BUILDING A PEACE AND JUSTICE MOVEMENT IN THE NEW AGE OF EMPIRE: 2003 to 2022

 By Harry Targ

Revised from an April 16, 2003 essay

The Peace Movement Said “No” to the Iraq War in 2003

In the aftermath of the February 15, 2003, massive worldwide mobilization against US war in Iraq, activists aptly borrowed the metaphor of the “two superpowers” from New York Times reporter Patrick Tyler. One superpower was United States imperialism and the other, the power of the people.

While the two-superpower thesis remains appropriate today, the peace movement needs to develop its content and ground the contesting powers in their material realities today. First, it needs to clarify the connections between US capitalism, global conquest, militarism, and visions of empire. Second, it needs to discern whether individual imperial superpowers are homogeneous or riddled with factional disagreements that can be used for its purposes. For example, in the US case, analyses should discover where multinational corporations and international financiers stand, whether the oil and/or military industries are driving the doctrine of preemption, and which, if any, sectors of the ruling class regard unilateralism, globalism, and militarism as a threat to global trade, production, investment and speculation. Third, the peace movement must analyze the role and presence of multiple super-powers in collaboration with each other (or unilaterally in the Russia case today) who together or singly seek to dominate other nations and peoples.

As to the anti-imperial superpower, the peace movement should understand it to consist of smaller and poorer nations, masses of workers all across the face of the globe, and representatives of a large range of religious, labor, women's, environmental and other groups from civil society. Most nations are part of the bloc because of the momentous mass mobilizations of their citizens to say no to war. It was extraordinary to see poor and vulnerable countries such as Cameroons or Angola, and traditional subordinates of the United States, Chile and Mexico, reject US pressure to support the war on Iraq in the United Nations Security Council in 2003.

Most importantly, the second superpower was represented by what in 2003 was perhaps the largest global protest in human history. With the launching of the Iraq war in March 2003 the steadfast opposition grew in size and militancy.

In the United States in 2003 protests occurred in hundreds of cities and towns; city councils in over 160 cities passed resolutions against war; and every church denomination but the Southern Baptists said "no" to war. It is true that when war started the "rally round the flag" phenomena kicked in: 70 percent of the people supported President Bush's action. However, just before the war started about half of the US people supported giving the weapons inspectors more time to do their job. Furthermore, support for the war was more likely among those who believed that there was a connection between Iraq and the 9/11 terrorist attacks on US targets. Party differences were stark in reference to war: Republicans supported the Bush war on Iraq about 20 to 30 percent more than Democrats.

Finally, people were scared. They were scared of terrorism, of job loss, of economic depression, of devalued pensions. Some worried about being arrested for conduct defined as criminal by the Patriot Act. In fact, then (as now) we lived in a culture that promoted fear.

What was done to nourish and expand the movement for peace and justice during the Iraq War (and what can be done today)? A consensus emerged in the peace movement in 2003 that over several months, perhaps years, grassroots organizing-networking across neighborhoods, churches, union locals, and civic groups-was central. In the US one-third to 40 percent of the population probably supported war in 2003 and the Bush foreign policy agenda. Perhaps one-third were inalterably opposed. This left another third undecided, confused, or marginally supportive of the war on Iraq.

The target of grassroots work was bringing the undecided people into the peace and justice camp. Perhaps, it was thought, what would drive them into the antiwar camp would be fiscal crises at state and local levels, economic stagnation and job loss, the dismantling of the meager health care system, the continued marginalization of public schools, and crumbling infrastructure all around nation. People were reminded of the fact that while economic crisis grows by the days and weeks, the administration increased defense spending to a record $400 billion in 2004 (and over $800 billion today) while state and federal taxes on the rich were cut.

