People Before Profit blog

Message from Missouri: 'This is our country! Let's take it back!'

Sat, 31 Jul 2004 02:35:00 +0000

Originally from People's Weekly World Newspaper

ST. LOUIS – Voters here in the Show Me State want George W. Bush to show them one good reason to give him four more years in the White House in the Nov. 2 election. Missouri labor and its allies have seen enough already and are working hard to 'show Bush the door in 2004.'

Defeat of Bush is not the only aim, however. Missouri Treasurer Nancy Farmer is running hard to oust Republican Sen. Kit Bond, a Bush clone. She hammers Bond for supporting tax giveaways to corporations, rewarding them for closing their plants in the U.S. and moving overseas. If Farmer succeeds, it would be a long step toward ending GOP control of the U.S. Senate. Incumbent Gov. Bob Holden, a Democrat, is seeking re-election with strong labor backing. There is also a broad movement spearheaded by gays and lesbians to block a constitutional amendment, on the Aug. 3 primary ballot that would ban same-sex marriages.

There is a spirited race for the seat vacated by the former House Minority Leader Dick Gephardt. Russ Carnahan, son of the popular late governor, Mel Carnahan, is the favorite. But one of his rivals is Jeff Smith, a youthful Washington University college professor whose glossy, widely distributed brochure states, 'Hold Bush accountable for his lies. The rush to war in Iraq is one of the biggest mistakes in American history. … This is our country! Let’s take it back!'

'We need a voice in the Legislature'

John L. Bowman Sr., an auto worker active in the Coalition of Black Trade Unionists (CBTU), is making waves in his campaign for a second term representing the 70th Legislative District that includes his hometown, Northwoods, in St. Louis County. A tall, genial man, Bowman had just come off night shift at the Chrysler plant when he spoke with the World. He chuckled when asked if he was headed home to get some sleep. 'No,' he replied. 'Sleep can wait.'

He was on his way to the local McDonald’s restaurant where his campaign workers rendezvous every morning and evening before fanning out to ring doorbells and talk to voters. 'We need a voice in the Legislature that is a clear advocate for working families on issues like living wage jobs, health care, and education,' he said. 'The Bush administration is pushing states into a fiscal crunch. Special interest groups are at an advantage, getting more tax loopholes. The burden is being thrown on lower-income working people.'

Bowman served a term in the Legislature in 2001 and pushed through bills providing tax credits for teachers who dip into their own meager income to buy school supplies for their students, and a bill to mandate teaching of 'financial literacy' in kindergarten through 12th grade. He also succeeded in pushing through a bill to extend benefits to thousands of poor people facing termination of their Temporary Assistance to Needy Families (TANF) benefits. From 1998 to 2000, he served as a Northwoods alderman.

Bowman said his canvassers urge people to vote in the Aug. 3 primary but also in November to oust Bush and other right-wing Republicans. 'My campaign represents opposition to the right wing,' he said. 'Opposition at the state level is central to turning back the tide of right-wing oppression at the national level.'

Vote theft was not limited to Florida

Bowman has inspired people to canvass door-to-door in 101-degree heat when a Huck Finn-style dip in the Mississippi makes more sense. Much of the sweat is being shed at the headquarters of the Service Employees International Union (SEIU), where scores of union and community activists staff a state-of-the-art phone bank to register new voters and turn them out both for the primary and general election. An army of volunteers leaves every morning to go canvassing.

A huge voter turnout in the city of St. Louis and surrounding St. Louis County and in Kansas City, Mo., on Nov. 2 is key to defeating Bush in this battleground state. Bush stole Missouri by a razor-thin margin in 2000 amid widespread charges that thousands of Black voters were disenfranchised.

Lew Moye, a 40-year veteran of this city’s Chrysler plant and a close friend of Bowman’s, told the World, 'A lot of people in 2000 showed up at their polling places on election day and were told their names were not on the voter rolls. They were purged.' A judge ordered the polls kept open to accommodate thousands of voters who had been waiting in long lines in Black precincts in St. Louis. 'Senator Bond went through the roof,' Moye said. 'He went to a higher court and got an order to close the polls. It was very similar to what they did in Florida.'

Moye, chairman of the United Auto Workers Local 110 Shop Committee representing 4,000 workers at the Chrysler plant and also president of the St. Louis Chapter of the CBTU, said, 'We have to turn out in record numbers Nov. 2. We cannot allow ourselves to be discouraged by what happened in 2000. People need to go to the polls early and report any kind of harassment, any attempt to deny them their right to vote.'

He added, 'I think we’ve got a great chance to defeat Bush in Missouri. It’s just a matter of getting our voters out to the polls.'

Working people 'are not better off today than they were four years ago,' Moye continued. 'Bush hasn’t done anything for us. He’s got us bogged down in a war we can’t win. We’ve got a health care crisis that is just getting worse. If ever there was a need for a change in the White House, it is now. I believe the people of Missouri are going to do their part to make that change this time around.'

Since Bush stole the 2000 election, Moye said, Missouri has lost 37,400 manufacturing jobs and 141,915 workers in the state are unemployed. The jobless rate jumped from 4.4 percent in January 2001 to 4.7 percent in April 2004. At least 28,800 jobless workers in Missouri have exhausted their unemployment benefits without finding new jobs.

'Bush has done nothing to stop the plant shutdowns,' said Moye. 'On the contrary, he has encouraged outsourcing with his support of tax loopholes for companies that move overseas.'

Bush defeat will boost union power

Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry, by contrast, vows to close those loopholes and reserve tax credits for companies that build plants in the United States. Moye pointed out that Bush is also a labor-baiter and union-buster who denied union rights for thousands of Homeland Security employees. Kerry refuses to cross picket lines and he supports the Employee Freedom of Choice Act to make it easier for workers to win union rights.

'The defeat of Bush would be a big rebuff to the right-wing tendencies in this country,' Moye said. 'It would send a signal that unions must be able to organize workers without restrictions, obstacles and harassment. And it would go a long way to revitalize the labor-African American alliance that is the basis for all progressive change in this country,' said Moye.

'It’s a myth that Bush is going to sweep rural Missouri,' he said. 'Factories in rural Missouri are closing the same as in the cities. Who is dying in Iraq? It’s poor rural whites and poor urban African Americans.'

In addition to Bowman, the CBTU has fielded Fay Davis, an autoworker, and Jay Ozier, a carpenter, for re-election to the Missouri Democratic State Committee in their respective wards.

'All of these candidates are pushing to get rid of Bush,' Moye said. 'We’re walking the streets, knocking on doors, talking to people about what it will mean to elect workers to office like John Bowman and how his victory in the primary will help turn out a big vote to defeat Bush in November.'

One of Bowman’s most enthusiastic backers is Shirley Johnson, a three-term alderman in the town of Northwoods. 'John’s ideas and issues are basically the same as mine,' she said. 'The needs of working families, education, health insurance, a woman’s right to choose. The incumbent opposes a woman’s right to choose. I’m definitely in favor of choice.'

She added, 'As an African American leader, John is capable of turning out the vote not only on Aug. 3, but also on Nov. 2.'

The feel of a strong people’s movement

Bowman’s legions of canvassers have included activists with Planned Parenthood, SEIU, and a contingent of members of the Communist Party USA and Young Communist League (YCL). Collectively they have visited more than 1,500 homes in the community northwest of downtown St. Louis. The Party and YCL members are volunteers in the CPUSA-YCL 'Midwest Project' that targets key battleground states in the surging 'dump Bush' movement. Many canvassers end their conversations with the appeal, 'Let’s put John Bowman in on August 3rd, and George W. Bush out on November 2nd.'

Jim Wilkerson, district organizer of the Kansas-Missouri CPUSA and himself a CBTU activist, hailed the team mobilized by the Party and YCL. 'The Party and YCL are rising to the occasion, coalescing with other progressive forces to defend democracy and defeat Bush in November,' he said.

Canvassers have come from California, New York, Pennsylvania, Maryland, Connecticut, Illinois, and many other states. George Robbins, a teacher from Buffalo, N.Y., said, 'Forty years ago I was a volunteer in the Freedom Summer Project registering Black voters in Mississippi. I spent the first evening at the home of Fannie Lou Hamer. Here we are today working for a big vote to get Bush out. Like then, this effort has the feel of a strong people’s movement.'

Across town, Audrey Hollis, an organizer with Jobs with Justice, said her group is 'reaching out to under-represented voters and new Americans. We are not only registering them to vote but we are educating them on the issues. The election in Missouri is very, very close. If we get just three additional voters in every precinct, then we will win. Bush and corporate America are shifting costs to the backs of employees and working people. We are losing income, losing health care and pensions. It is hitting everybody. The gap is widening between the wealthy and the workers. Can Bush be defeated? Yes. There is a lot of hope and energy in the air.'

Mark Fraley, civic engagement director for the Missouri Progressive Vote Coalition, said that as a rule of thumb, 50 percent or fewer of low-income people vote. But in 2000 and 2002, after an extensive campaign by the coalition, 67 percent of low-income people voted. 'It shows that if the means are available, poor people will vote,' Fraley said. 'This election is especially unique in that the electorate is so polarized. The two parties are focusing so much on winning over that tiny percentage of undecided swing voters that they ignore this huge pool of disenfranchised people who are disgruntled with the system.'

Every vote counts in Show Me State

Fraley added, 'We are going to shopping centers, welfare offices, bus and metro stops. We approach people and register them to vote. Sometimes it is in the workplace.'

In the one year since the project began, he said, over 42,000 voters have been registered. 'We plan to register 56,000. We are working all over the state of Missouri. We are just now moving into the get-out-the-vote stage. This is the most important election of our lifetime. Missouri has picked the winner in every election since the Civil War.'

This is the state where voters cast their ballots in the 2000 election for Democratic Senate nominee Mel Carnahan, who had died in a plane crash, rather than Republican John Ashcroft. Bush got his revenge by naming Ashcroft as Attorney General.

'That vote for Carnahan symbolized the growing sophistication of Missouri voters,' Fraley said. 'After all, if you had a choice of voting for a dead man or voting for John Ashcroft, who would you vote for?'

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South Africa’s Democracy: Deepening Class Contradictions

Fri, 30 Jul 2004 02:46:00 +0000

In the last issue of Umsebenzi Online (7 July 2004) we argued that capitalism has failed our democracy. In the two weeks since there have been some very significant developments underscoring this perspective.

In the first place, the Employment Equity Report, released by the Minister of Labor last week, shows the extent to which private capital is actually resisting transformation of the racial and gender demographics of middle and top management in South Africa’s companies. It shows the inherent and systemic racial character of South African capitalism. Racial and gender exclusion are not just a past legacy, they continue to be reproduced as an ongoing reality under capitalism. It is an illustration that South African capitalism has, for more than a century, relied on white male middle and top management as its most trusted 'lieutenants' for its accumulation needs.

South African capitalism is liable to reproduce the relative marginalization of black and women professionals. But events of the past weeks also illustrate that, left to their own devices, the narrow class and personal aspirations of black (and women) professionals are equally incapable of providing an effective transformational leadership.

The substantially privatized Telkom, for instance, presents itself as a leader in black economic empowerment (BEE), citing the demographic and gender profile of its top management cadre. It has just declared a huge profit of R4.5bn and paid its black CEO an obscene R11.4m in salary and bonuses. In the same week as these figures were released, Telkom announced its intention to retrench thousands more workers over the next three years. This follows the cutting of the number of fixed line employees by 24,453 since 1997. While delivering 'share-holder' value, with a spectacular 175% increase in Telkom shares since listing last year, Telkom tariffs have skyrocketed. A local call in 2002 was five times what it was in 1996. Last year local and national call prices increased by a further 12.5%.

Even the much-trumpeted 'broad' black economic empowerment component of the share-offering privatization process of last year has come to very little. The Khulisa shares, offered at a discount to the historically disadvantaged, account for less than 1% of the company’s shareholding.

In short, submitting Telkom increasingly to the profit-maximizing laws of the capitalist market, has made a few individuals, including some blacks, very rich, while increasing the cost of 'doing business' in South Africa for all, including for capitalists. But it is working people and their families who are most disempowered, depriving thousands of their only means of livelihood. What is happening at Telkom is an elite empowerment where the working class, and particularly black households, are impoverished.

Again, in exactly the same week that Standard Bank announces a huge black economic empowerment deal, the banks were busy evicting black bond-holders in Protea Glen in Soweto. This happens against the backdrop of unrest in Diepsloot, again a symptom of, amongst other things, the dismal failure of capitalist banks to finance low-cost housing. We note that as the capitalist banks do this, it is the state, through the Minister of Housing, cde Lindiwe Sisulu that has had to come to the rescue of some of those being evicted. For the capitalist banks, profits are the bottom line not the social needs of ProteaGlen residents.

Nor are some black professionals in the financial sector providing much of an inspiring example. As a direct result of our financial sector campaign, a significant sum has now been earmarked for low-cost housing, for access to banking services for workers and the poor, and for infrastructural development in poor areas. But some of these financial sector black professionals are now advancing the shameless argument that half of this sum should be allocated to them, so that they can buy shares in the financial sector!

Also in the past fortnight, the Food and Allied Workers’ Union has launched the first ever Section 77 notice, with a planned strike against a black economic empowerment deal at KWV. These are the first signs of deepening class contradictions between various classes within the black community as a result of competing models of black economic empowerment. The national contradiction cannot be addressed without simultaneously tackling the class contradiction in South Africa.

An emerging cadre of black professionals and managers in the private and public sectors can, potentially, play a progressive role. In fact, they must be assisted to play such a role. But it is only the hegemony of a consistent working class perspective, organization and mobilization that will ensure that they do indeed play such a role. If they are allowed to pursue their own narrow class and strata aspirations, they will simply ensure the continued dominance of a capitalist accumulation path that oppresses the great majority of blacks, women and, of course, workers and the poor.

South Africa is currently faced with a number of labor disputes and possible strikes in major sectors of our economy – the metal and motor industries, the mining industry, the public sector, media and communications, etc. In part, these are the usual, cyclical, two to three-year rounds of wage negotiations, as existing agreements begin to expire. But this year they occur in a particular context. In many sectors, organized workers cannot but help notice that the capitalist accumulation path has brought immense rewards to capitalists, while the earnings of workers (those still in employment) have declined.

This year’s round of wage negotiations will naturally reflect this understanding. The intensity of these disputes will, in part, be about different class interpretations of our decade of democracy, and of the ANC’s 70% electoral mandate. Some in the media and in big business have tried to interpret the ANC’s April election victory, as a mandate to continue with 'business as usual' in economic policy. This is certainly not the view of the millions of workers and poor who actually voted for the ANC. Nor are they the views of the ANC leadership, as illustrated by the Letter from the President ('The poor of this world rich in faith') in last Friday’s ANC Today.

For the SACP, the lessons of the last decade, like the lessons of the past two weeks, are clear: if we are to properly understand the character of our economy and the challenges of its transformation, the only route is a consistent working class analysis and perspective. And it is only from this perspective that progressive forces in general and the working class in particular, will be able to evolve a developmental path to transform our economy to serve the overwhelming majority of our people.

The struggle to overcome the crisis of underdevelopment entails purposeful, strategic anti-systemic measures, measures that counter the profit-maximizing anti-social trajectory of capitalism. There is a growing consensus that this requires strong state intervention. It also requires active popular mobilization, with the working class at the head, to assert worker power at the point of production, and popular consumer power and cooperative activism in our townships and rural areas. These strategic, anti-systemic measures are absolutely essential to counter the continuous reproduction of mass poverty by capitalism in our society. To counter the political economy of capital, we must foster the political economy of workers and the poor. We must build an economy and a society increasingly based on meeting social needs, not private profits. This is precisely what we are referring to in our strategic slogan – 'Socialism is the future, Build it now!

--Blade Nzimande is the General Secretary of the South African Communist Party. This article was originally published in Umsebenzi Online.

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Book Review - Who Are We?, by Samuel P. Huntington

Thu, 29 Jul 2004 14:39:00 +0000

Samuel Huntington, Harvard professor and chairman of its Harvard Academy for International and Area Studies, has drawn both criticisms and praise for his writings regarding the major divisions in the world in the post-Soviet world. In reality Huntington is an ideologue presenting a world model in which imperialism and the different people’s struggle to resist and destroy it have nothing to do with the conflicts in today’s world.

In an article published in Foreign Affairs, a few years after the counter revolution in the Soviet Union and other European socialist countries, Huntington titled The Clash of Civilizations and his subsequent book with the same title he put forward the idea that neither economics nor ideology would be the cause of conflicts, but different values based on history, traditions, language and religion.

For Huntington there is no struggle between socialism and imperialism, nor is there any struggle over control of a country’s own resources by its people against control by imperialistic powers in favor of the transnational corporations, nor class struggle as the motive force today.

For him the conflicts center over cultural values of different 'civilizations.' The one which seems to dominate his thinking the most in his mind is the clash between the 'West' and the Muslim world. Huntington is involved in what Columbia University professor Edward Said called 'The search for a post-Soviet foreign devil,' and that 'foreign devil' for Harrington are Muslims. As such, Huntington’s view that it is cultural values and differences as the true cause of conflicts is clearly chauvinistic and racist.

Widespread acceptance of Huntington’s views are a danger to the people’s movements throughout the world. If the conflicts in society are between different cultures there cannot be international unity among all peoples’ that are oppressed, nor can there be unity among the working class. Nowhere are the problems of the world caused by neoliberal economic policies of imperialism in this stage of the development of capitalism, and, of course, in the end the whole system of capitalism itself.

