Friday, March 15, 2024

United States/Chinese Economic Relations: a radio program

 

https://radio.cgtn.com/podcast/news/1/Panel-Will-a-US-election-year-see-more-turbulence-in-China-US-economic-relations/472255


Sunday, August 2, 2020

"PLAYING THE CHINA CARD" (Differently)

Harry Targ

(It is time to change from confrontation to cooperation. End the New Cold War now. 11/15/2021)

Beginning in 1969 President Richard Nixon, guided by his National Security Advisor, Henry Kissinger, fashioned a new policy toward China; what became known as “playing the China card.” It was motivated by a desire to push back and ultimately create regime change in the  Soviet Union. Cognizant of growing hostilities between the two large communist states, Nixon and Kissinger developed this plan to play one off against the other. Central to this policy was launching a diplomatic process that led to the1979 US formal diplomatic recognition of China. During the 1970s, the United States and China supported the same political allies in various parts of the world, Southern Africa and Southeast Asia for example. The split in the socialist world between the Soviet Union and China significantly contributed to the collapse of the Soviet Union and the weakening of socialism, for a time, on the world stage. Thus, from a US imperial point of view “playing the China card” worked.

In a speech on Thursday July 23 Secretary of State Mike Pompeo declared that the Nixon opening to China was a mistake. “We must admit a hard truth that should guide us in the years and decades to come: that if we want to have a free 21st century, and not the Chinese century of which Xi Jinping dreams, the old paradigm of blind engagement with China simply won’t get it done. We must not continue it and we must not return to it.” (Edward Wong, Steven Lee Myers, “Officials Push U.S.-China Relations Toward Point of No Return,” The New York Times, July 25, 2020). If it is true that the Nixon/Kissinger foreign policy toward China did in fact facilitate the weakening of socialism as a world force, why is the Secretary of State now calling “playing the China card” a mistake?

The answer to this question, or more broadly why is United States foreign policy returning to a policy hostile to China, perhaps creating a “New Cold War,” has several parts. First, as Alfred McCoy has described (In the Shadows of the American Century: The Rise and Decline of US Global Power, Haymarket Books, 2017), the United States, relatively speaking, is a declining power. As to economic growth, scientific and technological developments, productivity, and trade, the US, compared to China particularly, is experiencing stagnation or decline. China has engaged in massive global projects in transportation, trade, and scientific advances and by 2030 based on many measures will advance beyond the US.

According to McCoy, the United States has embarked on a path to overcome its declining relative economic hegemony by increasingly investing in military advances: a space force, a new generation of nuclear weapons, cyber security, biometrics, and maintaining or enhancing a global military presence particularly in the Pacific (what Obama spokespersons called “the Asian pivot”). In other words, rather than accommodating to a new multipolar world in the 21st century, the United States is seeking to reestablish its global hegemony through military means.

Second, the United States is desperately seeking to overcome the end of its monopoly on technological advances. In computerization, transportation, pharmaceuticals, it is challenging Chinese innovations, claiming that China’s advances are derived not from its domestic creativity but from “pirating” from United States companies. For example, the prestigious and influential Council on Foreign Relations issued a report last year entitled “Innovation and National Security: Keeping Our Edge.” The report warned that “…the United States risks falling behind its competitors, principally China.” China is investing significantly in new technologies, CFR claims, which they predict will make China the biggest inventor by 2030. Also, to achieve this goal they are “exploiting” the openness of the US by violating intellectual property rights and spying. Therefore, the CFR concluded, since technological innovation is linked to economic and military advantage and since US leadership in technology and science is at risk, the nation must recommit to rebuilding its scientific prowess.

Third, while the United States is engaged in efforts at regime change around the world and is using brutal economic sanctions to starve people into submission (such as in Venezuela, Cuba, Iran and 36 other countries victimized by economic sanctions), China is increasing its economic ties to these countries through investments, trade, and assistance. And China opposes these US policies in international organizations. In broad terms Chinese policy stands with the majority of countries in the Global South while the United States seeks to control developments there.