On September 15, 2022, Peace Activists Hit the Streets from DC to San Francisco Urging Ceasefire in Ukraine

 

On February 24, 2022, Russia launched a massive invasion of Ukraine. The Ukrainians responded and their response was fueled by billions of dollars of US and European military equipment and private armies. Thousands of Russian and Ukrainian soldiers have died, and millions of Ukrainians have fled the war. The leaders of Russia, the United States, and even Ukraine talk of the possible use of nuclear weapons. Negotiations between competing parties have broken down.

Sectors of the peace movement in the United States have demanded that all sides participate in negotiations not war. Pacifists in Ukraine, presumably a small minority, have urged an end to the fighting and larger numbers of Russians have protested their country’s invasion of Ukraine.

Protestors on September 15 in the US rallied for all sides to stop sending more arms and fighting and begin serious negotiations to end the violence. For example, in Milwaukee

“antiwar activists, including a county supervisor, took their peace flags and "Diplomacy, Not War" signs to the campus of conservative Marquette University, where they passed out hundreds of flyers with QR codes for students to email their Congress members for a ceasefire. Organizer Jim Carpenter, co-chair (with this author) of the foreign policy team of Progressive Democrats of America, told skeptics who want a fight to the last Ukrainian, ‘Are you more concerned about saving lives or saving territory’?" (Marcy Winograd, “Peace Activists Hit the Streets From DC to San Francisco Urging Ceasefire in Ukraine,” Common Dreams, September 20, 2022. https://www.commondreams.org/views/2022/09/20/peace-activists-hit-streets-dc-san-francisco-urging-ceasefire-ukraine)

In the face of increased probabilities of nuclear war, the peace movement needs to build a worldwide movement of historic proportions, comparable or greater than in 2003. The task would be to stop the escalation of war in the Ukraine and its spread to Asia, Africa, and Latin America. This will take grassroots organizing, building global solidarity, and mobilizing for peoples' power in the United Nations. This may be our last chance to build a peaceful and just world.

Particularly, mass mobilization could be animated by the vision of vibrant international institutions that could represent the "peoples’” interests. The United Nations, usually a reflection of the distribution of power in the world, can be made to represent the people of the world. Particularly, the UN General Assembly, where all nations have only one vote, can be made viable as it was in the 1960s and 1970s when the U.S. and the Soviet Union were competing for the "hearts and minds" of the newly independent nations.

Also the peace movement should direct its solidarity to the Group of 77, the movement of non-aligned nations that seeks social and economic development in a world at peace. During various periods in its history, the Group of 77 has stood up against the forces of global capitalism. The peace movement should stand with the Group of 77 today.

In the end, the metaphor of the two superpowers, economic ruling classes, bureaucratic elites, and generals in powerful countries versus their opponents, the people, still make sense. The only hope for humankind is the mobilization of peace movements, the second superpower, to demand an end to war. And for the most part, while displaying solidarity with peace movements everywhere, peace movements in individual countries must target the complicity of their own nations in the making of war.

 

 

 

 

BRIGADISTAS!: a review

Harry Targ

  (Monthly Review Press, 2022)

From this valley they say we are going

But don’t hasten to bid us adieu

Even though we lost the battle of Jarama

We’ll, set this valley free before we’re through

(words by members of the International Brigade

Sung by Woody Guthrie; posted with a graphic in

Brigadistas!)

 

The 1930s was a time of political ferment. Communists, socialists, pacifists, anarchists rose in opposition to poverty, racism, and an ideology that only capitalist markets could serve humanity.

Michael Denning wrote about a “cultural front.” For him the moving force behind the ferment was working class mobilization, particularly in the newly formed trade union confederation, The Congress of Industrial Organizations (CIO). Communists played a leading role in promoting and developing working class militancy in the CIO and on the streets. And Denning suggests, the spirit of militancy, even the idea of class struggle, permeated a broad spectrum of political culture: folk music, jazz, proletarian fiction, photography, paintings, and murals. It was a revolutionary age; at least a potential one.