For the working-class of developed capitalist countries proposals would be that all peoples of a given nation rally around the imperialist policies of the US and Europe, i.e. The 'Western World' against the Muslim, Eastern, Asian, African and others, but primarily the Islamic world. There is not one word about the economic system that this would support.

Lately Huntington has turned his attention internally to the United States where he attempts to apply a variation of his thinking to the domestic scene. His ideas would similarly deprive the peoples of the US of a powerful weapon for social progress – unity.

In his book Who are We?: The Challenge to America’s National Identity, Huntington aims his ideological guns at the people that he considers a 'major potential threat to the country’s cultural and political integrity' – Latin Americans. Even among Latin Americans he is mostly concerned about Spanish-speaking Latin Americans, leaving out the Portuguese-speaking Brazilians and the French creole speaking Haitians.

Among the Spanish-speaking Latin Americans he singles out the largest Hispanic minority in the US – those of Mexican origin and ancestry. At the same time he does not leave out Puerto Rican, Cubans and Dominicans.

Huntington’s position is a rallying call to Americans to stop the flow of immigrants from Latin America, otherwise it would ' be the end of the America we have known for more than three centuries.' While Huntington predicts there a 'nativist' movement will rise up in response to Latino immigration, his writings, both in regards to the international as well as domestic issues, seem to be a rallying call for just such a chauvinistic movement. Alan Wolfe, director of Boston College’s Center for Religion and American Public Life, criticized Huntington as endorsing, not just predicting, a 'white nativist movement' and calls his book a 'Patrick Buchanan with footnotes.'

In Huntington’s historical revisionism he claims that this immigration is different from past ones. He says that earlier immigrants were assimilated into the white, Anglo-Protestant culture of the American nation. Even then he has to admit that 'Contributions from immigrant cultures modified and enriched' the culture of this nation.' Yet, in his insistence on calling the US an 'Anglo-Protestant' country he ignores the Catholic, Jewish, Muslim, African and Asian contributions of immigrants throughout the years, as well as those of the native peoples of the Americas.

Huntington’s view of Mexicans and other Latin Americans as a threat to the US nation is due to six factors: contiguity, scale, illegality, regional concentration, persistence, and historical presence,' which to him seem to be problematic and new.

With regards to Mexicans, all six factors originate from wars of imperialist conquest fought by Americans against Mexico in the second third of the 19th century. While Huntington decries the use of Spanish by new immigrants and the learning of Spanish by Mexican American adults who were brought up speaking only English, he is critical of dual-language programs where children, both immigrant and native-born, are taught in two languages, thus becoming bilingual.

Huntington opposes the concentration of Mexicans in the southwest, Puerto Ricans and Dominicans in the New York area, and Cubans in southern Florida. Yet he considers the movement of Latinos to other areas, such as Mexicans going directly to Southern states with no stop-over in places like Texas or California, Puerto Ricans to the Orlando and Tampa areas in Florida, or in other areas of the country, as 'establishing beachheads,' a term referring to the vanguard of an invading military force.

Huntington blames a whole series of social ills on US Latin Americans. He claims there would be more unity in the country if there were to be less immigration of Mexicans to the US At the same time he completely ignores the divisions which his chauvinistic positions can create. In what seems as an effort to cause disunity between Latinos and African Americans, Huntington blames the former for the high unemployment among the latter, saying that the new immigrants take occupy the low-paying jobs that would otherwise go to African Americans.

Huntington portrays himself as a 'patriot ... [who is] deeply concerned about the unity and strength of my country ...' But what does his characterization of himself say about his feelings about the rest of us who disagree with his reactionary ideas, especially US Latin Americans who would be the most to disagree with him? That they are unpatriotic and thus a menace to US society?

Unfortunately, among liberal critics of Huntington’s positions there are those that accept some of his basic assimilationist premises. These argue, for example, that Huntington is wrong, that Latin American immigrants do assimilate. They offer as part of their 'proof' that most of these immigrants learn English and many become US citizens.

A fully democratic position must be a people have full rights as a national minority. Especially so, when they come from Mexico, a country that lost half its territory due to imperialistic plunder.

The case for Puerto Ricans is similar. The Puerto Rican national minority in the US exists because of the economic hardships which Puerto Rico suffers as a US colony. Democracy demands that all sovereign powers be transferred from the US to the people of Puerto Rico so that island-nation can join the international community as a full and equal partner. At the same time the 3.4 million Puerto Ricans in the US must be guaranteed all rights to their language and culture, a right which must be extended to all other Latin Americans in this country.

A question begs to be asked. Why now? Does US imperialism need to find another 'foreign devil' within its territory, as well as one outside?

US Latin Americans are being seen more and more as a potent political force due to their population growth and increasing numbers who are becoming citizens of the country. Many have seen the devastation that neoliberal economic policies are having in their country of origin. They oftentimes come to the US as economic refugees and to escape the social unrest resulting from anti-people economic policies. Only to find that because of national and racial discrimination they are relegated to the lowest-paying, most dangerous jobs, when they can find employment.

As Latinos grow in numbers within the United States and gain the vote they are being seen as a potent political bloc which in unity with other people’s forces can affect life in the US for the better. The GOP right (and to some extent the Democrats, too) is courting the Latino vote using what National Council of La Raza president Raul Yzaguirre calls 'piñata politics' – photo opportunities in the various Hispanic communities eating, dancing and speaking Spanish as opposed to talking to the issues affecting those communities and offering real solutions.

Huntington is not just a disinterested academic observer with extreme views. He is part and parcel of the ideological apparatus of the right.

Harvard University has received over $4,700,000 from the John Olin Foundation during a 15-year period for programs directed by Samuel Huntington. This foundation, whose family made its fortune in chemicals and munitions, has also funded right-wing ideologues like Olin Foundation has given over $8 million to Heritage Foundation from 1985 to 2002; over $6,600,000 for the American Enterprise Institute; and the Manhanttan Institute for Public Policy Research which former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani considered 'a preferred source of information' because the MIPPR 'advocates privatization of sanitation services and infrastructure maintenance, deregulation in the area of environmental and consumer protection, school vouchers and cuts in government spending on social welfare programs,' according to People for the American Way.

The Manhattan Institute has in turn funded the work of Charles Murray, co-author of The Bell Curve and Losing Ground, which attempts to make the argument that social programs hurt, rather than help, people in poverty and racial minorities.

If Huntington’s words were to be coming from the mouths of avowed fascists or members of the Ku Klux Klan, they may be easier to dismiss as the ranting of the lunatic fringe and maybe articles like this one wouldn’t be as necessary. However, Huntington is an accepted member of academia and respected in many circles including liberal ones. His views reach the decision makers in the federal government, both Republicans as well as Democrats. This makes his views more dangerous.

--José Cruz is editor of Nuestro Mundo.

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The People's Dreams vs. Wal-Mart Schemes

Thu, 29 Jul 2004 05:00:00 +0000

Black Commentator Co-Publisher Glen Ford delivered the following remarks to the Labor Plenary at the Rainbow/PUSH Coalition 33rd Annual Conference, in Chicago, Illinois, June 29.

During the last couple years we’ve been hearing a lot about a 'global clash of civilizations.' We have our own clash of civilizations going on, right here in the United States.

Essentially, civilization is the sum total of the expressed dreams of a people. It is their version – and vision – of what life is supposed to be.

But in the United States, only one very small group is empowered to dream its dreams – to build its version of civilization.

This group sees neighborhoods and cities and countries – the whole world – as its private Field of Dreams – places where they can make ever-increasing profits, at ever-diminishing cost to themselves. Forget about the rest of us.

Wal-Mart is the 'model' for this brand of civilization. They lock up everybody else’s dreams in their Big Box. And, whatever they do, no matter how destructive – they call that, 'development.'

Normal people, regular Americans, have their own 'civilized' dreams, including people in the inner cities. They walk the streets of their neighborhoods, saying:

'There oughta be an entertainment complex, right over there,' or…

'This is a perfect place for a restaurant – if they’d just move the police station a little closer,' or…

'They need to build some housing, here – bring some life to this area.'

What these everyday people are doing, is urban planning. Normal people are keenly interested in development. But regular people are given no reason to believe that their dreams have any connection to 'development' – or to the political process. It’s just…day dreaming.

Instead, we have allowed corporations to decide the fate of the cities. We hardly speak of democratic development. Even now, as the cities become more valuable than they have been in nearly a half-century, we still fail to tap the people’s dreams.

What we are left with, as a result – is Wal-Mart.

And, not just Wal-Mart, but the Wal-Mart 'model' – which is applauded on Wall Street and at the White House as the way that American corporations should operate.

If we are to defeat the Wal-Mart model, we must become the enablers of the people’s dreams.

We must do that, by building a movement based on democratic development – development of the cities for the benefit of those who live in them.

We must give the people the tools, the information, and access to specialized disciplines, so that they can dream – and build – their city.

Labor is uniquely positioned to nurture such a movement, especially Black labor.

The imbalance in the struggle against the Wal-Mart model is about more than just money. It is also about information. Corporations gather data all the time, for their own purposes. Yet no city in this country has anything that could accurately be called an overall plan for development. And no major American city has ever performed a real audit of its assets, public and private.

Corporations hold all the information cards, and manipulate all the numbers, because development is considered the business of business – not the people’s business.

That’s what we have to change, if we truly want to beat the Wal-Mart model.

We must bring together real urban specialists and planners, to do audits of the public and private assets of the cities, to assess the actual potentialities of these places – in close collaboration with those activists who are daily grappling with corporate developers, in localities all across this country.

For Black labor in particular, this is the unfinished business of our people’s historical struggle.

Building a movement for democratic development is also the context in which to discuss how union pension funds should be invested – investments that should be made with a larger Plan in hand: a democratic plan for urban development.

In 1980, Ronald Reagan came to power with a vision of a Shining City on a Hill. You and I know that Reagan’s vision did not include us - that we didn’t even live in his imagined City on a Hill.

Our job in the fight against the Wal-Mart model is to raise up a people’s vision of their city – one that shines in their imaginations – a dream that they will fight for. Because, in the end, all great movements are sustained by dreams.

--The United Food and Commercial Workers union (UFCW) played a key role in organizing the Labor Plenary at the Rainbow/PUSH conference.

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Wal-Mart and the Bush/Cheney Campaign Working from Same Play Book

Wed, 28 Jul 2004 02:58:00 +0000

Originally published at History News Network at .

The New York Times recently reported on events at the podium during the annual meeting of Wal-Mart Stores, Inc.:

'How many of you have heard something negative about a Wal-Mart job?' one executive, Susan Oliver, asked the crowd. When their hands sailed into the air, she responded: 'It hurts to hear it, doesn't it?'

She urged them, as did other speakers at the meeting, to spread positive stories about the company, and showed a video featuring jubilant Wal-Mart workers from across the globe, backed by a recording of Louis Armstrong singing 'What a Wonderful World.'

While this speech was part of a fanfare describing a series of new labor policies, Wal-Mart CEO Lee Scott offered little detail about upcoming changes in the company’s wage system. '‘No one's pay will be reduced as a result of implementing this new structure,’ he stressed, ‘but some associates will receive an increase.’'

Wal-Mart’s famous low prices are a product of its legendary low cost structure and cheap labor plays a vital role in making those prices possible. Therefore, Wal-Mart workers have a right to be suspicious of such vague proposals. According to Business Week, the new system will include pay caps for employees and limits on merit raises, thus harming the future earnings prospects of long-term workers even if their pay would not go down.

These changes, like the video with the Louis Armstrong music and the company’s recent commercials about its contributions to communities, are part of Wal-Mart’s reaction to bad publicity it has faced lately. The best example of this bad press is the recent judicial decision that certified a massive sex discrimination case as a class action suit, but the company has had many other public relations problems in recent months.

This bad publicity has put Wal-Mart’s vaunted anti-union stance to the test for the first time. One stock analyst told Business Week that the new labor policies might be intended as 'shark repellent against the unions.'

What the company doesn’t seem to understand is that effective shark repellant requires real change. History offers many counterexamples of non-union firms that made significant policy changes that kept organized labor at bay by significantly improving the lives of many workers.

Historian Nelson Lichtenstein has compared Wal-Mart to General Motors because both firms are standard setters for corporate capitalism in their respective eras. With respect to labor policy, this is comparing apples and oranges because Wal-Mart is non-union and General Motors in its heyday was anything but.

United States Steel, on the other hand, was the most important non-union company in the American economy after its founding in 1901. Because of its diverse, vertically-integrated operations, it had influence on keeping firms in industries ranging from cement making to transport non-union too.

Unlike Wal-Mart, U.S. Steel paid the highest wages in the entire steel industry during its first decades. More importantly, it created an elaborate policy of welfare capitalism, programs and policies not required by labor market forces, which cost it millions of dollars to implement and maintain. While some of these policies like pensions and a stock purchase plan were of only limited effectiveness, others such as safety programs and nurses who conducted home visits made a real difference.

Wal-Mart, on the other hand, offers music videos with happy workers in them rather than labor practices that make most workers happy. For example, a recent study showed that less than half of the company’s workers were insured on the company plan. Furthermore, a disproportionate number of the rest have to rely on government assistance for health care because their wages are so low and the out-of-pocket cost of the Wal-Mart plan is so high.

Is it any wonder then that the Bush administration has specifically endorsed Wal-Mart as a credit to American capitalism? As Vice President Cheney recently told workers at a Wal-Mart distribution center near the company’s Bentonville, Arkansas headquarters, 'This is one of our nation's great companies, and one of the most familiar names in all of America. The story of Wal-Mart exemplifies some of the very best qualities in our country -- hard work, the spirit of enterprise, fair dealing, and integrity.' Wal-Mart has returned the favor by ramping up its political contributions so that it is now the number two campaign giver this election cycle. Eighty-five percent of that money has gone to Republican candidates.

'It was fitting that Cheney came to hail the success of Wal-Mart,' writes Paul Waldman in the Gadflyer, 'because there are few American institutions that so embody the Bush administration's vision of what the American economy should look like.' Waldman focuses on traits such as the company’s low wages and its anti-unionism because they echo Bush policies, but this comparison works just as well with regard to presentation.

A film of smiling workers with 'What a Wonderful World' playing in the background would be equally at home in a Bush campaign commercial as it was at Wal-Mart’s annual meeting. Indeed, so far this campaign season the Bush has been able to offer little but optimism in defense of his economic and Iraq policies. The administration’s deceptive changes in federal overtime rules are an example of how Bush’s sunny rhetoric hides his malicious intent.

In contrast, U.S. Steel’s welfare capitalist policies were in large part a response to government pressure applied by Republican administrations. U.S. Steel believed that if the public viewed it as a benevolent employer, there would be less pressure for the federal government to slap it with an antitrust suit or create other impediments to its nonunion operations.

U.S. Steel’s serious attempt to improve the lives of its workers demonstrates the importance of politics to low-wage workers. Government pressure and management’s sense of noblesse oblige combined to create significant changes in the lives of rank-and-file steelworkers.

If America wants, part of this dynamic could be repeated. We cannot vote Wal-Mart out of office this November, but we can change the culture in which Wal-Mart operates by voting out George Bush. Don’t be fooled by soothing music and pictures of smiling workers.

-- Jonathan Rees is Associate Professor of History at Colorado State University - Pueblo. He is the author of MANAGING THE MILLS: LABOR POLICY IN THE AMERICAN STEEL INDUSTRY DURING THE NONUNION ERA (University Press of America, 2004) and co-editor of THE VOICE OF THE PEOPLE: PRIMARY SOURCES ON THE HISTORY OF AMERICAN LABOR, INDUSTRIAL RELATIONS AND WORKING-CLASS CULTURE (Harlan Davidson, 2004).

--Re-posted from History News Network with permission.

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Campaign for a National Health Program NOW!

Tue, 27 Jul 2004 15:19:00 +0000

The following is an executive summary of the US National Health Insurance Act (HR 676).

The Campaign for a National Health Program NOW!

Expanded & Improved Medicare for All Bill to be introduced by

Brief Summary of Legislation The United States National Health Insurance Act (HR 676) establishes a new American national health insurance program by creating a single payer health care system. The bill would create a publicly financed, privately delivered health care program that uses the already existing Medicare program by expanding and improving it to all U.S. residents, and all residents living in U.S. territories. The goal of the legislation is to ensure that all Americans, guaranteed by law, will have access to the highest quality and cost effective health care services regardless of one's employment, income, or health care status.

With over 42 million uninsured Americans, and another 40 million who are under insured, the time has come to change our inefficient and costly fragmented health care system. The USNHI program would reduce overall annual health care spending by over $50 billion in the first year. In addition, because it implements effective methods of cost-control, health spending is contained over time, ensuring affordable health care to future generations.

In its first year, single-payer will save over $150 billion on paperwork and $50 billion by using rational bulk purchasing of medications. These savings are more than enough to cover all the uninsured, improve coverage for everyone else, including medication coverage and long-term care.

Employers who currently provide coverage for their employees pay an average of 8.5% of payroll towards health coverage, while many employers can't afford to provide coverage at all. Under this Act, all employers will pay a modest 3.3% payroll tax per employee, while eliminating their payments towards private health plans. The average cost to an employer for an employee earning $35,000 per year will be reduced to $1,155, less than $100 per month.

95% of families will pay less for health care under national health insurance than they do today. Seniors and younger people will all have the comprehensive medication coverage they need.

Who is Eligible Every person living in the United States and the U.S. Territories would receive a United States National Health Insurance Card and i.d number once they enroll at the appropriate location. Social Security numbers may not be used when assigning i.d cards. No co-pays or deductibles are permissible under this act.

