To defend the thesis of “permanent violence” in Yemen that leads to state failure and in the context of the structural crisis of capital (where Keynesianism has reached its structural limits), this article will look at the Yemeni war through a Marxist lens. It aims to analyze the deep sociological roots of the Yemeni war through the laws of capital as presented by Marx and to show why the Yemeni war is a goal in itself for Imperialism. Three main laws of capital are considered: (1) the general law of capital accumulation developed in Volume I of Das Kapital, (2) the law of the “transformation” of value into price as presented in Volume III of Das Kapital, and (3) the law relating to the contradiction between production and consumption (leading to a crisis of overproduction and a crisis of underconsumption) that was developed by Marx in the Grundrisse, in Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844, and by contemporary Marxist author, Istvan Mészáros . All of these laws are all tied to the Marxist “law of value” which refers to the idea that socially necessary labor time acts as the ultimate regulating force in exchange and production under Imperialism.
News sources or think-tanks that have defined Yemen as a “failed state” include: Fund for Peace, Haaretz, al Jazeera, MEPC (Middle East Policy Council), crisisgroup.org, CSIS (Center for Strategic and International Studies).
A. Cordesman, “Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, Libya, and Yemen, The Long-Term Civil Challenges and Host Country Threats from ‘Failed State’ Wars,” 2019, https://www.csis.org/analysis/afghanistan-iraq-syria-libya-and-yemen.
Mao Tse Tung, “Quotations from Mao Tse Tung,” no date, chapter 5, War and Peace, https://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/mao/works/red-book/ch05.htm.
Mao Tse Tung, “Quotations,” chapter 5.
Imperialism: “Monopoly capitalism, or imperialism, is the highest and last stage of capitalism, with the replacement of free competition by the dominance of monopolies as its fundamental distinguishing feature.” (Definition from Marxists.org.) American Imperialism: Mészáros' argument is that we are now living within what is “the potentially deadliest phase of imperialism.” Since the 1970s, starting with the end of the Bretton Woods system, the US state has succeeded in establishing its global preeminence through military and political means. I. Mészáros, Socialism or Barbarism: From the American Century to the Crossroads (Delhi: Aakar Books, 2007).
D. S. Painter, Oil and the American Century: The Political Economy of US Foreign Oil Policy, 1941-1954 (Washington, DC: US Dept. of State, 1986). D. S. Painter, “Oil and Geopolitics: The Oil Crises of the 1970s and the Cold War,” Historical Social Research/Historische Sozialforschung, 39:4 (2014), 186-208.
M. Mundy, A. al-Hakimi, and F. Pelat, “Neither Security Nor Sovereignty: The Political Economy of Food in Yemen,” in Zahra Babar and Suzi Mirgani (eds), Food Security in the Middle East (London: Hurst & Co., 2014), 136-344. M. Mundy, “The War on Yemen and its Agricultural Sector,” ICAS—Etxalde Colloquium: The Future of Food and Agriculture, 24 (2017), 25-26.
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I. Mészáros, “Beyond Capital: Towards a Theory of Transition,” 1995, https://www.marxists.org/archive/Mészáros/works/beyond-capital/ch03-2.htm.
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“Constant capital is the value of goods and materials required to produce a commodity, while variable capital is the wages paid for the production of a commodity. Marx introduced this distinction because it is only labour-power which creates new value.” (Definition from Marxists. org.) Variable capital is “variable” because it isn't a given and compressing it or reducing its price leads to the creation of surplus-value (unpaid socially necessary labor time or the value produced that is above what the wages are worth). The capitalists negotiate with the laborers the price of labour-power (paid by a wage) which leads to the exploitation of the laborers and thus the creation of surplus-value. The concepts of dead capital and living capital respectively represent constant capital and variable capital but from a more “social view”, less associated with Marx's critique of classical political economy. “Capital is dead labour, that, vampire-like, only lives by sucking living labour, and lives the more, the more labour it sucks. The time during which the labourer works, is the time during which the capitalist consumes the labour-power he has purchased of him.” K. Marx, Capital (1867), vol. I, chapter 10: the working day, https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1867-c1/ch10.htm#:~:text=Capital%20is%20dead%20labour%2C%20that,he%20has%20purchased%20of%20him.
“The organic composition of capital, c/v, measures the difference between the rate of surplus value, s/v, and the rate of profit, s/(c + v) - the higher the organic composition of capital, i.e., the more capital-intensive the industry, the lower the rate of profit.” (Definition from Marxists.org.)
D. Yaffe, “Value and Price in Marx's Capital” (1974), https://www.marxists.org/subject/economy/authors/yaffed/1974/valueandpriceinmarxcapital.htm1974.
Yaffe, “Value and Price.”
K. Marx, Grundrisse der Kritik der politischen Ökonomie (1857), Notebook VII, chapter 14, https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1857/grundrisse/ch14.htm
Surplus value is defined by Marx as the difference between the value that living labor creates in production and value paid by the capitalist to the worker in the form of wages. “Surplus value is nothing but the excess amount of labor the worker gives over, above the amount of materialized labor that he receives in his own wages as the value of his labor power” (K. Marx, Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844, The Poverty of Philosophy, and Wage Labor and Capital, vol. 47, pp. 190-91). Definition from V. Vygodsky, “Surplus Value,” 2014, https://www.marxists.org/archive/vygodsky/unknown/surplus_value.htm.
Socially necessary labor time: “The necessary labour time is the time (per day or per week) which workers must work (in the average conditions of the industry of their day), to produce the equivalent of their own livelihood (at the socially and historically determined standard of living of their day). As wage-workers however, they cannot get paid until they have completed a full working day, and that extra time they work, over and above the necessary labour time, is called surplus labour time.” (Definition by Marxists.org.)
Vygodsky, “Surplus Value.”
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Yaffe, “Value and Price.”
Yaffe, “Value and Price.”
Marx cited in I. Mészáros, Beyond Capital: Towards a Theory of Transition (New York: NYU Press, 1995), 567.
Mészáros, “Decreasing Rate.”
Mészáros, “Decreasing Rate,” 54-55.
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