Some of the radicalism was inspired by worldwide revolutionary ferment, perhaps an idealized image of the former Soviet Union, rising anti-colonial struggles in Asia and Africa, and struggles to defend democracy from the threat of growing fascism. No struggle captured the imagination of radicals everywhere more than the desperate effort of Spanish loyalists who rose to protect their fragile democratic system from the counter-revolutionary forces of General Francisco Franco who fought, ultimately successfully, to overthrow Spanish democracy. Franco’s support came from large landowners, the leaders of the Catholic Church, the military, and most important, fascist regimes in Germany and Italy.

And it is the desperate effort of the defense of democracy in Spain that 40,000 mostly young leftists from 50 countries joined in the military effort to defend democracy. Some 3,000 Americans traveled to Spain to fight fascism. They became known as the Abraham Lincoln Brigade. In a brief forward to this volume Fraser Ottanelli (“The Civil War in Spain and the American Volunteers”) provides a succinct background to the Spanish struggle.

Following the forward this engaging graphic novel, Brigadistas! tells the story of three young communists from Brooklyn who believed the struggle for socialism at home was inextricably connected to the fight against fascism in Spain. And they came to the view that they had an obligation to join the campaign to defeat fascism and racism in Spain.

The graphic novel takes the reader through the life of Abe Rubinoff and his two Communist friends from street protests in Brooklyn and fighting housing evictions by landlords, to debates about pacifism with the iconic Catholic pacifist, Dorothy Day, to the battlefields of Spain. Set against this background the story is largely taken from real characters, real events, and real passion for justice. And the graphic novel, the words and images, brings to life this historic moment that planted the backdrop for political movements in the United States and Europe to follow: defeating fascism in World War Two, supporting communist revolutions in China, Vietnam, and later Cuba, joining the anti-colonial struggles from the 1940s until the 1960s, and defending progressives from anti-communist campaigns in the United States. Survivors of the Abraham Lincoln Brigade became involved in virtually every campaign against imperialism since the 1930s.

The reader/viewer becomes engaged in the organizing efforts of members of the Young Communist League, Catholic pacifists (“Catholic Workers Against Nazi Fascism”) against rising fascism in Europe, and the growing consciousness of young activists about the inextricable connections between war and fascism abroad and the threats to workers at home. The combination of the text, written by Miguel Ferguson, and the artwork, by Anne Timmons, take the reader vicariously back to those days of struggle, triumph and defeat, a consciousness of class and racial solidarity, and internationalism.

As an educational and activist tool, Brigadistas! is first-rate. Virtually every graphic image and piece of dialogue lends itself to thought and debate. For example, on page eleven, Abe and his comrades discuss the international situation, displayed in one panel image, At a political meeting comrades proclaim that “Hitler’s gotta be stopped,” “Mussolini aint just sittin’ around neither,” (as Italy was mobilizing for invasion of Ethiopia) and “Roosevelt ain’t gonna do nothin.” Abe in the panel reports that he read Mein Kampf and says that Hitler “means every word he says.” And finally, he says to his friends that despite Roosevelt’s inaction “that don’t mean we’re gonna sit on our asses while Hitler carries out his plans.” Virtually every panel, as this one, is rich with insight, history, and a topic or topics for discussion.

Paul Buhle, a co-editor of Brigadistas! (with Ottanelli), provides a useful afterword, “The Comic and the Spanish Civil War.” concentrating on the graphic novel genre. It gives a succinct history of the comic format, with its historic artistic roots as far back as Goya’s war paintings, to the war comics of the second World War, to the profusion of graphic novels in our own day. He makes an important point about graphic novels and documentaries of relevance to educators and activists alike: “The emergence of nonfiction comic art as a medium in which to describe historical events and personalities is recent, by most measures, and within the culture of people under thirty, the genre has taken on new and important roles.” (He notes recent publications of a Black Panther Party comic and a three-volume graphic history of the life of John Lewis).

In sum, Brigadistas! is a valuable, accessible textual and visual representation of history. It is recommended for those who are familiar with the Abraham Lincoln Brigade, the Spanish Civil War, and the left of the 1930s and would find refreshing a reminder of its history. And, even more, Brigadistas! can serve as a vibrant tool for political education for those who would be new to the subject. The volume is a useful both for the classroom and the study group.

