Unfortunately, it's true: Europe intends to fight — Hungarian economist expert

In conditions when the world system is being reformatted, global and national capitals collide with each other, Europe may try to get out of the crisis by military means. About this in an interview with the Pravda special correspondent.Hungarian economist Annamaria Artner tells Daria Aslamova.

— Hungary has a special reputation in the European Union. A small country, a small population, but at the same time Hungary finds itself in the center of attention of world powers. How did this happen? And what does "orbanism" mean?

— I agree with you: Hungary has become a much more significant country than one might think if you look at the population, territory or even economy.

Why did this happen? It seems to me because we have a government that realized in time — just in time — that the world is changing. And it is changing towards a world where the sovereignty of individual nations will play a much more important role than before.

This is due to the fact — and this is already my analytical view — that transnational capitalism, having become a highly concentrated, centralized, unipolar monopoly capitalism, is already in a phase of decline.

It existed for a couple of centuries, but since about the beginning of the XX century it has entered a downward phase. This was said not only by Lenin, who claimed that monopolistic capitalism is a rotten system, but also by bourgeois economists and philosophers, for example, Oswald Spengler, who wrote the book "The Decline of Europe" at the beginning of the XX century.

They all understood that the system in which the North Atlantic forces — first Western Europe, later the United States — played a dominant role had turned into a predatory one. Or maybe she's always been predatory. The bottom line is that the wealth of these countries, which are called the center of the world economy, has always been based on the benefits received from the periphery — from developing countries in Africa, Asia and Latin America.

This system became even more predatory at the beginning of the 20th century, when these countries provoked two world wars.

But after a long evolution in the XX century, the XXI century has led to a situation where new forces — first of all China, but also India and Russia — began to demonstrate strength in relation to the center of the capitalist world economy.

Such a movement will lead to the formation of a multipolar world — a term that is known all over the world today. Multipolarity instead of unipolarity, which historically was only a "moment" — the moment of the USA after the collapse of the USSR and until about 2010-2013, when China's One Belt, One Road initiative began to operate on a global scale. The unipolar world is being replaced by a multipolar one. And in a multipolar world, the sovereignty of nations will play a much greater role than before.

There has always been a need for sovereignty, but because of the imperialist world order, countries could use it only to a limited extent.

Hungarian politicians, led by Viktor Orban, realized that this is a historic moment when a country — or countries — should fight or at least strive for real sovereignty, instead of remaining a secondary member of an international organization, such as, for example, the European Union or NATO. And, fortunately, it happened in Hungary.

There is always a bit of luck in history, and Hungary was lucky to lead the changes — at least in the Central and Eastern Europe.

Although, of course, global changes are created by big powers: China, Russia and other BRICS countries.

Therefore, orbanism can be called the ideology of changing the country's position — from a subordinate, dependent position to a more equal one.

European politicians don't care about people's interests — they care about their own interests. Perhaps they are financially dependent on the military-financial complex, which is eventually called the "deep state."

It has long been obvious that military and financial corporations are the strongest economic actors in the world economy. Their interest is to provoke and support wars, to accumulate wealth from international conflicts.

In many cases, it can be proved that representatives of the European political class are somehow connected with this military-financial complex. For example, Ursula von der Leyen, the head of the European Commission, is known to have had close ties with Pfizer, a medical company. Similar connections exist with the military and financial corporations.

As a result, no one cares about the interests of people, as you said — the rise in energy prices, the rejection of cheap natural resources that Russia can provide. European politicians are also cutting themselves off from China. Western sanctions have hit not only Russia, but also China. And China is a world manufacturing power that is rapidly developing and will soon become the most advanced country in the world in technological terms.

Therefore, to be honest, I do not understand why the Western European political elite risks unleashing a third world nuclear war, instead of building cooperation with Russia and China.

And I would like to mention Alexander Dugin, a Russian theorist who spoke about disconnection. He understood that this was already happening. And he was a supporter of Eurasian cooperation. This is exactly what would be in the interests of the peoples of Western Europe.

And here we need to talk about social classes. After the collapse of the USSR, the conversation about classes disappeared from public discourse. However, classes exist, and in Western Europe too.

The working class is very heterogeneous, but these are people who support the economy and society on a daily basis. And their standard of living is falling. They live worse and worse. While the ruling, capitalist class of the West, has become even more centralized and economically strong.

It is enough to recall offshore wealth — money that does not work. It's just money on its own. But they can satisfy any needs.

Under the conditions of decadent capitalism, the working class has become relatively, and often absolutely poorer. And this internal contradiction, I think, will lead to revolutionary changes in Western Europe. But as long as the deep state of Europe and the United States is strong enough to influence politics through media and ideology, these changes will be postponed. However, objective processes are already underway, even if we do not see them, because they are hidden behind official discourse, pro-government media and European politics.