Fourth, although Trump foreign policy is designed to recreate a Cold War, with China as the target, a policy also embraced by most Democrats, there is at the same time counter-pressure from  sectors of the capitalist class who have ties to the Chinese economy: investment, global supply chains, and financial speculation. Moreover, sectors of Chinese capital own or have substantial control over many US corporations and banks. In addition, the Chinese government controls over $1 trillion of US debt. For these sectors of US capital, economic ties with China remain economically critical. In addition some writers, such as Jerry Harris, point to the emergence of a “transnational capitalist class” whose interests are not tied to any nation-state (Global Capitalism and the Crisis of Democracy, Clarity Press, 2016).

Consequently, while the trajectory of US policy is toward a return to cold war, there is some push back by economic and political elites as well. As the New York Times article above put it, “In the United States, tycoons and business executives, who exercise enormous sway among politicians of both parties, will continue to push for a more moderate approach, as members of Mr. Trump’s cabinet who represent Wall Street interests have done.”

Fifth, American domestic politics provide the immediate cause of the transformation of US/China policy. Candidate Donald Trump’s popularity is declining dramatically because of the spread of the covid pandemic, its impacts on the US economy, and the rise of racial tensions in the country. A classic antidote for politicians experiencing declining popularity is to construct an external enemy, “an other,” which can redirect the attention of the public from their personal troubles. President Trump has sought to deflect the cause of the spreading pandemic onto the Chinese. It is this external enemy that is the source of our domestic problems. In this context the President is talking tough with the “enemy” of the United States, and, as Secretary of State Pompeo suggests, it is about time that the US government gives up illusions about working with China. Only a Trump administration, he suggested, would be capable of doing this (forget President Obama’s “Asian pivot”).

Finally, the ideological package of racism, white supremacy, and American Exceptionalism so prevalent in United States history has resurfaced in dramatic ways as the Trump administration and its allies have opposed nationwide protests against police violence and structural racism. White supremacy at home is inextricably connected with American Exceptionalism abroad. For example President Theodore Roosevelt in 1910 claimed that the white race has been critical to civilization.  Years later Madeleine Albright, the Secretary of State in the Clinton Administration (and more recently President Barack Obama) spoke about the  United States as the “indispensable nation,”a model of economics and politics for the world. Pompeo continues this tradition claiming that the United States stands for a “free 21st century.” This sense of omniscience has been basic to the ideological justification of United States imperial rule.

Each of these elements, from the changing shape of economic and military capabilities, to political exigencies, to the pathologies of culture, require a peace and justice movement that stands for peaceful coexistence, demilitarization, building a world of economic justice and the rights of people to determine their own destiny, and inalterable opposition to racism, white supremacy, and exceptionalisms of all kinds.

Panel: China-US relations at turning point? http://chinaplus.cri.cn/podcast/detail/1/232452                                                    

 

Friday, March 8, 2024

THE VIETNAM WOMEN'S UNION: AN EFFECTIVE MASS ORGANIZATION

Harry Targ

(Originally posted Sunday, April 17, 2011)



 Vietnamese Women’s Club. Photo by Paul Krehbiel

We arrived in time to be ushered into a meeting of a rural Vietnamese women’s club, just outside of Hue. Discussion among the 75 single women was animated, self-assured, and clearly engaged. Members listened to each other, respected what each had to say, and evidenced not one iota of shyness even though their discussion of women’s health, environmental, and other immediate issues was being observed by eight American guests and a Vietnam Women’s Union official from Hanoi.

We had already been to a briefing at the Center for Women and Development’s new building, and the Women’s Museum in Hanoi. We had visited Peace House, a shelter for Vietnamese women victimized by sexual trafficking, part of the CWD project to provide shelter, training, and advocacy for women victimized by domestic violence or sexual trafficking. All of these venues-- the CWD, the Women’s Museum, the rural single women’s club, the Peace House shelter project-- were part of the national activities of the Vietnam Women’s Union. The VWU was clearly well- organized at the center, clear of purpose and commitment, and connected to regional and local bodies of women throughout the country.

Our introduction to the VWU was part of a 14-day educational tour of Vietnam in March, 2011 organized by the Committees of Correspondence for Democracy and Socialism (CCDS) and hosted by the Vietnam Women’s Union. In addition to our request to receive information about the VWU, we expressed interest in briefings on the Vietnamese policy known as Doi Moi, or the social market economy, and the lingering long-term impacts on the Vietnamese people of the 10-year use of Agent Orange during the American war. These issues and more were covered on our travels, briefings, museum visits, and conversations with Vietnamese people. The focus of this essay is the VWU.