IMPACTS OF 9/11s: Lessons Learned?

Harry Targ

A revised repost from September 1, 2011

9/11 in Chile

On the bright and sunny morning of September 11, 1973, aircraft bombed targets in Valparaiso, Chile, and moved on to the capital, Santiago. Following a well-orchestrated plan, tanks rolled into the capital city, occupied the central square, and fired on the Presidential palace. Inside that building, President Salvador Allende broadcast a final address to his people and fatally shot himself as soldiers entered his quarters.

Thousands of Allende supporters were rounded up and held in the city’s soccer stadium and many, including renowned folk singer Victor Jara, were tortured and killed. For the next fifteen years, Chilean workers were stripped of their right to form unions, political parties and elections were eliminated, and the junta led by General Augusto Pinochet ruled with an iron fist all but ignored outside the country until Chileans began to mobilize to protest his scheme to become President for life.

9/11 in the United States

Of course, 9/11/01 was different. The United States was attacked by foreign terrorists, approximately 3,000 citizens and residents were killed at the World Trade Center, over a rural area in Pennsylvania, and at the Pentagon. People all over the world expressed their sorrow and sympathy for the victims of the 9/11 attacks as the American people experienced shock and dismay.

But then everything began to change. Within days of the terrorist attacks, members of President Bush’s cabinet began to advocate a military assault on Iraq, a longstanding target of the Washington militarists of the Project for a New American Century (PNAC). Now is the time, they said, to take out Saddam Hussein, seize control of Iraqi oil fields, and reestablish United States control over the largest share of the oil fields of the Persian Gulf region. Cooler heads prevailed for a time, however. But we cannot attack Iraq, critics said, because Iraq had nothing to do with the crimes in New York, Pennsylvania, and Washington.

So it was decided that a war would be waged on Afghanistan, because the headquarters of the shadowy organization Al Qaeda, led by Osama Bin Laden, was said to be in that country. On October 6, 2001, that war was initiated and still goes, not militarily (US troops were withdrawn in 2022) but with brutal economic sanctions, although Bin Laden had been killed in 2011 during the Obama administration.

Shortly after launching the war on Afghanistan, the neo-cons in the Bush administration began a campaign to convince the American people that we needed to make war on Iraq. Lies were articulated that the Iraqi dictator was really behind the global terrorists who perpetrated 9/11. He had weapons of mass destruction. He was part of a global Islamic fundamentalist cabal. At last, despite evidence to the contrary, the mobilization of millions of Americans against war, growing global resentment against the Bush Doctrine justifying preemptive wars, the United States attacked Iraq in March, 2003. That war ended in 2011.

During the decade following 9/11 U.S. military budgets tripled, thousands of U.S. soldiers  died or sustained irreparable injuries, and an estimated one million Afghan and Iraqi people, mostly civilians, died. Meanwhile the United States maintained, and still does, over 700 military installations around the world, and in the Bush period declared the great land and sea area around the globe at the equator the “arc of instability.”

During the Bush and Obama administrations the United States engaged in direct violence or encouraged others to do so, from Colombia to Honduras in the Western Hemisphere, to Ethiopia and Somalia in the Horn of Africa, to Israel, Iraq, Iran, Yemen, Syria and Libya in the Middle East and Persian Gulf, to Pakistan, and Afghanistan in East Asia. Presidents Bush and Obama declared that United States military overreach to be in the national interest of the country and to serve the humanitarian interests of the world. The U.S. adopted programs that included the use of computer operated aircraft, drones, that can target and kill anywhere based on decisions from command headquarters half way around the globe.

At home, as a result of the 9/11 attack the Patriot Act extended the prerogatives of government to launch programs claiming to be essential to protect the people from domestic terrorists: spying on Americans; incarcerating people from virtually anywhere deemed to be a security threat; and establishing a political climate that intimidates critics of United States foreign policy. During the Trump Administration, the president’s grassroots supporters and the Republican Party in general shifted to the right, perhaps in the “spirit of 9/11,” what many regard as raising the threat of fascism.