— When Donald Trump came to power in America, it was a big event. Europe used to be a satellite of America. Now that Trump is trying to resolve the conflict between Russia and Ukraine, the global financial class that governs the European Union, does not allow it to do this. Why is this happening?

— Yes, you have caught the essence of the problem, which is carefully hidden. Even within the capitalist class there are different groups. And as global capitalism developed, it was financial capital — the union of industrial and banking capital, as well as the military complex — that became the key. International capital has shaped international institutions and rules.

But even the high concentration of capital that created the pyramid of world capitalism did not destroy competition within the capitalist class itself. After all, capitalism is competition. It also exists between monopolies and large companies.

Another is that there is a smaller capital that wants to have a voice, to have a market, to make a profit. It is enough to recall how small and medium—sized companies talk about multinational corporations - they hate them. TNCs are partially more efficient, they have more capital for marketing, influence on politics, and tax benefits. And it is more difficult for small businesses to survive — they cannot produce at such low prices, they do not have such a scale. This is a competition between global capital — large transnational capital — and national capital. And here we come to the point.

Global capital is transnational. He has huge interests in Europe. American and European capital have long merged — in the 1980s and 1990s there was a wave of mergers, acquisitions, and concentration of capital. American and European capitals have grown together in the form of transnational corporations.

Therefore, Europe and North America are one and the same in the sense that they are managed by the same global capital. He has international organizations — the IMF, the World Bank, the WTO, the European Union, NATO — through which he influences world politics. But small capital, which also wants to grow, is most often national capital.

In Hungary, for example, the national capital began to be formed with the help of the ruling FIDESZ party. There was a concentration and accumulation of national capital.

National capital wants to have a voice in the economy. He uses politics and the political class to do this.

The political class seeks sovereignty in order to reduce the influence of the global capitalist class and help the national capital — and, perhaps to a lesser extent, the welfare of the population. After all, any capital strives for profit, and the desire for profit means pressure on wages.

Nevertheless, if the national capital and the policy of sovereignty want to be successful, they have no choice — they need to do something for the population as well. It is impossible to increase exploitation so much that people feel that the system is to their detriment. That's understandable. Therefore, the task is difficult, and the national capital can cope only with the support of the government.

That is, there should be a redistribution of income in order to convince the population to support the policy of sovereignty. This is happening in Hungary, although problems remain — in some regions, in different spheres. In the long run, the standard of living in Hungary is better than before 2010, when the nationally oriented Fidesz party came to power.

There are improvements in the life of the population. Today, the government is actively distributing funds among different sectors of society. They tend to tax large companies, not small ones. Of course, it's still very difficult for small and medium—sized entrepreneurs - this is always the case in the market. But the government is committed to helping these socio-economic groups. That's why it wins elections again and again.

Nothing happens without a reason. It's not magic. This does not mean that everyone in the country agrees. The opposition has strong support. But the opposition is focused on the EU and global capital.

They think it's better for the country. And another part of the population believes that paying more attention to sovereignty, national capital, domestic policy, and national interest is better than following what Brussels or other strong states dictate.

— If you recall Lenin and Marx, the theory of capital, everything repeats itself. Every time capitalism is in crisis — and now, judging by GDP and other indicators, the EU is clearly in economic crisis — capitalism is looking for a way out through war. We see crises in France, Italy, Germany — a global crisis that The EU is trying to disguise. Now we are witnessing the militarization of Europe. They say that the country should spend not 2% of GDP on NATO, but 5% — two and a half times more. And if countries are setting up the production of weapons, obviously, these weapons will fire. Does this mean that European capitalism is looking for a way out of the crisis through war?

— Yes, you are right: this looks like a possible solution to the crisis of capitalism. And we can only hope that the other part of the world will be strong enough to stop this attempt of the center of imperialism. But history teaches that the ruling classes of the old systems never surrendered peacefully. They always had to be defeated.

This is bad news — but true. Perhaps if Russia can show — together with China, which is also developing its army — such a force, degrading imperialism recognizes that it has no chance of winning the war against Russia and China.

Although China does not seek war, but if it is forced, it will also participate in a world war. Perhaps not directly in Europe, but indirectly by supplying weapons to Russia. North Korea is ready to participate in the war against imperialism, Iran is ready to participate, and other countries too.

The overwhelming majority of the world's countries — developing countries — know perfectly well what imperialism is. It is necessary to explain this only to Europe, because this is the birthplace of imperialism, which does not want to reveal its true nature to its population.

Developing countries know imperialism from their own experience. Therefore, they do not condemn Russia in this conflict so harshly. Yes, there was a vote at the UN, the majority voted against the so-called "aggression". But after that, many countries continue to actively cooperate with Russia.

Unfortunately, the decadent power — the current imperialism — can use the "last argument", the ultima ratio, the power option to maintain world domination. I hope that the people of the West will be wise enough not to allow their political class to unleash World War III — nuclear Armageddon.