The Vietnam Women’s Union, one of six major mass organizations in the country, was founded in 1930 just before the Indochinese Communist Party. In socialist theory and practice, mass organizations are designed to mobilize major populations who require and are committed to social change in their societies. While their ideas and programs parallel those of local Communist parties, they are committed to meeting the needs of workers, women, youth, farmers, war veterans, and others whether they are members of political parties or not. Also effective mass organizations require both leadership and authentic and active participation from the grassroots.

As far as we could tell, the VWU is a model mass organization. It has levels of activity and participation at the national and provincial levels as well as in districts and small village communes. There are an estimated 13 million VWU members. As indicated in a VWU pamphlet: “Since its foundation, VWU has transformed itself fully into a women’s social-political and developmental organization, which is mandated to protect women’s legitimate rights and strive for gender equality.”

Levels of organization of the Vietnamese Women’s Union consist of a National Congress, a Central Executive Committee, a Presidium and provincial, district, and communal organizations. The VWU has 16 departments including communication and education, family and social affairs, international relations, ethnic and religious affairs, law and policy, and departments overseeing museums, a newspaper, and publishing. Our tour was organized by one of the departments, Peace Tours.

The VWU emphasizes organizational tasks ranging from supporting and building women’s skills and autonomy at the local level to greater political influence at the national level. The commitment to goals which were identified as critical for the recent period, 2007-2012, were reflected in what we saw. These included raising women’s consciousness, knowledge, and capacity, promoting gender equality at all levels of society, promoting economic development, building the VWU as a national organization, and building networks of relationships with progressive organizations around the world.

VWU short-term goals, identified in their literature seemed plausible based on our brief observation. These included targeting 70% of poor women for support “… to reduce poverty and eliminate hunger,” and “supporting more than 90% of female-headed poor households, with the goal of 40 to 50% escaping from poverty.”

One of the VWU departments, the Center for Women and Development, concentrates particularly on giving support to victims and overcoming violence and sexual trafficking of women. Peace House, with aid from overseas NGOs, was opened in March, 2007, to construct a model shelter for abused Vietnamese women. A CWD report indicated that “The Peace House has supported women and children who suffered from domestic violence from all over the country. The numbers of women and children receiving the services of the Peace House are increasing and after leaving the Peace House they are new persons, more independent and able to protect themselves and their children.”

Reflecting on guided tours such as the CCDS visit to Vietnam can have profound long-term impacts on participants, even though it is recognized that such tours are designed to show host successes while minimizing problems or organizational deficits. However, among the indisputable strengths of the VWU are the following:

1.VWU is truly a mass organization in the best sense of that term. It carries out policies representing the interests of a large percentage of women in Vietnamese society at all levels--from the rural commune to the nation.

2.A fundamental component of all VWU work is the belief that there is dignity in each member. Each Vietnamese woman has the right to fulfill her life to the full limit of societal resources and to be an active agent in that fulfillment.

3.Government, party, and mass organization, all have as their uppermost obligation serving the people. This means that these entities continue to struggle to overcome class exploitation, gender oppression, and racial and ethnic discrimination.

Several of the tour participants only partially in jest wondered if progressives in the United States could hire Vietnam Women’s Union organizers to help us reorder institutions and policies in the United States.



Vietnamese Doctors. Photo by Paul Krehbiel

 

 

Vietnam Women's Union website: http://hoilhpn.org.vn

 

 

Thursday, March 7, 2024

WORKING CLASS SOCIALIST, GRASSROOTS LABOR ORGANIZER, FEMINIST,FILM STAR: Thoughts on the Life of Vicky Starr

Originally posted on Sunday, January 10, 2010

Harry Targ


https://youtu.be/74gvcvXlgnM?si=aoS6iNk6i46oGvth


I read recently that Vicky Starr died on Thanksgiving Day, November 26, 2009. She was 93 years old. Thinking about Vicky Starr (or for fans of the film Union Maids Stella Nowicki) reminded me about how her life, which many of us learned of through the film, was so inspirational.