Benefits/Portability This program will cover all medically necessary services, including primary care, inpatient care, outpatient care, emergency care, prescription drugs, durable medical equipment, long term care, mental health services, dentistry, eye care, chiropractic, and substance abuse treatment. Patients have their choice of physicians, providers, hospitals, clinics, and practices.

Conversion to a Non-Profit Health Care System Private health insurers shall be prohibited under this act from selling coverage that duplicates the benefits of the USNHI program. They shall not be prohibited from selling coverage for any additional benefits not covered by this Act; examples include cosmetic surgery, and other medically unnecessary treatments.

Cost Containment Provisions/ Reimbursement The National USNHI program will annually set reimbursement rates for physicians, health care providers, and negotiate prescription drug prices. The national office will provide an annual lump sum allotment to each existing Medicare region, which will then administer the program. Payment to health care providers include fee for service, and global budgets.

The conversion to a not-for- profit health care system will take place over a 15-year period, through the sale of U.S. treasury bonds; payment will not be made for loss of business profits, but only for real estate, buildings, and equipment.

Funding & Administration The United States Congress will establish annual funding outlays for the USNHI Program through an annual entitlement. The USNHI program will operate under the auspices of the Dept of Health & Human Services, and be administered in the former Medicare offices. All current expenditures for public health insurance programs such as S-CHIP, Medicaid, and Medicare will be placed into the USNHI program.

A National USNHI Advisory Board will be established, comprised primarily of health care professionals and representatives of health advocacy groups.

Proposed Funding for USNHI Program: $1.86 trillion Per Year A payroll tax on all employers of 3.3%. Maintain employee and employer Medicare payroll tax of 1.45%. Implement a variety of mechanisms so that low and middle income families pay a smaller share of their incomes for health care than wealthiest 5% of Americans; i.e., a health income tax on the wealthiest 5% of Americans, a small tax on stock and bond transfers, and closing corporate tax shelters. A repeal of the Bush tax cut of 2001. For more details, click here: PNHP's

*For more information, contact Joel Segal, legislative assistant, Rep. John Conyers, at 202 225-5126, or e- mail at

See a list of supporters of this bill here.

Read more articles about HR 676 here, here, here, here, here, and here.

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The Bush Administration’s War on Women & Children

Mon, 26 Jul 2004 22:00:00 +0000

By now everybody knows that Martha Stewart has been sentenced to 5 months in prison for lying about a phone call. I think it was Jeffrey Toobin who said, 'The government has sent a clear message to all Americans. If you lie, you’re going to suffer the consequences.' Isn’t that just rich. The government sent a clear message that if you lie you’re going to suffer the consequences. I think they should clarify that a little and say, 'If you lie you’re going to suffer the consequences, unless of course you happen to BE in the government, or you’re insanely greedy and your lies happen to kill tens of thousands of people or purposely bankrupt the second largest state in the continental United States with the third largest economy in the world.'

I don’t even know how Kitty Pilgrim could sit there with a straight face when he said that. 'The government wants to send a message to people who lie.' I would have been rolling on the floor. The government wants to send a message. The government sent a message alright and it was, if you’re a woman or a child in this country, you better fasten your seat belt because it’s going to be a bumpy ride.
The fact that Martha Stewart might do jail time in a real live women’s prison with drug dealers, child abusers and perpetrators of other serious crimes, (there are no country club jails for female white-collar felons) merely serves to keep my Went-to-Sleep-in-America/Woke-up-in-The-Twilight-Zone experience alive and well. You see, a very important member of our government was once on the board of a big company called Harkin Energy. This person was asked to be on the committee that looked into all of this company’s big financial problems. And even though he was warned that selling his own stock because of his knowledge of the company’s financial situation would be illegal, he did it anyway making a tidy little profit of over $800,000 before the stock plummeted to just pennies per share and his investors lost their shirts. He, however, didn’t have to go to jail with a bunch of filthy dope dealers. Oh no. He got to be the leader of the free world. Doesn’t seem fair does it?

Meanwhile, Kenny boy, better known as Ken Who? walks away from Enron with tens of millions of dollars after telling his employees and their families to keep buying Enron stock even as he was selling his own shares faster than you can say greedy, lying bastard. What next? Men who are responsible for the deaths of thousands of innocent men, women and children being nominated for Nobel Peace Prizes? I can’t even sit still when some spokesperson for the Repugnant party says something like, 'Well, we’re still strong on our commitment to ending partial birth abortions.' THERE IS NO SUCH THING AS A PARTIAL BIRTH ABORTION. Literally, the only time that procedure is performed is when the mother’s life is at stake. Why won’t somebody say that? For example: Andrea Mitchell, 'Well, yes, Mr. Santorum. But are you aware that if you deny a woman a late term abortion, the birth might kill her?' 'Well, yes Andrea. And that’s fine with us because we are way more protective of the ‘unborn’ than we are of the ‘born.’ And furthermore, we don’t plan on helping women out at all by approving over-the-counter morning after pills or making birth control a little easier to get by having it covered by insurance like Viagra. And you can forget about day care, WIC programs or forcing the fathers to support the children they conceive because women are the cause of all of society’s ills and therefore they shalt be punished.'

Where have I heard that before? Oh, yes. The Taliban.

It seems as though they’re forgetting that two people are needed to conceive a child. Why isn’t the man treated with the same disregard as the woman? 'We’re sorry Mr. Thurmond but you’re going to have to raise this child by yourself with no help whatsoever from anyone. What about the child’s mother, you say? Well we don’t know where she is. Probably off somewhere conceiving more children. That’s not our concern.'

Yesterday the Bush administration announced that they’re not going to give anything to the UN Family Planning Fund, again, which hasn’t been done by a U.S. president in three-quarters of a century. According to studies done by NARAL this could mean nearly 2 million unintended pregnancies, 800,000 abortions, 4,700 maternal deaths, 60,000 cases of serious maternal illness, and more than 77,000 infant and child deaths in the next twelve months. Elizabeth Cavendish, Interim President of NARAL states, 'George W. Bush is really showing his true colors. Protecting the health and well-being of women and babies around the world is insufficient as a reason to stop him from promoting his anti-choice agenda.'

Women and children everywhere will suffer as this administration continues to use draconian measures to make sure the 'unborn' are protected. Stem cells, fertilized ovums, could be used to cure Alzheimer’s disease, Parkinson’s disease, repair irreversible spinal cord injuries, and even, perhaps, to generate organs such as livers and kidneys for transplantations. But noooooo. Not on this administration’s watch. Stem cells are offered more protection than a huge majority of children on the planet.

Ok. Now here’s the good news. These guys aren’t that smart. They proved that when they tried to ratify this constitutional amendment against gay marriage. We all know that they did that only to say to their radical right base, 'Hey, we’re not soft on faggots or wimmen. We know they’re the cause of all the evil in the world and we’re out to git ‘em.' But, though it may have accomplished that, it made them look silly and desperate to everybody else. And they actually think that if they don’t let Pat Robertson or Tom Delay speak at the convention we won’t know that their party is under the thumb of these guys who are so off base that they blame the Columbine School shootings on the teaching of evolution and day care.

Tom DeLay, who will just give you the SHIVERS if you ever watch him speak, has allegedly bribed his GOP colleagues to win their votes and violated campaign finance laws in Texas. And, as we speak, a complaint charging DeLay with extortion, money-laundering and other abuses of power has been filed and approved for review by the House Ethics Committee. As they say in Texas, yippee-kai-yea. Git along littlle dawggies.

So take heart. There’s a light at the end of this tunnel for Martha and millions of women and children all around the world. It won’t be long before the citizens of this country wake up and hit themselves on the side of the head and say, 'Wow! We could have had a real president. Whew! Let’s not make that mistake again.'

--Becky Burgwin’s writings have appeared in Time, Newsweek, New York Magazine, Counterpunch, Alternet and OpEdNews as well as several other online Op Ed sites. She is on the Board of Aid Afghanistan and one of the contributors to the Peace Project in Assisi, Italy. Send questions, comments, and critiques to: rburgwin@aol.com.

--Re-posted with permission of the author. Originally published at July 19, 2004.

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Book Review – The War on Terror, Ninan Koshy

Sat, 24 Jul 2004 14:17:00 +0000

'The people there are dead because we wanted them dead' was the response of a Pentagon spokesperson to a journalist’s question about the 'accidental' bombing of civilians in Chowkar Karez, Afghanistan in late October 2002. In the drive to conquer Afghanistan, Ninan Koshy reports in The War on Terror, the Bush administration and the Pentagon deliberately and indiscriminately bombed enormous areas populated by civilian non-combatants. Additionally, cluster bombs contained bomblets that often fell unexploded and colored the same yellowish color as the food aid packages dropped as part of a 'humanitarian' effort were used to destroy large numbers of people. The infamous 'daisy cutters' were first used in Afghanistan with Donald Rumsfeld refusing to rule out the use of nuclear weapons. The most immediate result of the US attack on Afghanistan was not military victories or the capture of the people believed to have masterminded the September 11th attacks but massive displacement of hundreds of thousands of residents of the country and a humanitarian crisis on an immense scale. Pentagon officials responsible for selecting targets often relied on information provided by competing local warlords and hundreds of civilians who were in no way related to the atrocities on September 11th found themselves the victims of more atrocities -– this time perpetrated by the imperialist power.

Koshy’s book, though at this point two years old, is worth another read. The release and success of Michael Moore’s film Fahrenheit 9/11 has reinstated a widespread interest in understanding the initial phase of Bush’s war on terrorism, the invasion of Afghanistan. Considering that amnesia is the dominant cultural characteristic of most Americans, revisiting this tale is an important task as we drive to dump Bush in the November 2nd election. Further, millions of Americans who have come to resent the 'war president' were still in shock in those early post 9/11 days and may find this resource useful in unraveling the events of those days.

A careful reading of Koshy’s work provides a brief but detailed history of the origins of the Taliban and Al-Qaeda in the CIA efforts to launch terrorist attacks against Soviet targets in Afghanistan as well as within the Soviet Union itself. When this activity concluded in the withdrawal of Soviet forces, Pakistan used its connections in the region to prop up the Taliban regime in order to accomplish its regional hegemony. Initially, prospects for oil related activities generated US tolerance for the fundamentalist regime, but terrorist attacks in Africa and other places planned by al-Qaeda and fueled by the growing coziness of the Saudi government with Washington necessitated a new direction in Afghan-US relations. Koshy argues that efforts to undermine the Taliban regime well before the September 11th attacks, but like much of US foreign policy, the attacks altered the landscape of what was politically possible for the Bush administration. There are some details in the book that more current investigations have exposed more fully. For example, Koshy asserts what many politicans, media figures, and 'experts' argued: the government of the US could never have imagined terrorists would use planes as missiles. But, as we’ve learned since, the White House was fully aware of the possibility but took steps to stifle warnings related to potential terrorist activities masterminded by Osama Bin Laden. John Ashcroft told the interim FBI director not talk about Bin Laden in July 2001. An August 2001 memo highlighting Bin Laden’s 'determination' to launch attacks with planes in the US was simply ignored by the White House. Even the 9/11 Commission's recently released watered-down report exposes a Bush White House intently focused on other issues.

Ultimately the direct effect of the terrorist attacks was that 'the events of that day were utilized by the US to change the world,' as Koshy argues. What was not politically possible on September 10th for the Bush team was pushed to the top of the agenda: permanent war and military buildups, including new nuclear weapons, political repression and erosion of civil rights and liberties and a reordering of foreign policy priorities – especially, according to Koshy, in Palestine and Iraq. In the former, an abandonment of the US's historical mediating role by the Bush administration and a green light for the far-right Sharon government. In the latter country, war.

In addition to finding a copy of the book at Leftword Publishers, I urge readers to browse this web site for other classic Marxist works as well as contemporary works by fine authors as Vijay Prashad and Aijaz Ahmad.

The War on Terror: Reordering the World By Ninan Koshy New Dehli, India, Leftword Publishers, 2002.

Against the Whole World: Bush's AIDS Policy

Sat, 24 Jul 2004 00:31:00 +0000

Originally published in the Online Journal, July 20, 2004.

Bush’s AIDS policy is a killer. AIDS took the lives of 3 million people since January of 2003, the majority of whom were in Africa. Nearly half were women. Yet Bush’s spending priorities to fight HIV infections and AIDS have allocated only $350 million of the highly publicized $15 billion he promised in his 2003 State of the Union speech. More interested in pushing a far-right agenda than in saving lives, Bush is presiding over one of the worst atrocities in human history. An assessment of the Bush administration’s AIDS policy shows that a far-right fundamentalist religious outlook subverts medical science for a racist, anti-gay, anti-woman agenda. Recently the administration has interwoven this dangerous worldview with the profit motive of large multinational pharmaceutical corporations. Finally, the administration has molded its general 'aid as imperialism' tactics to its AIDS policy. In other words, Bush uses anti-AIDS assistance to achieve certain foreign policy goals. As a result, this cynical president has overseen the deaths of millions and tens of millions more new infections.

Ideology Subverts Science

From its first day in office, an anti-condom policy has dominated many of the social policies of the Bush administration. In his 2000 campaign, Bush ran on an outspoken anti-choice, anti-gay platform in which he declared that he little in common politically with gays and lesbians and therefore they wouldn’t find a place in his administration. This thinking flowed from his Christian right-wing fundamentalism and was common to many of his religious backers in the Christian Coalition and other far-right think tanks like the American Family Association. Many of these groups blame lesbians and gays for the social ills of the country. So it wasn’t a shock when Bush adopted the 'global gag rule' on his first day in office.

The global gag rule, originally instituted by Reagan and removed by Clinton, is a funding condition that requires international programs that receive money from the US Agency for International Development (USAID) not to provide abortion-related services. This includes providing education about safe sex or contraception. The International Planned Parenthood Federation called it a signal of 'the Bush administration’s war against women and his overall contempt for their fundamental civil and human rights.'

While the 'global gag rule' is rightly seen as an attack on women’s reproductive rights, it also has dramatically affected social service organizations that educate local communities on preventing sexually transmitted diseases including HIV/AIDS. The administration used the rule to withdraw USAID funding from groups that provided abortion counseling, but it also used the rule to badger organizations that provided sex education into adding abstinence components to their programs. From the start, the administration, following a religious ideology that opposes reproductive choice and contraception instead of sound medicine, worked to supplant the accepted practice of promoting consistent condom use as the best defense against HIV and other STDs with faulty and dangerous abstinence indoctrination.

The religiously motivated abstinence doctrine has been universally condemned. Erica Smiley of Choice USA, a reproductive rights advocacy group for young women, described it as 'a huge disregard for democracy in other nations' because it imposes Bush’s religious views on people elsewhere. She also pointed out that it dramatically affects the ability to prevent HIV/AIDS as it froze millions in USAID funding that went directly into the distribution of condoms in countries hit hardest by HIV infections. Paul Nielson of the UN Commission for Development and Humanitarian Aid also blasted Bush’s abstinence policy as dangerous to women’s lives and as likely to result in 'weaken[ing] the battle against AIDS.' Dr. Peter Piot of UN AIDS asserted further that 'We are not in the business of morality.'

Right-wing Christian morality is the motor of the administration’s policy. Bush didn’t limit his agenda to the abstinence doctrine, however. In May of 2002 the administration, while attending the UN Children’s Summit, opposed the inclusion of language recommending condom use for the prevention of HIV/AIDS and demanded that this international summit promote abstinence programs. That summer Bush withdrew $34 million from the UN Population Fund asserting a similar argument as the 'global gag order.' As a result several AIDS prevention programs in African countries were forced to close. Weeks later, Bush withheld $200 million earmarked by Congress for programs in Afghanistan that included sex education and condom distribution as part of HIV/AIDS prevention.

At the UN Asian and Pacific Regional Population conference in December of 2003, the Bush administration exerted its abstinence ideology using its economic muscle. One participant at the conference is quoted as saying that between sessions of the conference 'we witnessed the US delegation threatening at least one high-level Asian delegate with his country’s loss of US foreign aid and the loss of his career' if he didn’t support the US agenda. The Bush administration delegation wanted to remove a recommendation of consistent condom use as an effective measure against HIV infections in favor of promoting abstinence.

This last week, the Bush administration provoked another controversy of the same brand at the 15th International Conference on AIDS in Bangkok, Thailand. First, the administration withdrew huge sums of money allocated to fund the participation of dozens of American experts at the conference in order to tighten the discipline on the pro-abstinence, anti-condom line. An international furor was sparked as a result. UN Secretary General Kofi Annan called on the world, with an implicit gesture to the Bush administration, to follow through on their pledges to fund the fight against AIDS fully. Rep. Barbara Lee (D-CA) accused the administration of undermining the fight against AIDS by pushing failed abstinence programs and drawing money away from condom distribution efforts.

Bush’s prioritization of ideology over medical science has been the major influence on his choice of political appointees. Among his first appointees in 2001 was Jerry Thacker, a former employee of Bob Jones University who described AIDS as a 'gay plague' and homosexuality as a 'deathstyle.' Bush withdrew Thacker after a heated controversy, but the anti-gay ideological component remained. In the summer of 2003, Bush appointed pharmaceutical executive and Republican Party booster Randall Tobias to head the President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS (the promised $15 billion fund). While Tobias seems most concerned with pressing a corporate agenda, he has done nothing to reverse the administration’s anti-science trend.

The preference for appointing anti-science ideologues sparked the Union of Concerned Scientists to circulate a petition with the support of over 4,000 scientists calling for 'the restoration of scientific integrity in federal policymaking.' Scientists have accused the administration of systematically, in many fields of scientific work, interfering with research and distorting science to serve its ideological ends. None of this culture of interference has had more impact than on the question of the prevention of HIV/AIDS.

