911 2001 US Suicide Bombing - Terrorism Aids Reaction

Marxist Theory · 2001-09-11

Core Argument

The central thesis is that the 11 September 2001 attacks were not an isolated act of irrational evil, but a product of the contradictions of US imperialism itself. The article argues that the attacks will serve the interests of the most reactionary sections of the American ruling class, providing a pretext for military aggression abroad and authoritarian legislation at home. The authors insist that Islamic fundamentalism, far from being an alien enemy of civilisation, was originally armed and financed by the CIA as a weapon against the Soviet Union — and that the "war on terror" is merely the latest phase of imperialist intervention dressed up as self-defence.

The article also raises the possibility — cautiously but explicitly — that the failure of US intelligence to detect the operation was so comprehensive as to be inexplicable, and that a provocation that got out of hand cannot be ruled out. This is not presented as a settled conclusion but as a question forced by the logic of the situation.

Theoretical Grounding

The analysis draws on the classical Marxist tradition's critique of individual terrorism, which runs from Marx and Engels through Plekhanov, Lenin, and Trotsky. The central theoretical claim is that terrorism is not merely morally wrong but counterproductive: it strengthens the state it seeks to weaken, unifies the ruling class, and demoralises the working class. The article applies this framework to the specific conditions of 2001, arguing that the attacks would produce the opposite of what their perpetrators intended — a hardening of US imperialism, not its retreat.

The piece also deploys a materialist analysis of Islamic fundamentalism, tracing its rise not to religious fanaticism alone but to the concrete operations of US foreign policy during the Afghan war. This situates the argument within the Marxist tradition's analysis of uneven and combined development, and of how imperialism creates the very forces it later claims to fight.

Economically, the article connects the attacks to the underlying crisis of overaccumulation. The US economy had enjoyed nearly a decade of boom, but the contradictions of that boom — the dot-com bubble, overcapacity, and the artificial strength of the dollar — were already pushing the world economy toward recession. The attacks are presented as the trigger that converts a latent crisis into an open one, analogous to the 1973 oil shock.

Conjunctural Relevance

The article was written on the day of the attacks, but its analysis has proven remarkably durable. The key predictions — a US military strike against an Arab country (Iraq), the strengthening of Israel's hand, the erosion of civil liberties at home, and the acceleration of rearmament — were all borne out with grim precision. The invasion of Afghanistan in October 2001 and the invasion of Iraq in March 2003 followed the logic the article describes.

The economic analysis also proved prescient. The US economy entered a recession in 2001, and the attacks deepened the downturn. The Federal Reserve cut interest rates aggressively, contributing to the conditions that later produced the housing bubble and the 2008 financial crisis. The "war on terror" became a permanent feature of US state expenditure, with the costs of the post-9/11 wars estimated at over $8 trillion by 2021.

The article's warning about domestic repression — the Patriot Act, surveillance programmes, and the normalisation of state violence — has been confirmed by two decades of security state expansion. The "reactionary and anti-democratic legislation" the authors predicted became the legal architecture of the post-9/11 world.

The piece also anticipated the geopolitical realignments that followed: the erosion of US moral authority, the deepening of anti-American sentiment in the Middle East, and the long-term destabilisation of the region. The rise of ISIS, the Syrian civil war, and the refugee crisis of 2015 are all downstream consequences of the dynamic the article describes.

Where the Argument Continues

The article leaves several questions open. The most significant is the precise role of US intelligence agencies in the attacks. The authors raise the possibility of a provocation but do not develop it. This thread is taken up in other IDOM articles, particularly those examining the official 9/11 Commission Report and the inconsistencies in the official narrative. The broader question of how ruling classes use "false flag" operations to manufacture consent for war is explored in the Marxist literature on the Reichstag Fire and the Gulf of Tonkin incident.

The economic analysis is also underdeveloped in this piece. The connection between the attacks and the long-term crisis of US capitalism — the declining rate of profit, the shift from productive to fictitious capital, and the role of military Keynesianism — is gestured at but not elaborated. Later IDOM articles on the 2008 crash and the COVID-19 pandemic provide a fuller account of these dynamics.

The article does not address the question of how the working class should respond to terrorism, beyond condemning it and opposing the imperialist backlash. The positive programme — building revolutionary socialist organisation, opposing war, and linking the struggle against terrorism to the struggle against capitalism — is implicit but not developed. This is taken up in other texts in the tradition, particularly Trotsky's writings on the united front and the fight against fascism.

Connections

The article sits within a broader Marxist tradition of analysing terrorism as a symptom of capitalist crisis, not its cause. It echoes Lenin's Left-Wing Communism: An Infantile Disorder, which critiques individual terrorism as a substitute for mass struggle. It also draws on Trotsky's analysis of the rise of fascism, which emphasises how ruling classes use fear and crisis to dismantle democratic institutions and crush the working class.

The article's analysis of Islamic fundamentalism as a creature of US foreign policy connects to the Marxist literature on imperialism and the Middle East, particularly the work of writers like Tariq Ali and Gilbert Achcar. The critique of the "war on terror" as a cover for imperialist intervention is developed in later IDOM articles on Iraq, Afghanistan, and Libya.

The economic analysis — the connection between the attacks and the underlying crisis of overaccumulation — should be read alongside Marx's Capital Volume 3 on the tendency of the rate of profit to fall, and alongside later Marxist work on financialisation and fictitious capital. The article's prediction of a global recession anticipates the 2008 crisis and should be read in conjunction with IDOM's analysis of that event.

Key Quotes

1. "This terrorist act has a completely insane and criminal character and must be condemned - but not for the hypocritical reasons given by Bush and Blair. Marxists oppose individual terrorism because it is counterproductive and plays into the hands of the most reactionary sections of the ruling class."

2. "It must not be forgotten that Bin Laden was originally financed, armed and backed by US imperialism and was the creature of the CIA. When it suited Washington to stir up Islamic fundamentalism as a weapon against the Soviet Union, they did not scruple at supporting such rabid reactionaries and mass murderers."

3. "In the shadowy world of intrigue, provocation and counter-provocation that characterises the activities of the secret services, it is not beyond the bounds of possibility that a section of the US military Establishment decided to allow the terrorists to launch an attack inside America as a means of boosting public support for an aggressive policy and rearmament."

4. "The rape of the planet by Big Business has created a world fraught with misery, war and chaos, which has now impacted on the heart of world imperialism. This is the real cause of the present atrocity."

5. "Despite its spectacular impact, even the best-organised terrorist attacks can never succeed in destroying or even seriously weakening imperialism."

6. "In the words of the Roman historian Tacitus: 'And when they have created a wilderness, they call it Peace'."