As a teenager, Vicky Starr left the family farm in Michigan and arrived on the Southside of Chicago in 1933. She stayed in the home of Herb and Jane March, Communist activists who had come to Chicago to organize the packing house workers in the huge Stockyards. Under March’s tutelage she sought employment in the Yards and almost immediately began to network with workers to build a union of workers in the days leading up to the formation of the Congress of Industrial Organizations (CIO).

The processing of meat from the 1880s until the late 1950s was centered in Chicago. The Stockyards, housing the Big Four packers (Armour, Cudahy, Swift, and Wilson), employed thousands of workers. Because the work was so dangerous and unpleasant, it was largely carried out by the most marginalized sectors of the working class.

In the era of Upton Sinclair’s, The Jungle, workers were primarily immigrants from Eastern and Southern Europe. After World War 1 and the “the Great Migration,” African Americans secured the lowest paid and most dangerous jobs in the Yards. Historic union organizing drives in 1904, and 1921 faltered because of racism and ethnic conflict among workers. Communist and socialist organizers in the Yards, such as March, realized that combating racism was central to organizing industrial unionism in the meat packing industry.

And it was rank-and-file activists like Vicky Starr who tirelessly met with workers, helped write leaflets and newsletters, interacted with the radical students from the University of Chicago who had offered their assistance to union organizing drives, and communicated with sympathetic members of the influential Catholic Church in the city.

As a member of the Young Communist League, Starr and her comrades would read classic Marxist and Leninist texts. Since Starr would be identified with organizing campaigns by her bosses, she often lost her job in the yards. When that occurred she would apply for work at another packing house company using a different name.

She told Alice and Staughton Lynd (Rank and File, 1973) many years later: “When I look back now, I really think we had a lot of guts. But I didn’t even stop to think about it at the time. It was something that had to be done. We had a goal. That’s what we felt had to be done and we did it.”

In 1937, workers established the Packinghouse Workers Organizing Committee (PWOC). Despite resistance by the major meat packers, state violence, red-baiting against union organizers by the state and the American Federation of Labor’s Amalgamated Meat Cutters (AMC), the United Packinghouse Workers of America (UPWA-CIO) was constituted in 1943. Until its merger with other unions, it remained a militant trade union that fought racism and red-baiting and publicly opposed United States foreign policies such as participation in the Korean War. And during its formative years in the mid-1940s Vicky Starr served for a time as Education Director for District 1 of UPWA.

Central to Starr’s contribution to the working class from the time she was a member of the Young Communist League, to the budding labor movement, the formation of the UPWA, and later as an organizer of clerical workers at the University of Chicago was her constant struggle against racism and sexism. After the formation of UPWA Starr said “We tried to make sure that there were both Negroes and whites as officers, stewards…in all the locals.” She fought residential segregation and participated in building the Back of the Yards Council on Chicago’s south side and worked to end the exclusion of African Americans from professional sports. And in the end she recalled that the most militant trade unionists on the shop floor, the beef kill, were African Americans.

As an organizer in the 30s and a UPWA staffer in the 40s she combated sexism as well. “Women had an awfully tough time in the union because the men brought their prejudices there.” Women often had the most demeaning jobs in the Yards, wage rates discriminated against them, their special needs, such as child care received no attention, and they often were fearful of demanding their rights on the shop floor and in the union.

As a socialist, Starr reflected on those halcyon days of UPWA-CIO organizing. She said that there was a sense that workers were ready to come together. There was a growing feeling of working class solidarity. Union organizers would show up at the Stockyards with literature and speeches. And at the grassroots she and others were on the shop floor spreading the word informally about the union.

And socialism needed to be addressed in terms of the concrete benefits of people’s lives. “You had to talk about it in terms of what it would mean for that person. We learned that you can’t manipulate people but that you really had to be concerned with the interests and needs of the people. However, you also had to have a platform--a projection of where you were going.”

Starr left the Yards in 1945, was forced underground for a time in the McCarthy period, raised four children and returned to work as a secretary at the prestigious University of Chicago. She still had “a platform” at the university, organizing all non-professional staff. Despite predictable resistance from the bastion of liberalism in higher education she applied the grassroots organizing skills she learned as a teenager in the stockyards to achieve victory for clerical workers. Teamsters Local 743 was recognized in 1978. Vicky Starr became the first shop steward of the new local.