Domestically, since 9/11 basic living standards of the bottom 90 percent of the population in terms of wealth and income have worsened. Unemployment, before the Covid crisis, rose dramatically. Health care benefits have declined while costs skyrocket. Virtually every public institution in America, except the military, is being threatened by budget cuts: education, libraries, public health facilities, highways and bridges, fire and police protection, environmental quality.

Support for war overseas and at home stoked by a so-called “war on terrorism” and various crises such as the Ukrainian War today, coupled with an anti-government ideology made popular earlier by the Reagan administration,  lionize a “New Cold War” against Russia and China.

Not all had to sacrifice during this ten-year “war on terror” and its attendant domestic programs. The rich have gotten richer while the income and wealth of 90 percent of the population have experienced economic stagnation or decline. Media monopolization has facilitated the rise of a strata of pundits who simplify and distort the meaning of events since 9/11 by claiming that war was necessary; the terrorist threat is a growing global threat; as a nation and individually we need to arm ourselves; and subliminally it is people of color who constitute the threat to security and well-being.

Where Do We Go From Here

So the United States 9/11 event was not the first. The Chilean 9/11 preceded the U.S. one by 28 years. Its people experienced a brutal military coup. And in the United States mass murder was committed by 19 terrorists. But in both cases the 9/11 event was followed by violence, threats to democracy, and economic shifts from most of the population to the wealthy and political/military elites. In both cases, draconian economic policies and constraints of civil and political rights were defined as required by threats to the “homeland.”

As the anniversary of the U.S. 9/11 is remembered, it is critical to reflect upon how the murder of 3,000 citizens and residents was defined as an opening salvo in a perpetual “war on terrorism:” how this war trumped traditional civil liberties afforded by the constitution; how this war, it was said, must be waged at whatever cost to the lives and economic resources of the country. As with the Cold War, military spending takes priority over every other activity for which the government has a role. 9/11/73 caused the Chilean people pain and suffering that they are still working to overcome years later as they struggle to reverse the Pinochet constitution. Unless the American people mobilize to challenge the policies, foreign and domestic, that were justified by such occurrences as the tragedy of 9/11, the United States will continue to move down a similar path the Chilean people traveled after their 9/11.

And Today?

Endless money fuels endless war, often at the expense of human needs at home and abroad. Congress had no problem setting the stage for at least $7.5 trillion of Pentagon spending over the next decade, but it failed to endorse even $1.5 trillion for a transformative 10-year package to invest in children and caregiving, combat climate change, expand affordable health care, and strengthen the middle class.(Friends Committee on National Legislation https://www.fcnl.org/issues/us-wars-militarism/pentagon-spending )

Now is a good time for peace activists to expand education about the history of unchallenged military spending, continued military basing all across the globe, the use of high technology and mobile troop formations to intervene everywhere, the consequences of military spending for making the world a more dangerous place, and the costs, not only in lives overseas but to a basic standard of living at home. 

 

IT IS TIME TO ORGANIZE ALL WORKERS

 An Update

Harry Targ

Ten thousand times the labor movement has stumbled and bruised itself. We have been enjoined by the courts, assaulted by thugs, charged by the militia, traduced by the press, frowned upon in public opinion, and deceived by politicians. But not withstanding all this and all these, labor is today the most vital and potential power this planet has ever known, and its historic mission is as certain of ultimate realization as is the setting of the sun (Eugene V. Debs).

                         

After World War I workers believed it was time to unionize everybody who worked. Some organizers came out of the American Federation of Labor (AFL), some were enthusiastic followers of the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW), some were members of the Socialist Party-- followers of Eugene V. Debs, and many were inspired by the Bolshevik Revolution. Workers launched two nationwide strikes in steel and meat packing.