Most recently Bush appointees in the Center for Disease Control, under the direction of the Department of Health and Human Services, altered federal regulations regarding funding for HIV/AIDS prevention education programs in the US. The goal, according to Doug Ireland, is to eliminate funding for community and school-based programs that promote condom use as the best method of HIV/AIDS prevention in favor of 'failed programs that denounce condom use, while teaching abstinence as the only way to prevent the spread of AIDS.' Additionally, the administration wants political appointees to screen all educational materials generated by programs that receive federal funding for 3 main things. First, they must advocate abstinence as the best method of prevention; second, they must inaccurately characterize condoms as less effective than abstinence education; and finally, they must adhere to moralistic guidelines about 'obscenity' and be void of 'sexual suggestiveness.' Main targets of these guidelines are programs that teach proper and consistent use of condoms. Since, in the view of the Bush administration, teaching condom use is the same as promoting sexual activity, we can expect the administration arbitrarily to force sex education programs to either emphasize abstinence and downplay or demonize condom use in order to keep funding or search for limited private sources. If Bush’s preference for shifting federal resources toward private, religious charities is any sign, more and more money will continue to be shifted away from sex education and prevention programs that work to abstinence-oriented and abstinence-only programs.

The main problem with abstinence programs, like other areas of Bush administration politicized science, is that they don’t work. At least three major studies have shown abstinence programs – especially abstinence-only programs – fail to convince youth to avoid sex until they are married. Some 88 percent of youth who made a pledge to avoid sex until marriage as part of an abstinence program, according to a Columbia University study, broke the pledge. Sexual activity among abstinence students actually increased dramatically. Because they weren’t taught condom use, youth who went through such programs were one-third more times as likely to have unprotected sex, reported a study published in the American Journal of Sociology. But the CDC rules elevate abstinence above the medically sound principle of condom use as the best preventative measure against HIV infection and the spread of AIDS.

Corporate Agenda is Job One

Despite research completed in June by Doctors Without borders and the University of Montpellier's Research Institute for Development in France showing generic so-called 3-in-1 anti-AIDS drugs to be as effective in fighting the disease as costlier brand name drugs, a group aligned with the Bush administration attacked makers of generic AIDS drugs at the recent international conference in Bangkok, Thailand. Agence France-Presse reported that an advisor of Bush heads this group which took out a full-page ad in the Bangkok Post. The Bush-affiliated group, in an effort to influence the outcome of the conference – numerous international conferences have in recent years usually have pitted the Bush people against the world and the international scientific community – attacked Cipla, an India-based company that made the 3-in-1 drugs. Bush’s people described the drug as ineffective and unsafe. What is most disturbing to the Bush administration is that Cipla and other generic producers may reduce the annual cost of anti-AIDS drugs from around $10,000 to just several hundred dollars per person.

The administration’s response to its critics has been to demand that the world look at its financial 'generosity' in contributing to the fight against AIDS. Indeed in his 2003 promise to deliver $15 billion over the next five years, Bush seemed to make a break from the slow-moving, underfunded policies of previous presidents. Closer scrutiny of the reality behind the public relations promise shows a return to the dangerous Reagan days.

Only $350 million in new money of the $15 billion had been disbursed in the year and a half since the promise even though Congress made $2.4 billion available. A $500 million payment to the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, the acclaimed UN-related multilaterally controlled fund organized in the 1990s to deliver large scale treatment and prevention resources to hardest hit regions, in June was 'late money,' according to Salih Booker of Africa Action. This money had been promised in 2003 and allocated in the 2004 budget. Bush seemed to wait for a useful photo opportunity to make a delivery of the payment, which coincidentally took place just about 15 days before the 15th International Conference on AIDS. The late delivery was an attempt to stifle criticism from the international community over controversial aspects of the Bush AIDS policy.

Meanwhile, the amount contributed to the Global Fund to Fight AIDS will shrink by 64 percent next year, prompting some anti-AIDS activists to predict the funds impending bankruptcy. Bush’s $15 billion promise, says Paul Davis of Health GAP, is far short of what is needed. '[H]is five-year plan to treat 2 million people,' insists Davis, 'means that 13 to 15 million people with AIDS will die during that same time period.' Health GAP argues that the US needs to chip in about $30 billion over the same period to fight the disease adequately.

Delaying delivery of resources, drugs, treatments, and research has been the hallmark of the Bush policy on AIDS since 2003. First, the administration’s grants made through the $15 billion fund provided no money to purchase generic drugs. When that proved to be unpopular, the administration developed a 'let’s research and hold conferences about generic drugs' approach, meanwhile AIDS patients died. Then, last May, the administration promised to speed up the approval of generic drugs by asking the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to oversee the approval process. The problem is that the World Health Organization (WHO) had already undertaken most of the work Bush planned to hand over to the FDA. This proposal to duplicate WHO’s work delayed the delivery process further and paralleled the administration’s unilateralist approach to most major international issues; more AIDS patients died. According to Jim Lobe, writing for Foreign Policy in Focus, Bush’s struggle over unilateral control of the global AIDS policy costs the lives of 8,000 people a day. According to UN estimates, 25 million of the 38 million infected with HIV worldwide live in southern Africa, while 7.6 million people living in Asia are infected.

The delay of resources cost lives, but in the Bush administration’s view it serves a useful corporate purpose. Jen Cohn of Health GAP was quoted as pointing out that 'By creating a parallel process, they’re making it much more expensive and time-consuming…. By forcing the generic manufacturers to go through more hoops, they’re ensuring Big Pharma…will get market share before generics get on the scene.' The Tobias appointment was crucial in the development of these tactics.

By the time the administration’s delegation arrived in Bangkok last weekend (July 11), the delay strategy was scrapped for an all out assault on generic manufacturers. Perhaps, the administration plans simply to wield its large financial stick to force the international community to do what it wants. Or perhaps it has deployed the anti-generic movement as a means of giving its more 'moderate' delay tactics and anti-science ideology time to appear as a rational alternative and gain acceptance from sections of the international community.

To the present moment, religion and corporate profits have served as the ideological and economic bases for the Bush policy on AIDS. The main barrier to maximizing the effect of the policy is the international community. To sidestep the world, Bush has adopted a program of trying to bankrupt the multilateral organizations developed over the last two decades in the UN. He is fighting to replace multilateral oversight over sex education, prevention of infection, and treatment of AIDS with his unilateralist approach akin, in his words, to the 'war on terror,' which The Nation editors recently noted has having failed so miserably. Far from an emergency plan, the Bush AIDS plan is another tool to promote a foreign policy of providing aid to his friends and forcing his enemies into greater carnage.

Two years ago prominent economist Jeffrey Sachs, now a special adviser to UN Secretary General Kofi Annan, called on African countries to unilaterally cancel their debt and redirect the resources used for debt servicing to fight AIDS among other pressing domestic needs. Sachs’ call needs to be revisited. The call for funding generics with oversight and approval through existing UN organizations should be supported. Most of all, we need an administration that will fully fund the Global Fund and will value people’s lives over corporate profits and religious ideology.

We need an administration that isn’t racist and homophobic and will follow scientific guidelines for the prevention and treatment of the disease. We need an administration that will regard the AIDS pandemic as a crisis not a source of profits, which currently afflicts nearly 40 million people – 4 of 5 of whom live in Asia or Africa. We need an administration that will allocate the $30 billion most anti-AIDS activists and scientists believe will be necessary to fight the disease adequately over the next 5 years. We need an administration that will fight for cheaper generic drugs that have already been proven to work against the disease and are already saving lives. We need an administration that will promote effective preventative measures like condom use. We need an administration willing to work with, not against, the international community to move the most resources to hardest hit regions and not use AIDS money as a cynical and deadly foreign policy tactic. We need to dump Bush in order to move forward against AIDS.

--Joel Wendland is managing editor of Political Affairs and can be reached at jwendland@politialaffairs.net.

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Book Review - What's the Matter With Kansas?, by Thomas Frank

Fri, 23 Jul 2004 12:33:00 +0000

Thomas Frank’s What the Matter With Kansas? is a book with a local focus on an allegedly non-battleground state, featuring a cast of characters few readers outside the Sunflower State will recognize, and offering an analysis that should be read and considered by every progressive, left or working-class activist from Maine to San Diego, and from Seattle to the Florida Keys. With a political analysis that would do any of the classical Marxist writers proud, Frank examines the real reasons for the current right-wing domination of 'middle America,' using a firmly class-based approach that is grounded in considerable research and statistics as well as personal and anecdotal evidence. His use of humor and storytelling lightens up what could otherwise be a heavy sociological tome, yet the political punch of his writing almost never lets up throughout the book.

Frank’s point of origin in his analysis is the decline in the fortunes of both rural and urban working-class Kansans since the Reagan years, a situation echoed in nearly every state of the union but particularly acute in Kansas. Here, rural areas the size of several East Coast states are already economically dead and demographically dying thanks to what Frank calls 'Reagan-Clinton era' agricultural policies. Numberless small towns like Emporia or Olathe are either well on the way to 'ghost town' status, or else, like Garden City or Liberal, have been transformed into low-wage meat-processing centers, usually based on super-exploitation of low-skilled minority or foreign-born workers. Urban workers’ salaries in Wichita and Kansas City, Kansas head downwards as unions are broken, manufacturing leaves for greener pastures overseas, and well-paying industrial jobs are replaced (if at all) by service work or precarious temporary employment. Entire neighborhoods, communities and commercial districts across the state languish or lie abandoned and crumbling. The state budget is in full-blown crisis mode, with no plan for recovery except 'to wait for an economic upturn.' Rural and urban workers watch their material situation worsen day by day, community tax bases evaporate, and whole counties become open-air senior citizens’ centers as working families, the unemployed and recent graduates flee for their economic lives.

And, as Frank emphasizes in a constant drumbeat throughout his book, working-class Kansans have responded to this disaster by voting more and more strongly Republican each election, and by moving further and further to the right, with areas hit the hardest often turning into the hardest right wing bastions. In Frank’s analysis, white working-class Kansas has reacted to the crisis by standing up as one, besieging the bastions of power, screaming to their exploiters, 'Please kick me again! And, while you’re at it, please vote yourself another tax cut at our expense!' The irony would be delicious if it were not so tragic.

This situation is certainly not unique. Progressives in the American South have confronted this dilemma for decades, if not a century or more. Throughout the Midwest and West, liberal, progressive and left activists find their states 'written off' by Democrats and taken for granted by Republicans, while contenders for local and state office use candidate debates as little more than convenient platforms to vie for the title of 'most conservative.' In vast areas of this country’s heartland, anyone with a mildly progressive bumper sticker or tee shirt can sooner or later expect to hear the shouted or whispered taunt of 'Liberal!' which has come to take the place of the 'pinko commie' type epithets of decades past.

Marxists have long known and emphasized that class-consciousness and political awareness do not fall from the sky, and that simple economic, social or political adversity (or even gross oppression) may indeed radicalize, but do not a progressive movement make. This is the point made by Frank throughout the book, though his methodology is more observational than theoretical. He shows in graphic terms how in the effective absence of popular left or pro-working-class ideas and movements, the right wing has effectively harnessed public discontent in Kansas (and, by extension, throughout the American 'heartland') for their own purposes, very much against the material interests of that same public.

However, Frank does not leave his analysis at the level of theoretical musings about the nature of 'false consciousness.' His book examines the specific nature of the deception that has been perpetrated upon working-class Americans of the 'heartland,' some of the implications that this entails for America, and (most importantly), the weaknesses and internal contradictions of the conservative movement which could lead to possible opportunities for rescuing the country from the grip of the Republican right wing.

According to Frank, the mythology proffered by the right wing is actually profoundly class-based. Kansans (like the rest of the nation) see the yawning gulf between rich and poor, between workers and the privileged growing every day. However, the ultra-right has managed to identify the true exploiting classes, the true villains responsible for the declining prospects of the working class as…the Hollywood elite! These, plus the despised 'intellectuals' (bow-tied, overeducated cap-and-gowned idiots who fill our college kids’ minds with liberal nonsense), the 'cultural elite' (news anchors, fashion designers, sitcom writers, eaters of sushi and drinkers of latte), and Democrats in general are 'the Liberals,' the real culprits behind the story of America’s decline.

Frank suggests that in order to make this conclusion at least minimally credible, the political right first needed to make economic and material questions vanish. This has been successfully accomplished, he writes, by convincing working people (without a murmur to the contrary from Clinton Democrats) that business cycles, the monopolization of agriculture, the decline of rural life, the flight of manufacturing overseas, the eclipse of labor unions and the ongoing impoverishment of the working class are simply forces of nature, no more subject to mere human control than are droughts, thunderstorms or Kansas tornadoes. And, once economic questions are off the table, the only logical reason one can propose as to why our lives are undeniably getting worse and worse must be because all those rich, famous, libertine film and music stars (the only ruling class one ever reads about in People magazine or the supermarket tabloids!) are imposing their evil, atheist culture on 'decent Americans,' with the eager connivance of the TV networks, stuck-up double-dome professors, and the nose-in-the-air Starbucks crowd, all of whom scorn ordinary workers and farmers as 'hayseeds' and 'hicks.' Hence the 'culture wars' and the continuing domination of the right wing over immense swaths of the Midwest, West and south.

Nor, according to Frank, is the contemporary right-wing movement primarily driven by racism. The conservative movement is, of course, an overwhelmingly white, Anglo-Saxon phenomenon, and its leadership (the real ruling class in this country) is never reluctant to play the race card when required. But, Frank contends that at least as far as the Midwest is concerned, the day is gone when Republican-majority states could be dismissed as hotbeds of racism to be left to stew in their own vicious odium. The ultra-right ideology has achieved a life of its own, he warns, independent of the old racist code words and dreams of resegregation that once sustained it. Frank goes out of his way to point out that 'culture war' critiques are not alien to the Left either, as evidenced by Stalin-era American Marxist polemics against 'cosmopolitan' ruling class manners and morals. According to this theory, contemporary Bush-bashing efforts such as the book The Bush Dyslexicon, far from convincing the unconvinced that the nation’s current leader is an incompetent fool, serve mainly to 'preach to the choir' (convince the already convinced) and to further infuriate and alienate those who see Bush as 'one of ours.'

Although What’s the Matter with Kansas, though not explicitly Marxist, is at least Marxist-friendly, the book does have some significant shortcomings. Probably the most notable is the virtual absence of any mention of African Americans or Latinos in the book. Kansas in the twenty-first century fully reflects the diversity of the American population, but one might get the impression from the book that Kansas is as lily-white as Denmark. Of course, in America, ultra-rightism is mainly a white problem, but ignoring the crucial past, present and future role of minorities in overcoming that problem is a serious error.

Frank goes to great lengths to explore the connection between white evangelical religious movements, the so-called 'pro-life' movement, and the dominance of the extreme right in Kansas politics. He links the rise of the ultra-right in Kansas directly to Wichita’s militant anti-abortion protests during the summer of 1993, when white evangelicals heeded a 'call to arms' to 'save the unborn,' and discovered for the first time the world-shaking power of mass political action. However, the author carefully avoids any examination of the contradictory role of the Catholic Church in the pro-life movement and its possible complicity in the rise of the ultra-right, preferring to spend pages telling the story of a bizarre Kansan who got together with five of his buddies and had himself elected Pope! Frank addresses the schismatic ultra-conservative Society of St. Pius X, but he spares not a word for either the right-wing Catholic bishops and priests who push the 'pro-life' movement (and, necessarily, its associated ultra-right agenda), or the relatively progressive Catholic leaders (such as those of the Diocese of Dodge City) who have firmly spoken out in recent years for the rights of farmworkers, minorities and family farmers, and against war and racism, and even against pro-life extremists..

Although What’s the Matter With Kansas? was published in 2004, it seems to have been penned before the events of September 11, 2001. 'Nine-eleven' receives only three brief mentions in the book, and Iraq none at all, even though these issues have evolved over the last few years into some of the main points of the right-wing agenda. Also, a large part of the book deals with recent and contemporary Kansas political figures who will be of interest only to those who are very well informed about Sunflower State politics and government. This same factor will also give the book a rather short 'shelf life,' since it is unlikely that any of the figures mentioned will be of interest a decade from now to anyone but specialized scholars.

If one is not from a rural background, dislikes drawl or country music, or does not regard latte as the devil’s own brew, it is easy to succumb to the temptation to make fun of such a belief system as Frank describes or even to doubt the sanity, intellectual capacity or good faith of those who hold it. However, Frank repeatedly reminds readers that those who uphold such beliefs (the citizens who vote in election after election to put overwhelmingly distressed states like Kansas into the Republican column) are, in their great majority, solid working-class people who in some aspects may well be more class-conscious than the average American worker, and who (within the limits of the 'facts' dished out to them) think they are voting in their own best interests. The task at hand would seem to be not so much to 'defeat' them (though the Bush administration and the ultra-right must certainly be defeated at the ballot-box!) but to reach these fellow workers and convince them that their gut-level suspicions of being exploited and oppressed are absolutely on the money—only the identity of their exploiters is different from what they have been told.