But Starr’s contribution to the American working class, Black and White, male and female did not remain unnoticed beyond the shop/office. Alice and Staughton Lynd captured her remembrances of CIO organizing in the 1973 book Rank and File and the clerical workers struggle in the 2000 book New Rank and File. And especially, “Stella Nowicki” was one of three stars (the others were Sylvia Woods and Kate Hyndman) in the wonderful documentary (Union Maids, 1977) about women organizing in the CIO in the 1930s.

This last project made Vicky Starr a major celebrity. It brought to the attention of new generations of activists the fighting spirit of the 1930s, the central role Communists played in the battles, and the absolute centrality to organizing the working class of fighting racism and sexism.

Still relevant today, Union Maids (and the Lynds collections of interviews), can help inspire, educate, and inform activists about tactics, strategy, and basic principles of organizing.

Vicky Starr concluded her 1973 interview saying: “It was a privilege and a wonderful experience to participate in the excitement of those times.”

It is important to remember Vicky Starr for what she did for the working class, particularly industrial and clerical workers. And reflections on her life and work can still inform activists as they struggle for economic justice today.



 

Tuesday, March 5, 2024

A SUMMARY OF REMARKS SUPPORTING A GAZA CEASE FIRE RESOLUTION: THE WEST LAFAYETTE CITY COUNCIL

(March 4, 2024)

Harry Targ

    


       Purdue Exponent Photo

Peace activists, and many Americans generally, are frustrated viewing the daily images of bombing, bodies, destruction of buildings, starvation, and fear engendered by the genocidal war of the Israeli government on the Palestinian people. We feel the anguish of Aaron Bushnell, who immolated himself in front of the Israeli embassy on February 25, 2024. Those of us who lived through the Vietnam era remember Norman Morrison, a Hoosier, who self-immolated himself in front of the Pentagon in 1965. Before that, Buddhist Monks had also made the ultimate sacrifice in the streets of what was then called Saigon in the former South Vietnam.

We know that the United States has great influence over Israel. It has provided $4 billion a year in military aid to Israel since 1979. Currently the Biden Administration has introduced to Congress a proposal for military supplemental support, totaling an additional $14 billion to Israel (78 percent of which Israel would be obliged to be used in purchases from US arms manufacturers).

Military contracts with arms manufacturers often involve universities. Purdue University is a case in point. For example, on October 6, 2020 Purdue Today reproduced an article from a Department of Homeland Security Journal, Homeland Security Today, announcing a Purdue/Homeland Security research project involving research on drones for use in Abu Dhabi, the UAE capitol. (The article has been since been removed from Purdue Today).

The article reported that “a group of Purdue University researchers have been tasked to make sure drones and their systems could operate securely, safely and efficiently in the United Arab Emirates capital, Abu Dhabi.” It named Purdue professors in Aeronautical and Astronautics, Computer Science, and Purdue’s “cybersecurity research and education center” as project participants. (“Purdue University and Abu Dhabi Work Together on Cybersecure Drone Swarms”

 https://heartlandradical.blogspot.com/2023/12/from-middle-east-to-purdue-university.html

To avoid the sense of desperation felt by Aaron Bushnell, Norman Morrison and others we need to find ways to give voice to our frustration with the ongoing war on the Gazan people. And it is to our political institutions that our energies must turn: both to influence public policy and to be able to express our sense of outrage.

As a political body closest to us, we look to the City Council, and other local governmental institutions, to reflect our concerns, even though they have little direct contact with foreign policy decisions.

Along with satisfying our need to speak out we cannot know what impact our voices can have. Referring to the Vietnam analogy, hundreds of thousands of voices articulated in different ways did impact on United States foreign policy in the 1960s and 1970s. And it was through articulation of opposition to that war that we discovered that our friends and neighbors shared the same views.

In addition, as has been reported many city councils have already expressed their outrage at the war against the war in Gaza and have called for a cease fire:

“Reuters compiled data from 70 cities that have passed Israel-Gaza resolutions or proclamations since Oct. 7, when Hamas militants killed some 1,200 people in Israel and took 253 hostages, according to Israeli tallies. They range from major cities like San Francisco to smaller cities such as Carrboro, North Carolina, and Biden's hometown of Wilmington, Delaware.”

https://www.reuters.com/world/us/us-city-councils-increasingly-call-israel-gaza-ceasefire-analysis-shows-2024-01-31/

In my view the West Lafayette City Council needs to endorse a resolution that includes an immediate permanent cease fire in Gaza, international efforts to provide social and economic justice for Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank, and frees all hostages held by combatants in the current war.

 

 

 

 

Wednesday, February 28, 2024

THREATS TO ACADEMIC FREEDOM ARE ESCALATING: Indiana, Florida and Everywhere

Harry Targ

("SB 202, which was introduced by Sen. Spencer Deery (R-Lafayette), would reform the tenure process in Indiana to ensure public universities adopt a philosophy of promoting free speech and "intellectual diversity," which was defined as  "multiple, divergent and varied scholarly perspectives on an extensive range of public policy issues."  The Indiana House of Representative voted 67 to 30 in favor of the bill yesterday. Journal and Courier, February 27, 2024.)

(“Meanwhile, Kenneth Griffin, a megadonor who gave Harvard so much money that it named its largest graduate school after him last year, said at a conference Tuesday that elite universities now produce “whiny snowflakes” instead of “leaders and problem solvers” because of their excessive focus on “microaggressions [and] a DEI agenda.” The Boston Globe, January 31, 2024).

 

**************************************************************


David Horowitz launched an assault on higher education in 2005, not too dissimilar to the McCarthyite attacks on higher education in the 1950s. He and a variety of organizations such as the National Association of Scholars (NAS) sought to purge higher education of critical thought.

Another round of more sophisticated and highly resourced attacks on higher education was expanded in the twenty-first century by the Koch Foundation State Policy Networks (SPN). In this case, state organizations were created, rightwing politicians were supported for key administrative posts in universities, particularly university presidencies, and Boards of Trustees representing huge corporations and banks acted more assertively to destroy the rich diversity of educational experiences that had been inspired by the 1960s.

With the rise of the far-rightwing forces around former President Trump, combining corporate elites, religious fundamentalists, extreme free market advocates, and military contractors, the attacks today on education, K through university, have become fierce.

Now conservative politicians have launched attacks on education in state houses and the halls of Congress. Critical Race Theory, rather than being a short-hand description for a body of scholarship, has been redefined as ideology. Politicians running for office talk about the Civil War without mentioning slavery as a root cause. Charges of antisemitism are being used to challenge expressions of intellectual and political points of view on campuses. Presidents at our most prestigious universities, women and persons of color, are attacked for defending academic freedom. Other presidents remain silent as academic freedom is attacked. And the Indiana legislature just passed SB 202 which inserts politicians and appointed Board of Trustees in the processes of evaluating what faculty teach. Rather than protecting intellectual diversity SB 202 and other such legislation will stifle the intellectual diversity which has characterized higher education at its best.

The whole edifice of what John Stuart Mill described a long time ago as “the marketplace of ideas” is under assault. To borrow from a book title about the 1950s by Marty Jezer, we are returning to a new “Dark Ages.”

It is time for those who support a higher education that is rich with discussion and controversy to stand up in defense of freedom of speech, education, and an educational system that is not influenced by powerful economic and political interests.

 

 

Thursday, February 22, 2024

UNDERSTANDING THE CONTEMPORARY WORLD ORDER AND WHY WE MUST WORK TO CHANGE IT

 Harry Targ

 


https://www.lulu.com/shop/harry-targ/challenging-late-capitalism-neoliberal-globalization-militarism/ebook/product-1z8p584g.html?page=1&pageSize=4

Friends,

In my opinion VJ Prashad just posted an important statement below (the link is in two formats). Not only does he address the wasteful military system but he links it to the IMF and global debt, and the growing gap between the Global North and South. He also addresses the role that “intellectuals” can play in alerting the world to the realities of the connections between war, mis- and under-education, starvation, and global inequality and the international institutions that have been established to address these issues. Prashad’s portrait also implies why those who rise up against the imperial and war system may do so in ways we find uncomfortable.

While we mobilize to influence policy on these issues we should bring this richer understanding of “why” to activists and politicians.

https://thetricontinental.org/newsletterissue/education-peoples-science-movement/?output=pdf

https://thetricontinental.org/newsletterissue/education-peoples-science-movement/




 

 

The Bookshelf

CHALLENGING LATE CAPITALISM by Harry R. Targ

Read Challenging Late Capitalism by Harry R. Targ.