But agitation and persuasion are difficult tasks and it is always tempting to return to the old comfortable pitfalls of the Left and liberalism, including (to paraphrase a favorite saying of former CPUSA Chair Gus Hall) waiting for ready-made leftists to walk in and recruit themselves into the movement. Hardships like those now being inflicted on Kansas’ working class almost always produce discontent and anger, but not necessarily progressive thought or action. As clearly shown by contemporary history, discontent and anger can go right as easily as left, and the right wing aims to make sure they go rightward. For the Left, waiting patiently for demographics (the growth of minorities into majorities, the passing of generations) to eventually hand us the victory, or dismissing right-wing triumphs as the products of lingering racism are also tactics of little value. And, it seems equally crucial to avoid a leftist 'silent majority' analysis, where (without serious objective evidence) one simply shrugs off right-wing electoral victories with blithe comments about how only a small minority of the total electorate voted Republican, while the disaffected progressive majority must have stayed home out of sheer disgust.

Frank’s analysis of the right wing’s takeover of 'heartland' politics suggests that this disastrous trend was not due to chance or luck, but must be blamed on specific, tangible weaknesses on the left as much as on right-wing deceptions that are crying out to be unmasked. It would seem to be our task to unmask these deceptions, and this is why Thomas Frank’s What’s the Matter With Kansas? should be required reading for every American progressive.

What's the Matter With Kansas? By Thomas Frank New York, Henry Holt & Co., 2004

--Owen Williamson is a contributor to Political Affairs.

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The Fantasy of Fair Globalization

Thu, 22 Jul 2004 22:34:00 +0000

The world is witnessing, for the last several years, extensive resistance against the economic onslaught of the latest phase of capitalism on the common people, which is popularly known as neo-liberal globalization. Even many of those who welcomed the advent of this globalization as marking a progress for human well-being have turned into its critics and are crying halt to its rampages.

It is in this background of changed perception of globalization and active struggle against its disastrous effects that some of the capitalist ideologues and protagonists of globalization have started talking of capitalism with a human face, globalization with a human face and fair globalization.

Marxist Thesis

These terminologies, however, confirm capitalism is not a humane system nor is globalization humane or fair. This was precisely the criticism of those opposed to capitalism and its present phase of globalization. That globalization is not fair or humane is being admitted by a few of the government heads, intellectuals and well-placed people from different walks of life.

The recent publication Fair Globalization: Creating Opportunities for All, produced by the World Commission on Social Dimension of Globalization, appears as a formal recognition of the unfair and inhuman character of globalization.

However, before making an examination of the facts and arguments advanced by the commission in its publication, let us have a brief look at the basic teachings of Marx and Engels on the relevant topic.

The inherent crisis of the capitalist system is a well-known proposition of the Marxist interpretation of the history of capitalist development. In his celebrated work Socialism: Utopian and Scientific, while vividly analyzing the development of modern capitalism, Engels shows how the process of evolution of society, motivated by the contradictions between the productive forces and relation of production at any stage of its development, has resulted into the present capitalist society. Then delving into the process of development of capitalism, he shows that capitalism bristles with contradictions and concludes: 'The collision becomes inevitable and, as this cannot produce any real solution so long as it does not break into pieces the capitalist mode of production, the collision becomes periodic. Capitalist production has begotten another ‘vicious circle’…The economic collision has its apogee. The mode of production is in rebellion against the mode of exchange' (emphasis in original). Thus the capitalist crisis cannot be resolved without a social revolution.

We cannot discuss the current topic without a reference to this basic Marxist analysis.

Imperialist Globalization

The latest phase of capitalism is also due to its inherent crisis. Beginning with Adam Smith’s laissez faire economic prescription and its relatively sustained form, it was subsequently impelled by its law of development into a protective system after the outbreak of war in 1914 when the laissez faire British government took control of the coal and railway industry. The period also witnessed a boom till the Wall Street crash of 1929 precipitated a global collapse and a long and very serious depression.

In 1933, when Roosevelt assumed the office of US president, he committed to a program of vigorous federal intervention to stimulate a recovery in the US economy. Known as the New Deal, it was based broadly on the principles elaborated by British economist J M Keynes in his General Theory of Employment, Interest and Recovery (1936). Yet, throughout the 1930s, the British political and business establishments – and many of their counterparts in the United States – remained reluctant converts to what later became known as Keynesianism. But events were to compel them soon to adopt it. It is another thing that Keynesianism too could not exonerate capitalism from crisis. The law of a vicious circle of crisis landed capitalism into the present phase of neo-liberal globalization – laissez-faire on a higher level.

Implications of Globalization

What are implications of the recent economic and social development? A few examples cited here show how, in the globalized economy, the rich-poor inequality in both economic and social spheres is formidably widening and the poor are sinking to the bottom.

The World Bank has estimated the number of persons in different countries and in the world as a whole who subsist on less than 1 and 2 dollars per day (one US dollar = Rs 45 approx). In Nigeria, for example, in the early 1990s, 98.8 per cent of the population lived on 2 dollars a day or less; in India the figure was 86.2 per cent in 1997. In a world population of some 6 billions, 2.8 billion (about 45 per cent) survive on 1 dollar a day or less and 1.2 billion (about 20 per cent) on 2 dollars a day or less.

World Bank economist Branco Milanovic oversaw the most sophisticated attempt to measure income inequality worldwide (see Monthly Review, March 2004), using a massive household survey covering the entire world. He found that the richest 1 per cent in the world get as much income as the poorest 57 per cent. The richest 5 per cent had in 1993 an average income 114 times greater than that of the poorest 5 per cent; the ratio was 78 times in 1998. The poorest 5 per cent grew poorer, losing 25 per cent of the real income, while the richest 20 per cent saw their real incomes grow by 12 per cent, more than twice the average world income. World inequality grew because inequality grew between countries. The rich nations grew richer at the expense of the poor ones.

Buttressing Milanovic’s findings, the United Nations Development Program’s Human Development Report 2003 informed that the income of the richest 25 million Americans was equivalent to that of nearly 2 billion of the world’s poorest. In 1920, per capita income in Western Europe was three times that in Africa; by the 1990, it was more than 13 times as high. Adding human meaning to these numbers, the report said, 'the statistics today area shaming; more than 13 million children have died through diarrhea disease in the past. Every year over a half million women, one for every minute of the day, die in pregnancy and childbirth. More than 800 million suffer from malnutrition.'

Some 54 countries are poorer now than in 1990 – the year the neo-liberal imperialist globalization was unleashed full steam. In 21 countries, a larger population is going hungry. In 14, more children are dying before the age of 5. In 12, primary school enrolments are shrinking. In 34, life expectancy has fallen. Such reversals in survival were previously rare, said the UNDP report 2003.

In addition, the latest ILO report on employment projects a grim picture with 187 million unemployed globally and that too only in the formal sector of the economy. The situation in the informal sector is more horrible.

This reality of the sharply widening gap between the rich and the poor, the inhuman poverty of the poor and the astronomical opulence of the rich in the wake of imperialist globalization, again confirms Marx’s brilliant analysis of the process of immiseration in his Capital, Vol. 1. To quote Marx: 'The greater the social wealth, the functioning capital… the greater is the industrial reserve army… the greater is the mass of solidated surplus population, whose misery is in inverse proportion to the torment of labor…The more extensive the industrial army, the greater is official pauperism. This is the general law of capitalist accumulation.'

Globalization with a Human Face?

It is in this background of the darkest ever reality of human sufferings for the last few decades that the report on A Fair Globalization by a wide-ranging commission has appeared. The commission was appointed by the director general of ILO.

One must not forget that even the appointment of this commission came in the backdrop of tumultuous and massive anti-globalization struggles in almost every part of the world, including inside the ILO fora. More and more people from all countries are getting mobilized round the slogan 'Another World is Possible,' meaning an alternative to capitalism. The slogan was raised by the World Social Forum at its first session in Brazil’s Rio de Jeneiro in 2001.

Delineating the background of globalization, the commission’s report referred to the following underlying causes generating this new economic thinking in the capitalist economy: a) stagflation in the industrialized countries, (b) developing countries falling into debt crisis and experiencing economic regression, (c) widespread recourse by the indebted developing countries to structural adjustment loans from the Bretton Woods institutions, prominent among the conditions attached to these loans being liberalization of trade and FDI policies, (d) rising influence of the pro-market economic doctrine, (e) collapse of communism in Europe in 1989-90 as a turning point; at a stroke it added to the global free market economy an additional 13 former communist countries with a combined population of 400 million people; (e) end of the bipolar world, meaning the disappearance of any systemic alternative to the market economy, this coincidentally being the period of an explosive growth of information technology.

Some pertinent observations made by the commission in regard to the failure of globalization are noteworthy: The global financial system has been plagued by a series of financial crisis of increasing frequency and severity. The negative impact of these crises has been devastating, wiping off the gains of years of prior economic progress and inflicting heavy social costs through increased unemployment and poverty (p 34). A basic step in evaluating the impact of globalization is to look at what has happened to rates of economic growth globally and across countries. Here it is striking that since 1990 the global GDP growth has been slower than in previous years (p 35, emphasis added). Only a small minority of developing countries have become part of this new global system..… A vast majority of developing countries including almost all the LDCs receive hardly any private financial flow. 55 developing countries grew at less than 2 per cent per annum and out of these 23 suffered negative growth. This uneven pattern is shaping a new global economic geography (pp 35-36, emphasis added). The industrial countries with their strong initial economic base, abundance of capital and skill and technological leadership, were well placed to gain substantial benefits from increasing globalization of the world economy (p 37). Gainers and Losers

About FDI, the report points out, 'The evidence suggests that on the whole, foreign investment does increase growth. Although this should have been a positive effect on employment, this may be negated by strong crowding out effects on local firms unable to compete by the introduction of capital intensive technology by the foreign firms' (p 38, emphasis added).

As for who have been benefited from the process of globalization, the report notes, 'As in the case of countries, the people who benefited most from globalization include those associated (as shareholders, managers, workers or sub-contractors) with successful MNCs and with internationally competitive national enterprises. More generally, those endowed with capital and other assets, entrepreneurial ability and education and skills that are in increasing demand have all benefited.'

As for who have lost out, it says, 'Others who have lost out, except in countries that have experienced rapid growth, have been the poor, the assetless, illiterate and unsettled workers and indigenous people. For example, the increased international competition for markets and for FDI have generated pressure to increase labor markets and for FDI have generated pressure to increase labor market flexibility and erode labor protection… there have been growing concerns over the inadequate quality of the employment that has been generated in some parts of global production system. This is partially true of employment in firms acting as sub-contractor to MNCs in labor intensive industries such as garments and footwear' (p 46).

About women, the report says, 'Substantial number of women have been adversely affected by globalization…. Trade liberalization has often allowed the import of subsidized agricultural products and consumer goods that has wiped out the livelihood of women workers. The increased entry of foreign firms has often had similar effect through, for example, displacing women from their land' (p 48).

Devastating Findings

The ILO report found a formidable growth of unemployment and confirmed the Milanovic report’s findings about the widening inequality of income and alarming increase in poverty.

About the cultural effects of globalization, the report mentioned the grossly inadequate investment in education and also noted that the 'global information revolution has also already affected cultural and social values…. one contentious issue is the impact of the information revolution on local cultures and values across the world. There is a widespread concern at the overwhelming dominance of the culture and values of the United States, and other Western countries, in the global media and entertainment industry. The fear is that exposure to the images of western life style and role model could lead to tension and would be both culturally and socially divisive' (emphasis added, pp 48-49).

Some of the findings of the commission’s report on globalization are devastating. These amply vindicate the points of criticism raised repeatedly by those opposing this imperialist globalization as an inhuman phenomenon.

However, though admitting certain unpalatable truths about globalization, the commission took a strongly class position and pleaded for the fairy tale of 'Fair globalization – creating opportunities for all.' Some of the methods suggested by the commission are world governance, a few changes in the rules of WTO and other multilateral agencies etc, which are no solution at all. It is nothing but a desperate class collaborationist attempt to protect these basic interests of world capitalism.

Inhuman Nature and Methodology

The neo-liberal globalization, or 'neo-liberal imperialist globalization' in Fidel Castro’s words, is a phase of capitalist development after capitalism successively tried various methods like lasses faire, protectionism, Keynesianism and welfare state and yet it repeatedly faced a crises of devastating nature. The huge accumulation of capital is in perpetual search for lucrative investment. Ultimately, they are trying for a solution by privatizing the public sector and liberalizing trade as potential avenues for investment. But at what cost? With its sole motive of super-profit, capital has subjected all sections of the toiling people to inhuman exploitation and degradation.

But this phase of capitalist crisis is not just a phase of its usual cyclical crisis. It is a phase of general crisis of capitalism encompassing all aspects of economy, society, politics, culture and environment. That is why, for its survival, capitalism has ultimately resorted to a method that is mindlessly inhuman.

Can this methodology, which itself is intrinsically and universally not only unfair but de-humanizing to the core, be remodeled into a fair one with a human face? To say the least, all these talks are wild fantasies, a humbug and crudest form of hypocrisy and deception to cover the cruelties of globalization and to benumb the anger and spirit of resistance of the millions of hapless victims of this imperialist globalization.

We can say in the words of Fidel Castro that 'The world needs an order. There is a need for universal, global, just and democratic order. There is an order coming, one that can be seen coming at a full speed, unstoppable – it’s the neo-liberal globalization, going global. We have to start thinking about an order of a different kind and, in the meantime, denounce and struggle.'

--originally published July 11, 2004 in People's Democracy.

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Book Review - Resource Rebels, by Al Gedicks

Thu, 22 Jul 2004 09:20:00 +0000

Speaking with Timothy Pfaff in the Financial Times Magazine sometime last year, anti-war activist and writer Maxine Hong Kingston remarked: 'It’s terrible to be in a country that is making war all over the world.' Sociology professor and environmental activist Al Gedicks, in this compact, well-researched and urgent volume, concurs, sharing similar sentiments about US – and broadly Western – neo-imperial ambitions, now vehemently militarist. But as the book title reveals; his argument is not limited to the blinkered passion for war or the war-making craft. He targets dry lampoons at probably the worst capitalist culprits – mining and oil multinational corporations – who traverse the earth’s expanse with nomadic fervor, stripping it of mineral resources along the line. And just like the big bully who takes delight in rattling little Johnnie on the way home from school, these companies carry on their activities with sheer force, oblivious to ethics or accountability, disregarding the rights of those natives whose claim to their lands, however resource-rich, is primarily ancestral, untainted by pecuniary sheen.

It’s a globalizing world and capital is 'reigning.' However, the so-called 'invisible' hand of the market is yet to bring about the much needed state of global socioeconomic nirvana spoken about so lavishly by capitalist mavericks only two decades ago. Instead, globalism has succeeded in creating more rigid elitist structures; distorting, marginalizing, and exploiting at a grander scale. By blurring – in the name of globalization – the reality of environmental destruction and injustice with hypocritical demeanor, the extractive corporations reveal just how avaricious they are. And perhaps they have good enough reason to bite with glee the fingers (that is, the environment) that feed them, backed as it is by the geopolitical interests of military-industrial hegemony.

However grisly the supposition, the fact remains that as increasing pressure is being mounted on natural resources greater threats are brewing in the meanwhile: global warming, air and water pollution, extinction of some plant and animal species, and the destruction of farmland are some examples. But a heady problem remains: that posed to native peoples. In many ways, their existence has become like gnats, 'disturbing' the ventures of global capital.

Recognizing the effusive signals of inequity amidst the delirium of cut-throat consumerist magic and neo-imperialism is a task Gedicks urges us on to. 'Beneath all the rationalizations about progress and economic development,' he writes, 'lies the insatiable consumption of minerals and energy by the world’s leading industrial economies.' He shows very ably how resource extraction, to satisfy the yearnings of largely military ('our civilization is at stake here guys') interests, triggers bouts of unrest, conflict and violence in the communities where mining sites are located and mining activities occur. Certainly, the trick or treat approach to profiteering by the mining industry has come, by default if you will, with incessant genocide, ethnocide, invasions, victimization, and internal displacement and refugeeism.

Amongst other cases Gedicks well describes the havocs and brutalities wreaked under the rubric of 'progress' by Shell and Chevron in Nigeria’s Niger-Delta, the subjugation of the peoples of West Papua by Freeport McMoRan and Rio Tonto, and the resistance by the Sokaogon Chippewa of northeastern Wisconsin against the 'colonization' of their lands by multinational mining concerns.

The author makes an admirable case for 'resource efficiency': delineating the reduction of metal consumption especially on the part of the military, taxation of mining companies involved in virgin exploration, and recycling as meritorious strategies. But most importantly, Gedicks’ thesis is aimed at bringing the abuses, insensitivity and exploitative maneuverings of multinational mining and oil corporations the world over. As neutered 'cooperation' morphs into, or moves in tandem with, ghoulish threats of 'hush or be crushed,' the inevitable result is contesting between natives and multinationals at an incredible scale. Developments in the last decade or thereabout – when environmental justice networks took on a bolder agenda – underscores this.

More and more, popular transnational organizations are coalescing worldwide against the assault on native lands. Again, as Gedicks makes known, the basis for the formation of these networks is to advocate the rights of weak(ened) communities, especially in the Third World. There is much sense in the author’s opinion that '[i]n the absence of governmental regulation, grassroots and popular movements have emerged to defend native cultures, protect human health and preserve fragile ecosystems.' Although theirs is a task fraught with structural difficulty, it is nevertheless a noble one; and it deserves far-ranging support.

A meticulous work, rich in detail and case studies, even spotting some charming maps; Resource Rebels is a compelling call to observe the cracks on the wall and to do something, quickly, about it. Well worth reading.

Resource Rebels: Native Challenges to Mining and Oil Corporations. 2001 By Al Gedicks Cambridge: South End Press, 2001.

--Akinbola E. Akinwumi is a writer and researcher currently living in Lagos, Nigeria where he writes from.

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Communist Party of Israel says, 'Take down this wall!'

Thu, 22 Jul 2004 00:15:00 +0000

The position of the Communist Party of Israel on the apartheid wall.

The apartheid wall must be dismantled immediately!
The CPI calls upon all supporters of peace in Israel and the world to pressure the Sharon government to immediately implement the recommendations of the International Court of Justice in Hague concerning the apartheid wall.

The recommendations of the International Court of Justice concerning the apartheid wall are an important contribution to the public struggle against the construction of the wall and the continuing occupation, and for the achievement of a just and stable peace which is the real guarantee of security – so states the position accepted by the political bureau of the CPI on July 9, the day the court published its recommendations.

The CPI reiterates that the Sharon government’s purpose in this wall’s construction is the continuation of the Israeli occupation (of the Palestinian territories), the perpetuation of the settlements in the West Bank, and the prevention of the establishment of a viable Palestinian state. The construction of the wall, as determined by the International Court of Justice, has caused daily intolerable suffering to the Palestinian people while grossly violating international humanitarian law.

The CPI warns that the arrogant dismissal of the United Nations court’s findings may lead to the international isolation of Israel, and to the imposition of sanctions such as those imposed on South Africa during the apartheid regime.

The CPI calls on all forces of peace, human and civil rights, in Israel, Palestine, and all over the world:

Let us join forces in a public crusade to demand that the Sharon government carry out immediately the recommendations of the International Court of Justice, dismantle the wall built in the occupied territories, and compensate those Palestinians whose lives and property were damaged by it.

Dismantle immediately the apartheid wall!

Dismantle all the settlements in the occupied territories!

Isolate the occupation government!

Yes to peace between Israel and Palestine!

July 9, 2004

/

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Book Review: Keeping Up with the Dow Joneses, by Vijay Prashad

Wed, 21 Jul 2004 13:07:00 +0000

Much of what Vijay Prashad writes in Keeping Up with the Dow Joneses is not new, but is said with such clarity and precise insight that this little book will remain a useful resources for activists and teachers for years to come. Keeping Up may be accurately described as a reader on neo-liberal austerity and class warfare in the US. It focuses on three main categories – debt, prison, and workfare – to show how they are used against the working class in order to discipline it, keep it divided and weaken its organizations. But Prashad doesn’t limit the discussion to this negative result. He describes developing struggles in the labor movement and community organizations that are fighting back.

Debt is the first concept Prashad uses to link together various aspects of economic crisis in the US. In order to boost profits, corporations have come to rely more on contingent labor, or temporary, contract, sweatshop, prison, day, workfare or other forms of labor that create an unstable, insecure position for workers. Three in ten workers, Prashad points out, are already defined as contingent, and job growth occurs more rapidly in contingent work than any other sector of the economy. Increasingly consumer debt is a main form of subsistence for millions of contngent workers. Likewise, public debt fuels austerity measures that have decimated, and in some cases eliminated, the social safety net. The people in the category of contingent work fluidly blend with unemployed, undocumented immigrant and incarcerated workers. A result of the growing contingent workforce (and its economic degradation) is increased leverage the capitalist class has over organized as well as unorganized workers. As Prashad puts it, 'Capitalism…maintains this reserve army through the coercive mechanisms of incarceration, the fear of being illegal, and of being without dignity.' This physical and psychological coercion is 'part of its class war against organized labor, to discipline away from the ambition to challenge the structure of the system.'

But as Prahsad illustrates, workers haven’t just rolled over. Unions have fought the use of prison labor as a source of production and profit for prison corporations, linking, sometimes, the expansion of the prison industrial complex to institutional racism. Other unions have fought for employer provided childcare, expanded healthcare packages to cover major illnesses such as AIDS, and even subsidization of housing for workers. These kinds of struggles go beyond just defensive strategies to improving the quality of life of workers outside of the workplace. Additionally, the 1997 Teamster strike at UPS sought to convert contingent part-time work into full-time union jobs. This victory helped rejuvenate the Teamsters. Immigrant workers throughout the last 15 years have put to rest the myth that workers who fear deportation will not organize or strike. Even when employers have threatened to use federal agencies like the INS to arrest and deport union leaders, immigrant workers have fought back. They have won major victories as exemplified by the growing success of coalitions like Justice for Janitors and the broad labor movement in New York City that supported the taxi workers strike (largely organized by South Asian immigrant drivers) in 1998. So the story Prashad relates is not just about the working class, especially those who are most exploited, being trampled under the iron heel of capitalism. They are fighting back. And as the broad left thinks about 'where to go from here,' Prashad offers some keen insight: 'Those among the contingent who are in organizations are at work building capacity for the class to make a push toward socialism. The fight for a living wage, against prisons, for a revaluation of work and welfare: these are the main avenues for the contingent class’ battle for the resources to take the struggle deeper.' This is where the frontlines of the class struggle and the fight for democracy are to be found.

Keeping up with the Dow Joneses: Debt, Prison, Workfare By Vijay Prashad Boston, South End Press, 2003.

The General Strike Can Teach Unions How to Grow

Tue, 20 Jul 2004 23:45:00 +0000

San Francisco, CA - Archie Brown was first a ship scaler, and then a longshoreman - a dockworker all his life. He was there 70 years ago, when thousands of maritime workers closed west coast ports from San Diego to Canada. He saw the tanks and guns deployed by shipowners to fence off the docks at the height of the strike. And he remembered what happened next, when police shot into crowds of strikers, killing two union activists, as they sought to break picketlines and escort struck cargo off the piers.

The deaths of Howard Sperry and Nick Bordoise came at the peak one of the longest and bitterest of the labor wars of the 1930s. In shock and grief, thousands of San Francisco workers marched silently up Market Street behind the two caskets in a huge funeral procession. Then they shut down the entire city in the famous general strike.

For four days during that summer of 1934, nothing moved in San Francisco. Long afterwards, whenever he tried to explain what it was like, Archie talked about how quiet it was when all the work stopped. The important thing about the silence, he said, was not its contrast with the city's normal cacophony. It was the fact that he and his fellow workers created it themselves, by doing nothing. Not working may seem a passive form of protest, yet their action gave them a sense of power they never lost.

'Without our brain and muscle, not a single wheel can turn.' Archie must have sung this verse to Solidarity Forever, the hallowed union anthem, hundreds of times on picketlines in the decades that followed. To him and other veterans of the general strike, these were not just words. They expressed a reality experienced first hand. The strike taught these wharf rats about power - that working people could get it, and wield it with devastating effect, if they understood that the world depended on them.

Seventy years later, as our modern labor movement struggles to regain the power it's lost, these four days shine as a beacon. They point out that the way workers won power proved to be as important as what they did with it.

The maritime and general strikes were social movements that came from the bottom - from the anger and dissatisfaction of workers themselves. They were mistrustful of the old labor hierarchy that had lost the power and will to improve the lives of rank-and-file dockers and sailors. So the first thing Archie and his coworkers did was create a new organization - the International Longshore and Warehouse Union.

They built a union they were sure could never be hijacked from their hands. The key was one of labor's most democratic institutions, one that survives to this day - the longshore caucus. Every time the union sits down to negotiate a new contract with multibillion-dollar transportation companies, every local union in every port elects delegates. Together they decide what the union will demand, and choose a committee to do the talking.

The 1934 strike produced a single, coastwise agreement, in which dockworkers from San Diego to Seattle act as one. The secret of their power was combining local democracy with the ability to shut down the whole coast at once. Today many workers pay a terrible price when they lack this ability to act together. Last year grocery workers successfully shut down supermarkets throughout southern California. But were defeated when their employers kept stores open everywhere else.

The coastwise contract was designed to prevent this from happening in the ports. It is no accident that, when the Bush administration intervened on the side of the ship owners during the 2002 longshore lockout, its biggest threat was legal action to force the union to negotiate a different contract in each port.

The general strike and the creation of the ILWU had a ripple effect. Other workers saw dockers win a hiring hall, freeing them from the humiliating shapeup, when workers had to beg a job from a gang boss every morning. The workforce was integrated. Today Black, Latino and Asian workers are the majority in big ports like San Francisco and LA, and women drive huge container cranes. People called bums and derelicts in the 20s and 30s had some of the best-paying, most secure jobs in industrial America by the 50s and 60s. As a result, a wave of union organizing spread inland from the ports, a social movement inspiring everyone from department store clerks to farm laborers.

That movement transformed the politics of California, Oregon, Washington, and especially Hawai'i, where it ended the domination of five big plantation-owning families over the state's political system. As a result, today Hawai'i has a greater percentage of union members than any other state. And when the Pacific Rim is called the left coast, it's a tribute to the political changes sparked by the general strike.

These changes were not welcomed by the shipping companies, the banks and the big newspapers that were their voice. They were terrified by the general strike, and invented an imaginary invasion of communist troops from Mexico to scare the public. Their real fear was more prosaic - company owners didn't want to listen to anyone, especially bums on the waterfront.

Forced to recognize the union, they went after its leaders. Employers and their government allies spent two decades trying to deport Harry Bridges, the ILWU's first president - an immigrant from Australia accused of being a communist. They failed. In the 1950s, McCarthyite legislation sought to ban communists and left wingers from holding office in unions. Archie Brown and ILWU Local 10 challenged this undemocratic law, which was later declared unconstitutional. The Coast Guard screened maritime workers for loyalty, and blacklisted and drove hundreds off the ships and docks. ILWU members like Don Watson picketed the Coast Guard every week, fought them in court, and eventually ended the vicious practice. These were some of the first and hardest political battles that eventually ended the witch hunts of the cold war.

Today's unions, debating what to do about the Patriot Act and the scapegoating of immigrants and political radicals, should remember this history. They might remember too the legacy of internationalism sparked by the general strike. In the late 1930s dockworkers refused to load scrap iron bound for fascist Japan and its brutal war in China. In the 1980s, a new generation refused to unload cargo from apartheid South Africa, or coffee used to finance Ronald Reagan's illegal war in Nicaragua. And last fall the ILWU not only condemned the US war in Iraq, but Local 10 leader Clarence Thomas went to Baghdad to offer help to unions there banned by the Bush-appointed occupation authority.

Unfortunately, labor can't rest on past achievements. The political machines built by radical unionists in the 30s and 40s have been strangled by subservience to politicians who accept workers' votes, but scorn their political demands. The flexible, independent and radical politics born from the general strike need to be reinvented - to elect a new administration that ends the Iraq and Afghan wars, rejects new free trade agreements, and wins national healthcare.

The ILWU, like most unions, is now an island of high wages and workplace rights, surrounded by a sea of unorganized workers who have neither. A labor movement devoted mostly to defending the interests of its own members will soon disappear. But if it inspires tens of millions of working people outside its ranks by building a social movement defending their interests, they will join as surely as did Archie and the workers of 1934, electrified and transformed by the general strike.

--Posted with permission from the author.

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Against the Grain - Was Lenin Defective?

Tue, 20 Jul 2004 13:44:00 +0000

In a recent booklet, by Leo Panitch and Sam Gindin (P&G), 'Global Capitalism and American Empire,' Lenin’s theory of imperialism comes in for some heavy criticism. Let’s see if it is justified.

The authors, in a section entitled 'Rethinking Imperialism,' caution against considering 'globalization as inevitable and irreversible.' They quote the Communist Manifesto as follows: 'The need of a constantly expanding market for its products chases the bourgeoisie over the whole surface of the globe.' Curiously, they think Marx and Engels were exhibiting 'prescience' when they wrote this – which they call a description 'of a future that strongly matches our present.'

But Marx and Engels were not prophesying the future. They were describing the historical reality of their own day – so manifest, already by 1848, was the imperial drive of capitalism. Incidentally, the fact that P&G can take an 1848 description of capitalism for a future prediction strongly matching the present explains one of the reasons why the classics of Marxism have not become outdated.

P&G look at history and discern three 'great structural crises' in capitalism: 1) Post 1870s colonial rivalry leading to World War I; 2) the Great Depression, leading to World War II; 3) globalization rapidly advancing due to economic problems of the 1970s. Because the contours of these crises and the results produced by them could not be predicted in advance, P&G contend that globalization is 'neither inevitable' re: classical Marxism, 'nor impossible to sustain.' Since Lenin’s theory of imperialism implies the opposite conclusions, the authors think his theory is mistaken.

Lets take a closer look. Lenin’s theory, according to the authors, made the 'fundamental mistake' of assuming 'capitalist economic stages and crises.' Lenin was 'defective' in his 'historical reading of imperialism' as well as his understanding of capital accumulation and, lastly, his view that 'inter-imperialist rivalry' was 'an immutable law of capitalist globalization.'

After having asserted all this, P&G conclude that, contrary to Lenin’s ideas, 'A distinctive capitalist version of imperialism did not suddenly arrive with the so-called monopoly or finance-capital stage of capitalism....'

P&G accuse Lenin of 'reductionism' in equating monopoly capitalism with imperialism. They maintain that 'capitalism' and 'imperialism' are independent of each other ('two distinct concepts'). History tells them that imperialism can be traced further back than the 1870s: that it goes at least as far back as mercantilism. This is just playing with words. The Romans were imperialists as far as that goes. Lenin was not discussing some universal ahistorical 'imperialism' but the specific historical imperialism of his own epoch based on the domination of financial capital.

Lenin saw that after 1873 (as a result of crises) monopoly capitalism began to consolidate and replace so-called competitive capitalism: the imperialism of Lenin’s days was a direct outgrowth of this new type of, a higher type in his words, of capitalism. We can, without accusing Lenin of having a defective historical understanding, agree with P&G that it is false to maintain that 'the nature of modern imperialism was once and for all determined in the kinds of rivalries attending the stage of industrial concentration and financialization associated with turn-of-the [19th]-century monopoly capital.'

But of course they are correct. No Marxist, especially Lenin, would maintain history gets frozen at a particular stage of its development. Lenin says of his definition of imperialism that it is convenient to sum up the principle aspects of the phenomena he is describing but 'nevertheless inadequate' because all definitions [and theories based on them] are 'conditional and relative' because all historical social events and formations are in flux.

P&G would have a better grasp of Lenin’s theory if they understood it in its own terms and did not misrepresent it as a 'once and for all' statement of the nature of imperialism. Their mistake is in thinking Lenin’s view of imperialism in terms of an evolution of economic stages and crises within capitalism was itself a mistake.

P&G also deny that imperialism is the 'highest stage of capitalism.' They do this because they are historically situated in the 21st century phase of 'globalization' and Lenin’s theory, now almost a century old, dealt with the capitalism of his era. Therefore they maintain that what he was observing was 'a relatively early phase of capitalism.' They could have saved themselves a lot of unnecessary Lenin criticism had they been more historical themselves. Capitalism is not going to go back to a previous stage of independent national capitalisms. It will continue to internationalize itself through the process we call 'globalization' and what Lenin was describing was a relatively early phase of the highest stage of capitalism. What we call 'globalization' is just a euphemism for the domination of the world by a handful of powerful states dominated by financial and monopoly elites that continue to plunder the world in their own interests. Lenin saw that this system was really a transitional system to an even higher form of economic development – namely socialism. This transitional nature of the 'highest stage of capitalism' is presently obscured by the temporary world dominance of US monopoly capitalism.

We should be absolutely clear about this, Lenin meant by 'highest stage' not that the historical features of capitalism in his epoch were fixed for all (capitalist) time, as P&G seem to imply, but only that capitalism had, as capitalism, no higher stage to evolve into that would renounce the need to export capital (finance capital especially) and find markets abroad. Globalization is just the latest stage of monopoly capitalism as it has transformed itself and developed since the days of Lenin, but it is still the logical outcome of the situation described by Marx and Engels in 1848.

It is also, I think, an error to hold, as do P&G, that Lenin and like minded theorists of the past did not recognize the role of the state in relation to the market: that they failed 'to appreciate the crucial role of the state in making ‘free markets’ possible and then to make them work.'

A strange accusation to make against someone who viewed the state as the executive committee of the bourgeoisie and thought that it functioned to further the interests of the capitalist class and its struggle to, among other things, build, acquire, and maintain markets both domestic and foreign.

It is true that Lenin could not foresee the specific historical development that has resulted in 'neoliberal' globalization dominated by one 'superpower.' But it is also true that the theory laid out by Lenin in Imperialism the Highest Stage of Capitalism remains the best starting point for any attempt to understand the contemporary world.

--Thomas Riggins' online comment appears each week. He can be reached at pabooks@politicalaffairs.net.

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The Influence of the Christian Right on U.S. Middle East Policy

Tue, 20 Jul 2004 03:26:00 +0000

In recent years a politicized and right-wing Protestant fundamentalist movement has emerged as a major factor in U.S. support for the policies of the rightist Likud government in Israel. To understand this influence, it is important to recognize that the rise of the religious right as a political force in the United States is a relatively recent phenomenon that emerged as part of a calculated strategy by leading right-wingers in the Republican Party who—while not fundamentalist Christians themselves—recognized the need to enlist the support of this key segment of the American population in order to achieve political power.

Traditionally, American fundamentalist Protestants were not particularly active in national politics, long seen as worldly and corrupt. This changed in the late 1970s as part of a calculated effort by conservative Republican operatives who recognized that as long as the Republican Party was primarily identified with militaristic foreign policies and economic proposals that favored the wealthy, it would remain a minority party. Over the previous five decades, Republicans had won only four out of 12 presidential elections and had controlled Congress for only two of its 24 sessions.

By mobilizing rightist religious leaders and adopting conservative positions on highly-charged social issues such as women’s rights, abortion, sex education, and homosexuality, Republican strategists were able to bring millions of fundamentalist Christians—who as a result of their lower-than-average income were not otherwise inclined to vote Republican—into their party. Through such organizations as the Moral Majority and the Christian Coalition, the GOP promoted a right-wing political agenda through radio and television broadcasts as well as from the pulpit. Since capturing this pivotal constituency, Republicans have won four out of six presidential races, have dominated the Senate for seven out of 12 sessions, and have controlled the House of Representatives for the past decade.

As a result of being politically wooed, those who identify with the religious right are now more likely than the average American to vote and to be politically active. The Christian Right constitutes nearly one out of seven American voters and determines the agenda of the Republican Party in about half of the states, particularly in the South and Midwest. A top Republican staffer noted: 'Christian conservatives have proved to be the political base for most Republicans. Many of these guys, especially the leadership, are real believers in this stuff, and so are their constituents.'

The Movement Takes Office

The Rev. Barry Lynn of Americans United for Separation of Church and State recently quipped: 'The good news is that the Christian Coalition is fundamentally collapsing. The bad news is that the people who ran it are all in the government.' He noted, for example, that when he goes to the Justice Department, he keeps seeing lawyers formerly employed by prominent right-wing fundamentalist preacher Pat Robertson.

As the Washington Post observed, 'For the first time since religious conservatives became a modern political movement, the president of the United States has become the movement’s de facto leader.' Former Christian Coalition leader Ralph Reed marked the triumph by chortling, 'You’re no longer throwing rocks at the building; you’re in the building.' He added that God 'knew George Bush had the ability to lead in this compelling way.'

American liberals have long supported Israel as a refuge for persecuted Jews and have championed the country’s democratic institutions (for its Jewish citizens). Historically these liberals, bolstered by the disproportionate political influence of Zionist Jews within the party, prompted Democrats to adopt a hard line toward Palestinians and other Arabs. Though more hawkish on most foreign policy issues, Republicans traditionally took a somewhat more moderate stance partly due to the party’s ties to the oil industry and in part because of GOP concern that too much support for Israel could lead Arab nationalists toward a pro-Soviet or—in more recent years—a pro-Islamist orientation. But this alignment has shifted, thanks to the influence of the Christian Right. Though Christian fundamentalist support for Israel dates back many years, only recently has it become one of the movement’s major issues.

As a result of renewed fundamentalist interest in Israel and in recognition of the movement’s political influence, American Jews are less reluctant to team up with the Christian Right. Fundamentalist leader Gary Bauer, for example, now receives frequent invitations to address mainstream Jewish organizations, which would have been hesitant toward the movement prior to the Bush presidency. This is partly a phenomenon of demographics: Jews constitute only 3 percent of the U.S. population, and barely half of them support the current Israeli government.

The Israelis also recognize the Christian Right’s political clout. Since 2001, Bauer has met with several Israeli Cabinet members and with Prime Minister Ariel Sharon. Former Prime Minister Benyamin Netanyahu noted, 'We have no greater friends and allies' than right-wing American Christians.

It used to be that Republican administrations had the ability to withstand pressure from Zionist lobbying groups when it was deemed important for American interests. For example, the Eisenhower administration pressured Israel during the Suez Crisis of 1956, the Reagan administration sold AWACS-equipped planes to Saudi Arabia in 1981, and the first Bush administration delayed a $10 billion loan guarantee for Israel to await the outcome of the pivotal 1992 Israeli election.

With the growing influence of the Christian Right, however, such detachment is no longer as easily achieved. For the first time, the Republican Party has a significant pro-Israel constituency of its own that it cannot ignore. Top White House officials, including Elliott Abrams, director of the National Security Council on Near East and North African Affairs, have regular and often lengthy meetings with representatives of the Christian Right. As one leading Republican put it: 'They are very vocal and have shifted the center of gravity toward Israel and against concessions. It colors the environment in which decisions are being made.' Indeed, the degree of the Bush administration’s support for Prime Minister Sharon has surprised even the most hard-line Zionist Jews.

Rising Power of Christian Zionists

It appears, then, that right-wing Christian Zionists are, at this point, more significant in the formulation of U.S. policy toward Israel than are Jewish Zionists, as illustrated by three recent incidents.

* After the Bush administration’s initial condemnation of the attempted assassination of militant Palestinian Islamist Abdel Aziz Rantisi in June 2003, the Christian Right mobilized its constituents to send thousands of e-mails to the White House protesting the criticism. A key element in these e-mails was the threat that if such pressure continued to be placed upon Israel, the Christian Right would stay home on Election Day. Within 24 hours, there was a notable change in tone by the president. Indeed, when Rantisi fell victim to a successful Israeli assassination in April 2004, the administration—as it did with the assassination of Hamas leader Sheik Ahmed Yassin the previous month—largely defended the Israeli action.

* When the Bush administration insisted that Israel stop its April 2002 military offensive in the West Bank, the White House received over 100,000 e-mails from Christian conservatives in protest of its criticism. Almost immediately, President Bush came to Israel’s defense. Over the objections of the State Department, the Republican-led Congress adopted resolutions supporting Israel’s actions and blaming the violence exclusively on the Palestinians.

* When President Bush announced his support for the Road Map for Middle East peace, the White House received more than 50,000 postcards over the next two weeks from Christian conservatives opposing any plan that called for the establishment of a Palestinian state. The administration quickly backpedaled, and the once-highly touted Road Map essentially died.

Theological Influences: Good Versus Evil

Messianic theology is centered around the belief in a hegemonic Israel as a necessary precursor to the second coming of Christ. Although this doctrine is certainly an important part of the Christian Right’s support of a militaristic and expansionist Jewish state, fundamentalist Christian Zionism in America ascribes to an even more dangerous dogma: that of Manichaeism, the belief that reality is divided into absolute good and absolute evil.

The day after the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, President Bush declared, 'This will be a monumental struggle of good versus evil, but good will prevail.' America was targeted—according to President Bush—not on account of U.S. support for Arab dictatorships, the large U.S. military presence in the Middle East, U.S. backing of the Israeli occupation, or the humanitarian consequences of U.S. policy toward Iraq but simply because they 'hate our freedom.' Despite the Gospels’ insistence that the line separating good and evil does not run between nations but rather within each person, President Bush cited Christological texts to support his war aims in the Middle East, declaring, 'And the light [America] has shown in the darkness [the enemies of America], and the darkness will not overcome it [American shall conquer its enemies].'

Even more disturbingly, Bush has stated repeatedly that he was 'called' by God to run for president. Veteran journalist Bob Woodward noted, 'The President was casting his mission and that of the country in the grand vision of God’s Master Plan,' wherein he promised, in his own words, 'to export death and violence to the four corners of the earth in defense of this great country and rid the world of evil.' In short, President Bush believes that he has accepted the responsibility of leading the free world as part of God’s plan. He even told then-Palestinian Prime Minister Mahmoud Abbas that 'God told me to strike al-Qaida and I struck them, and then he instructed me to strike at Saddam, which I did.' Iraq has become the new Babylon, and the 'war on terrorism' has succeeded the Cold War with the Soviet Union as the quintessential battle between good and evil.

Cultural Affinities

The esprit that many Americans have with Israel is rooted in a common historical mission. Each country was settled in part by victims fleeing religious persecution who fashioned a new nation rooted in high ideals with a political system based upon relatively progressive and democratic institutions. And both peoples established their new nations through the oppression, massacre, and dislocation of indigenous populations. Like many Israelis, Americans often confuse genuine religious faith with nationalist ideology.

John Winthrop, the influential 17th century Puritan theologian, saw America as the 'City on the Hill' (Zion) and 'a light upon nations.' In effect, there is a kind of American Zionism assuming a divinely inspired singularity that excuses what would otherwise be considered unacceptable behavior. Just as Winthrop defended the slaughter of the indigenous Pequot peoples of colonial Massachusetts as part of a divine plan, 19th century theologians defended America’s westward expansion as 'manifest destiny' and the will of God. Such theologically rooted aggrandizement did not stop at the Pacific Ocean: the invasion of the Philippines in the 1890s was justified by President William McKinley and others as part of an effort to 'uplift' and 'Christianize' the natives, ignoring the fact that the Filipinos (who by that time had nearly rid the country of Spanish colonialists and had established the first democratic constitution in Asia) were already over 90 percent Christian.

Similarly, today—in the eyes of the Christian Right—the Bush Doctrine and the expansion of American military and economic power is all part of a divine plan. For example, in their 2003 Christmas card, Vice President Dick Cheney and his wife Lynne included the quote, 'And if a sparrow cannot fall to the ground without His notice, is it probable that an empire can rise without His aid?'

But is such thinking normative in the United States? Polls show that the ideological gap between Christian conservatives and other Americans regarding the U.S. invasion of Iraq and the 'war on terrorism' is even higher than the ideological gap between Christian conservatives and other Americans regarding Israel and Palestine.

In many respects, much of the American right may be at least as concerned about how Israel can help the United States as about how the United States can help Israel. Due to the anti-Semitism inherent in much of Christian Zionist theology, it has long been recognized that U.S. fundamentalist support for Israel does not stem from a concern for the Jewish people per se but rather from a desire to leverage Jewish jingoism to hasten the Second Coming of Christ. Such opportunism is also true of those who—for theological or other reasons—seek to advance the American Empire in the Middle East. And though a strong case can be made that U.S. support for the Israeli occupation ultimately hurts U.S. interests, there remains a widely held perception that Israel is an important asset to American strategic objectives in the Middle East and beyond.

Strategic Calculation Trumps Ethno-Religious Card

Ultimately, Washington’s championing of Israel—like its approval of other repressive governments—is part of a strategic calculation rather than simply ethnic politics. When a choice must be made, geopolitical considerations outweigh ethnic loyalties. For example, for nearly a quarter of century, the United States supported the brutal occupation of East Timor by Indonesia and to this day supports the Moroccan occupation of Western Sahara, despite the absence of powerful Indonesian-American or Moroccan-American ethnic lobbying forces. The United States was able to get away with its support for occupations by Indonesia and Morocco due to their relative obscurity. This is certainly not the case with Israel and Palestine. (Interestingly, even though the East Timor situation involved a predominantly Muslim country conquering, occupying, and terrorizing a predominantly Christian country, virtually no protests arose from the Islamaphobic Christian Right.)

The Christian Right has long been a favorite target for the Democratic Party, particularly its liberal wing, since most Americans are profoundly disturbed by fundamentalists of any kind influencing policies of a government with a centuries-old tradition of separating church and state. Yet the positions of most liberal Democrats in Congress regarding the Israeli-Palestinian conflict are far closer to those of the reactionary Christian Coalition than to those of the moderate National Council of Churches, far closer to the rightist Rev. Pat Robertson than to the leftist Rev. William Sloan Coffin, far closer to the ultraconservative Moral Majority than to the liberal Churches for Middle East Peace, and far closer to the fundamentalist Southern Baptist Convention than to any of the mainline Protestant churches. Rather than accusing these erstwhile liberals of being captives of the Jewish lobby—a charge that inevitably leads to the countercharge of anti-Semitism—those who support justice for the Palestinians should instead reproach congressional Democrats for falling captive to the Christian Right. Such a rebuke would be no less accurate and would likely enhance the ability of those who support peace, justice, and the rule of law to highlight the profound immorality of congressional sanction for the Israeli occupation.

Those who support justice for the Palestinians—or even simply the enforcement of basic international humanitarian law—must go beyond raising awareness of the issue to directly confronting those whose acquiescence facilitates current repressive attitudes. It will not be possible to counter the influence of the Christian Right in shaping American policies in the Middle East as long as otherwise-socially conscious Christian legislators and other progressive-minded elected officials are beholden to fundamentalist voting pressures. It is unlikely that these Democrats and moderate Republicans will change, however, until liberal-to-mainline churches mobilize their resources toward demanding justice as strongly as right-wing fundamentalists have mobilized their resources in support of repression.

--Stephen Zunes is an associate professor of politics and chair of the peace & justice studies program at the University of San Francisco. He serves as Middle East editor for the Foreign Policy in Focus project and is the author of Tinderbox: U.S. Middle East Policy and the Roots of Terrorism (Common Courage Press, 2003).

--Re-posted with permission from Foreign Policy In Focus.

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Book Review - Holy War Inc., by Peter L. Bergen

Tue, 20 Jul 2004 01:47:00 +0000

The tragedy of 11 September 2001 inexorably has led to the publishing of a small library of volumes exploring the innards of so-called 'Islamic Fundamentalism.' Among the most celebrated of this genre is the instant volume, penned by the CNN producer, Peter L. Bergen, who has been interviewed frequently on television.

Suggestive of the popularity of this best-selling volume is that I bought it at an airport in Nairobi, Kenya. Recall that this city was the site of one of the more devastating attacks on US interests before 9/11 – the bombing of the US Embassy there, which killed 200 Kenyans and injured 4000. Indicative of the new era that 'terrorism' has initiated is that security at this airport was phenomenal during my visit in the spring of 2004, involving three close searches and traversing three metal detectors before being allowed to board a plane. Bergen is one of the few writers to have interviewed bin Laden, which he did before 2001 and the fall of the Taliban in Afghanistan. The author points to the enormous wealth of this notorious figure’s family, which – as is well-known – has had various ties to the fortune of the Bush family. 'By the mid-1990s, the bin Laden group of companies had grown into a colossus whose worth was estimated at $5 billion.' This economic behemoth was 'the distributor for Snapple drinks and Porsche and Volkswagen cars in the Middle East and is licensed by Disney to produce a wide range of Arabic books.' Osama bin Laden was able to draw upon this fortune when he began his de facto collaboration with the US in undermining the pre-Taliban government in Afghanistan, backed by the former USSR. The author argues that the 'war against the Soviets in Afghanistan surely' was a 'just jihad,' but since this conflict was the seedbed for 9/11, it is hard to accept the author’s reasoning.

Further confidence in the author is shaken when he writes that the 'Russians invaded over Christmas of 1979 to install Hafizullah Amin, effectively a Soviet puppet, as President.' In fact, Amin was deposed during the course of this intervention and was replaced by Babrak Karmal. It is downright shocking that this book has been vetted by numerous experts and gone through a number of editions and yet cannot get this simple fact straight.

Moreover, when the author writes of the attack on the ship, USS Cole in Yemen the fall of 2000, he gives scant attention to Washington’s effort over the years to destabilize the then government of Southern Yemen, headed by progressives and Marxists.

Nonetheless, it is understandable why this book has sold so many copies. It is well-written and the narrative is enhanced by the author’s 'you are there' approach, as the scene shifts from Afghanistan to Pakistan to Yemen to other hotspots. Moreover, the book does provide valuable details on the pre-2001 collaboration between the so-called 'Islamic Fundamentalists' and Washington, though this is certainly not the author’s primary intention. As such, this is a book worth reading.

Holy War Inc.: Inside the Secret World of Osama Bin Laden By Peter L. Bergen London: Orion Books, 2003.

--Gerald Horne is a contributing editor of Political Affairs.

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Dramatic Revisions and Socialist Visions: Interview with Tony Kushner

Sun, 18 Jul 2004 01:51:00 +0000

Editor‘s note: Tony Kushner, a Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright and a gay activist, has written a number of plays, including Angels in America, Part 1: The Millennium, Angels in America, Part 2: Perestroika, Slavs!: Thinking about the Longstanding Problems of Virtue and Happiness and Homebody/Kabul. In addition, Kushner has received grants from the New York State Council on the Arts, the NEA, the Whiting Foundation and the American Academy of Arts and Letters. He also received a Lila Wallace/Reader‘s Digest Fellowship and a medal for Cultural Achievement from the National Foundation for Jewish Culture. Angels in America is being made into a HBO film directed by Mike Nichols. Kushner‘s new play, Caroline or Change, will open on Broadway in September. Kushner was interviewed by Joe Sims.

PA: You emphasize the need to speak the truth and advocate an art that is engaged and committed. You also suggest culture is partisan. But, in theater and in the cultural world, many say that culture should not be political. Why is this?

TK: I think in general there is a powerful tradition of denying the existence of politics in art. The easiest answer is what Roland Barthes or Bertolt Brecht says, that the denial of ideology is an ideology – a bourgeois ideology. The way you protect your interests is by pretending you are not speaking from a historically determined or dialectical place, but rather from some position of immutable truth that lies beyond history and critical thinking. And we like to pretend – since we pretend these truths exist – there are means of getting at those truths. Religion is one example, it is supposed to be a discourse that lies completely out of the historical framework, and art is another. There is an anxiety that generates an attack on the notion that art is political, that art is partisan. It is a fantasy of being able to protect the purity in art, a fantasy of being able to outlast the vicissitudes of the present moment, a way of guaranteeing immortality in art, which of course increases its market value. Something that can be thought to have a life of 50 or 100 or 500 years must be worth more than something that is only of value for an instant. We know a 600 year-old statue is more valuable than one made the other day.

For American artists specifically, it‘s a conservative gesture that seeks to deny the extent to which democracy has succeeded. One of the ways it succeeded is in the creation of people who think politically, who have a deeply bred political common sense and an understanding of political struggle. By creating the arena of civil rights, we made public a certain kind of struggle that in other countries, even democratic countries, is hidden or in a nonpolitical arena. In America, it is all in the courts, the legislature, out on the streets. It‘s a civic event; it‘s part of the life of the state. And I think when artists deny politics a place in the theater, a place in the museum, it‘s a way of denying what is powerful and important as an accomplishment of American constitutional democracy.

PA: Is McCarthyism still a factor in this denial?

TK: Yes, I think McCarthyism is still certainly alive. We just had an example of it in political life rather than artistic life with the Not in Our Name statement against the war in Iraq. A journalist, who I think is actually rather well-meaning, discovered the Not in Our Name statement was organized by a group called Refuse and Resist, which was organized, although not exclusively, by people who are part of the RCP [Revolutionary Communist Party]. So an alarm was sent out, and an article appeared in Salon saying, “Are you aware that Not in Our Name is a front for the RCP?” [This] is a) completely untrue and b) red-baiting in the grand old McCarthy tradition. There is still this notion of guilt by association. I think McCarthy, the HUAC and that whole period of the red scare traumatized this country. We haven‘t completely recovered.

I imagine it is also operative in art. There is a fear maintained to this day that government funding for the arts is used as a tool of censorship. It‘s not censorship where artists are arrested and hauled off to prison. One knows certain kinds of expression simply aren‘t going to get funded. If you make a decision to say certain things, you realize you are probably going to be denied funding.

PA: Setting aside the problem of funding, at one point there was a broad left movement in theater, literature and Hollywood. Wouldn‘t you say that if the organized left wants to have influence it must engage in the arena of broad popular culture?

TK: Yes, and that still goes on. For instance, with the gay and lesbian struggles, we‘ve triumphed on a cultural level primarily through the medium of popular entertainment. When the Christian right accuses Hollywood of peddling a homosexual agenda, they are completely correct. This is, in fact, the only thing that we‘ve triumphed in. We‘ve failed totally legislatively. Every time we try to pass a lesbian or gay rights or an anti-discrimination bill and certainly in the struggle to get married, we‘ve endured terrible defeats. We are going to continue enduring them until we get a federal government that rises to its historical role, as the protector of minority rights.

But on a political level we have failed to make common cause with other groups. On a cultural level, you can‘t turn on television without running into lesbians and gay men. There‘s an enormous amount of progress that is changing this country and the world. But it‘s not of the organized left.

When you talk about the organized left, it‘s hard to know exactly what that means. I think the most activist people on the left, the people with the most radical disenchantment with capitalism, with the deepest belief there must be another way of organizing human relationships, people with a really deep understanding, a lived understanding, have fallen in love with a marginalization and a powerlessness.

PA: They‘ve fallen in love with marginalization?

TK: I think so. People on the left constantly decry the lack of identifiable left voices on television, and in some mainstream discourse. We have been shoved to the side, and it‘s really a debate between the center and the far right.

That certainly is the case in legislative bodies. I don‘t believe that‘s simply a conspiracy of giant corporations. We also have lost the ability to speak in a way most people understand. There has been a drifting apart of left intelligentsia and “the people,” the middle class and the working class. We‘ve become irrelevant and in a certain sense become comfortable with that. It allows us to spin fantasies that have no need to be reconciled with reality, which is an easier thing than to have to actually take responsibility for changing the world. To be a critic of the world is an easier thing than to be an activist. In a way, we have gone back before Marx and abrogated the fundamental tenet: philosophers are felt to understand the world, the point is to change it. I worry we have drifted away. Because of the crisis of theory, because of various other kinds of crises, we have become less capable, and more and more used to being not capable.

PA: Let‘s talk about the crisis in theory. There is a character in your play the “Oldest Living Bolshevik” who decries the lack of a theory. Do you think that the left feels it can‘t proceed for lack of a grand explanation for moving forward, particularly in light of what happened in the Soviet Union?

TK: Yes. I think it‘s complicated, because I don‘t know that a meta-theory can really ever have credibility again. I don‘t know that it ever should. In my play, Homebody/Kabul, I found myself surprised in arriving at [that conclusion]. Any theory that seeks to explain all of history, and offers a single prescription for the incredible variety and the complexity of human behavior, has to rest on an oversimplification of people. Human beings are both communal beings and individuals, and to lose sight of one or the other is problematic. On the other hand, I think that in the absence of some grand theoretical ideas that can assist people in the interpretation of their own lives and suggest directions for change, we become lost.

I still believe deeply in the socialist tradition, which has taken many, many forms over the last 1000 years. But it‘s the notion of economic justice, something like social justice, something like a recognition finally of the communal as well as the individual, the communal basis of wealth as well as property rights. These are powerful ideas that have persisted for centuries and clearly aren‘t gone. There is clearly great value in them. I think [what is needed is] an articulator, someone who redeems Marx from the mess Stalinism made of Marx, and in a sense Marxism made of Marx, or a group of theories that will in a sense replace what Marx once was, because it was a theory.

PA: But did it ever claim to be all-encompassing or to be the truth?

TK: I think, in a way, yes. Because it is dialectic, in a way it proclaims to be the truth in the sense that Kant and Hegel claimed the truth. It‘s a methodology for arriving at an unfixed and constantly changing truth. The truth is not a fixed object that lies in the past waiting to be discovered and held on to forever. The dialectical method is a way of extending reason to its absolute limits and discovering that its limits extend much farther than one would have ever imagined. It is a way to think one‘s way out of the nightmare of history. I think to that extent it‘s intended to be a grand scheme. Marx had those kind of protean ambitions, in the same way that Freud did and other thinkers of the 19th century – it was a time for that kind of thought.

The French deconstructionists are right to point out that there is a consonance between colonial ambitions and empirical empire-building ambitions, and the giant continental-sized theories of the grand thinkers of the 19th century.

It‘s extremely difficult to grope one‘s way back to what was there originally. But the work is still immensely powerful, and all you have to do is read history to see that astonishing power, the articulation of not just Marx but also Rousseau, Hegel, Kant, and what these people did by naming something. Before Rousseau, people fought for freedom but didn‘t know what it was they were fighting for. By giving them the name, he created the preconditions for the French Revolution. Naming is a tremendous power.

There are still principles that are so utterly irreplaceable and international. It really takes us back to 1917, and earlier of course, to look at where things went wrong. In a certain sense they went wrong in exactly the way Marx warned they would: there can be no socialism, no Communism in one country; national socialism, national identity, and national boundaries are the problem.

Effective internationalism and solidarity are so unbelievably important. The labor theory of value still holds; the notion of profit being unpaid labor is still critical.

So it‘s how do you get all that and rescue it from the bloodbath it became mired in by Stalinism, and how do you look through it to find where it went wrong. A lot of the voices of those big battles at the end of the 19th and the beginning of the 20th century [need to be listened to]. The voices of Antonio Gramsci and Rosa Luxemburg and Trotsky even, who knew exactly, at least on paper, what the errors of judgment were in Leninism. I think there is a lot of reinvestigation and reformulation that needs to happen.

PA: We have been discussing how to create a socialist alternative in the wake of these difficulties. It is like the question you posed at the end of your play Slavs, What is to be done? So how, as an artist and an activist, do you see moving forward?

TK: I was on a panel on Saturday with two Russian playwrights. The moderator read this quote from Stanley Kunitz, who I think is one of our greatest poets ever. Kunitz said that it‘s always the job of the artist to oppose the state. I thought about it and said I wasn‘t sure if that was entirely the case.

We are in a very complicated moment. It seems to me there are two areas of judgment, one is the notion of a revolutionary vanguard party that will pave the way and a rejection of democratic norms. I have a deep conviction that democracy is a good idea.

All the problems of democracy can only be solved by more democracy. If there is hope, it lies in a radical vision of democracy as a universal enfranchisement. I think the big question of revolution versus evolution, which was so much a part of what 19th century political theory was about, speaks directly to the question of violence itself. I‘m not a pacifist, but I wrestle all the time with my reasons for not being one. The question is about the tempo of change. Is it tolerable for current circumstances to remain the same, and how abruptly must they change? Speed is obviously necessary to save lives. But is it so necessary that a revolution is justified? And what does one make of the history of revolution, which is unfortunately a very depressing history?

So those are the questions. I think there is a question of a revolutionary fantasy and an anarchist fantasy. And I think that an exploration of those things that are problematic is what I want to work on, both as an artist and also as an activist.

What is the role of the left now? It is going to be very bad for everyone if the Republicans get hold of the Senate. The Democrats have behaved appallingly, but why is the Democratic Party, which I believe is not identical to the Republican Party, behaving so badly? Again, who is to blame? There are a huge number of progressive people in this country.

Why are our voices not being heard? In part it‘s because we tell ourselves, and teach each other, that the machinery of American constitutional democracy is of no value. Consequently we abdicate the field of legislative and presidential power to the middle and the right. We gave up at some point on constitutional democracy. That was a mistake.

PA: But don‘t you think that there is a growing movement in the unity between the left and center in the labor movement and in the peace movement? Over 100,000 people marched against war last April. Compare that to the beginning of the Vietnam War.

TK: We learned from [the Vietnam War] and we remember it. The right is caught up in fantasies of WW II and has skipped over that. On the left when [we] think of war, [we] still [are] thinking, as we should, of Vietnam. So we are starting out having learned a lot, and there are changes and positive signs. But there is a lot of work to be done. I mean take the globalism movement, the anti-globalism movement – in a sense it‘s both – is incredibly exciting. But it is a little bit disturbing. The extent to which it seems, at least in the demonstrations that I‘ve gone on, to be fueled primarily by a kind of an eco-anarchism, is immensely romantic. And I can understand, I mean I‘m 46 – I don‘t mean to be condescending to anybody – but if I was 19, I wouldn‘t be terribly interested in who won as Senator of Minnesota. It‘s much sexier to put on a bandana and throw a brick through a Gap window. But where that‘s going to lead, I don‘t know. As an incitement, as an advertisement, as a calling of attention, it is extraordinary. Where it goes from there, I think, is a big question. And I think that what you are saying is absolutely true. There are important connections being made between the left and left of center, between liberals and radicals. But there is still an immense amount of work to do to try and find a left that actually wields power.

We want to actually be able to say you are not going to bomb, because we won‘t let you. We can do it because there are enough progressive courageous representatives in Washington to say, “go fuck yourself,” when another Bush comes back and says, “I want you to pass this resolution.” I believe [we need ] like 150 more Barbara Lees, then we‘ll be somewhere. Until we get that, where are we? Why aren‘t there 150 Barbara Lees?

There are more than enough people who are progressive. By my sort of intuitive estimate, around 30 to 40 percent of the population really is certifiably left, so why do we feel there are six of us?

I was involved in Act Up, and one of the great lessons was that it was only about an achievable agenda, about getting things done. People worked on so many different levels. It was direct action, but it was also incredibly smart infiltration. It wasn‘t about hanging on to some cherished notion of being on the outside or being in opposition. Because if that‘s all you are, then when do you stop opposing and start creating?

Bush and GOP Comparable to Deposed Vajpayee and BJP

Sat, 17 Jul 2004 02:43:00 +0000

Right-wing Politics and Terrorism – Wars and Encounters as Politics

Violence is integral to right wing politics, and wars and encounters are essential components of its strategy. This is as much true of the Hindutva forces as it is of the US establishment led by Bush.

Therefore, when the Hindutva forces claim to fight terrorism, we not only have to take it with a pinch of salt, all the time remembering that there is a lot in common between the two and that they feed each other, but also keep in mind that this so-called fight holds a special place in Hindutva’s diabolical scheme of Hindu Rashtra, much in the same way as the assault on Iraq has a place in the US establishment’s imperialist schemes. In both cases the underlying assumption is of a ‘clash of civilizations,’ with themselves representing civilization and the ‘other’ representing barbarism.

This assumption itself can be, and has been, effectively challenged on numerous grounds, ideological as well as factual. But it continues to hold ground and contributes to a degree of popular consent for what are essentially undemocratic acts on the part of right wing political forces. It is important to see the linkages between the US attack on and occupation of Iraq and the war mongering against Pakistan by the Sangh Parivar, and the easy slide that these permit into hate politics against Muslims the world over.

Unjust Wars and Encounters

Unjust wars and encounters not only represent undemocratic solutions to a problem, eroding in the process the concept of just wars and legitimate rebellions against injustice; they also become instruments for furthering a right wing political campaign filled with lies and hatred for those characterized as ‘enemy.’ They in fact contribute towards drawing and propagating stereotyped images of whole communities of those targeted, and separating their fate from exercise of any judgement on the basis of normal norms of justice by citizens at large. And from any normal feelings of human beings towards sufferings of others.

The tortures by the US soldiers of Iraqi citizens, and the continuing persecution of Muslims in Gujarat on pretexts of harboring designs to kill Modi, have not caused the large-scale revulsions they should in democratic societies. Few people recognize the agony and despair of the Kashmiri people caught between militancy and the sweeping actions of those representing the state. Such lack of empathy for human rights can only be detrimental to the interests of the democratic movement.

The latest killing of four Muslim youths near Ahmedabad raises larger questions that need our concern and have wider implications. On June 15, the Ahmedabad police claimed to have killed four terrorists in an Indica car, at a desolate location near Kotarpur on the outskirts of Ahmedabad, on their way to the city, after a thrilling chase in a pre-dawn encounter. The bodies were neatly arranged on the road for display. Immediately, without any inquiry, it was claimed by the Gujarat police that they were terrorists from the Pakistan based Lashkar-e-Taiba, two of them being from Pakistan, and the other two including a nineteen year girl Ishrat Jahan being Indians, and that they were plotting to kill Narendra Modi.

Larger Question

The larger question is how do the right wing Hindutva forces -- or the state forces in BJP ruled states -- manage all the time to become investigators, prosecutors and judges, in some cases even meting out their own private ‘justice’ through Bajrang Dal and other such organizations? It tells something about our polity that the new government must urgently address itself to, if it wants to free this country from the dadagiri of the Hindutva goons.

How, why and under what authority did the police kill them? The media debate has been confined to the question of whether they had any terrorist links. The point is, even assuming that they did have such links, we still need to be told what they had done to justify their cold-blooded murder? Are terrorist links, without any act of commission or omission, sufficient to kill any person? Was there any prior investigation? If so, what was it, and who lodged the FIR and when? What does it say? If it was not an investigation, what was it?

If they were about to commit a cognizable offence, could the police not have prevented the commission of this offence, without killing them? Under what law can the police kill any person? There is no provision either in the constitution or in the Criminal Procedure Code giving any right to the police to kill. The only provision giving any person the right to kill is under section 100 of the Indian Penal Code. That is as a matter of private defense.

And who decides that killing was justified? Too easily the police resort to killings in the case of those they brand as Muslim terrorists, and in all cases without exception they shoot to kill rather than injure. Obviously dead bodies tell no tales and cannot speak for themselves, so the self-proclaimed investigators also easily assume the role of persecutors and judges. It is happening all the time and with increasing frequency since 9/11 and since the BJP formed its government.

These are questions being asked and observations made by concerned citizens. These are questions that political parties need to address urgently as well.

Human Rights Issues

These are human rights issues that pertain to criminalization of politics, questions of law and order, fundamental rights of citizens, and the building of a secular polity in which right is not might. It is a travesty of justice that while thousands of those known to be perpetrators of the Gujarat genocide roam free, others, simply because they belong to another religion, are routinely made targets of a communalised state machinery on grounds of mere suspicion, by no other than this RSS infiltrated machinery. Modi himself, the architect of the genocide, continues to enjoy the office of chief minister despite countless investigative reports by concerned citizens’ groups, while poor Muslims are continuously being charged with conspiracies against the state by Modi’s henchmen.

We must remember that those young misguided youths who are being guided into militancy through sheer desperation are ultimately paying the price for it. They are living desperate, unhappy, and hounded lives, and getting killed for their misdeeds, not sitting pretty in offices with state security protection, and political clout that ensures them immunity for crimes committed. As a matter of fact, numerous people even feel that more important than the dismissal of any governor is the dismissal of Modi for his complicity in the Gujarat genocide and his flaunted justifications to this day for what the Hindutva forces did in Gujarat.

Obviously, the Congress, which hardly showed teeth during the killings despite the brutal murder of one of their own former MPs, is hardly likely to bell the cat even now that it is in power at the center. Its refusal to recognize the nature of the popular mandate, reflected in the election results and programmatized to some degree in the Common Minimum Program, and to act on it swiftly, would be suicidal not merely for the Congress, but for the third front alternative as well. The failure of the Congress can only benefit the Sangh Parivar at this crucial political juncture, whereas swift decisive measures against anti-democratic forces will give teeth to a secular democratic state.

The intervention of the Supreme Court in the Best Bakery Case (relating to one of the most gruesome killings during the Gujarat genocide) in censoring and curtailing the Gujarat state government in its active role of denying justice to the victims by protecting the perpetrators of the crime, represents a struggle within the Indian state between sectarian and secular democratic forces. This struggle is bound to take place within the judiciary, the police force, the administration, and the army, which form the direct instruments of the state, and also within media, educational institutions, cultural bodies, at all levels from the center to the village based bodies.

ExtraConstitutional Methods of Parivar

The Sangh Parivar, which has utilized every occasion of political ascendancy to fill these bodies with its own people, and to change the political complexion of major institutions of the state, is not going to hand over its power in a platter just because it has lost elections and the right to form the government. Its cadre remains entrenched in the institutions of governance and of ideological significance. The fact that it does not form the government or hold a majority in the parliament makes it all the more desperate to resort to extra-constitutional methods of furtherance of its political agenda. A politics of war mongering, hate and encounters is most suited to rendering helpless those it portrays as enemies and also of ensuring that those positioned in the state instruments of power retain their biases and remain active collaborators in their politics, whether the Sangh linked party forms the government or not.

The new government must, therefore, put an end to all extra-constitutional assertions by the instruments of the state, and the Gujarat state machinery headed by Modi must be put on the defensive. As it happens, it shows through its actions that it can continue as before, no matter if the government at the center has changed. It must be decisively disabused of this complacency. The new government in place at the center must make a positive difference for the people of Gujarat.

--Re-posted from People’s Democracy the weekly newspaper of the Communist Party of India (Marxist).

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