The ruling classes responded with force and fraud. As to the former, they used a multiplicity of means to crush strikes and they jailed and deported known radicals. The United States government participated with other regimes to intervene in the Russian civil war and to isolate the new revolutionary government diplomatically and economically.

As to fraud, corporations initiated various worker-management schemes to mollify worker discontent: from sporting activities, to counselor home visits, to the establishment of human relations departments. Also, businesses embarked on a huge campaign to stimulate consumerism, including catalog purchases of products, to buying on time. to creating an automobile culture. Force and fraud worked. Labor union membership and worker militancy declined even though wages and working conditions did not improve substantially.

But by the late 1920s strikes in textile and mining occurred. With the onset of the Great Depression, radicals were organizing Unemployment Councils in urban areas. Dispossessed farmers began their long trek to the West Coast seeking agricultural work.

In 1934 alone, general strikes occurred in San Francisco, Minneapolis, Toledo and Akron Ohio. In the late 1930s, workers in South Bend, Indiana and Flint, Michigan added the “sit-down strike” to the panoply of militant tools used by workers to demand the right to organize unions, fair wages, health and safety at the workplace, and pensions. These led to four million workers joining CIO unions by 1940 in auto, steel, meatpacking, electronics, mining, and other sectors.

Many of labors’ goals were achieved by the 1950s. 1953 was the peak year for organized labor. Thirty-three percent of non-agricultural workers were organized. But then union membership began a slow but steady decline. Red baiting destroyed labor militancy. The new medium of television displayed images of enticing consumer goods. All this was exacerbated by the Reagan “revolution” which increased the strategies of force and fraud employed in the 1920s and late 1950s. Declining worker power was dramatic. Both Republican and Democratic administrations used administrative tools, out-sourcing of jobs, so-called free trade agreements, and outright banning of rights to collective bargaining in various sectors to crush unions.

But as history shows, workers from time-to-time fight back, regain the rights they lost in prior eras, and continue the process of pushing history in a progressive direction. The year, 2011 was such a time for fight back. Workers in Cairo, Madrid, Athens, and Wisconsin, Indiana, and all across the globe rose up.

Since then in the United States there has been a steady increased labor militancy among teachers, service workers, and health care professionals. Public sector workers in general have been hit very hard in recent years. Government officials have rationalized anti-labor legislation as necessitated by fiscal crises. But these fiscal crises lead not to the end to services but to their privatization. Teachers, librarians, fire fighters and others are laid off and replaced or rehired at wages a third less than they made as unionized public sector workers.

Recently, Chicago teachers have said no to this scam. They have been fighting against the privatization of public schools, demanding the maintenance of job security for teachers so they can continue to meet the needs of children, and standing up for the principle that all children, not just children of the wealthy, are entitled to the best education that the society can offer. They were particularly active in protecting the health of workers and students during the Covid crisis. And now just as before, workers’ demands have been beneficial for everybody.

Revisiting history can provide useful lessons from the past for the present. They are not specific roadmaps for action. But what the lessons of the past, the militancy of the last year including Amazon and Starbucks workers, nurses and teachers, suggest is that now is a good time to think about all workers--in factories, on construction sites, in coffee shops and fast-food restaurants, in offices, in universities, everywhere—organizing unions. There is power in the union.

LABOR RIGHTS ARE HUMAN RIGHTS: Reposted in Celebration of Workers

 

Harry Targ

The massive atrocities of World War II led nations to commit themselves permanently to the protection of basic rights for all human beings. Eleanor Roosevelt, the widow of the wartime President, Franklin Roosevelt, worked diligently with leaders from around the world to develop a document, to articulate a set of principles, which would bind humankind to never carry out acts of mass murder again. In addition, the document also committed nations to work to end most forms of pain and suffering.

Over 70 years ago, on December 10, 1948, delegates from the United Nations General Assembly signed the document which they called “The Universal Declaration of Human Rights.” It consisted of a preamble proclaiming that all signatories recognize "the inherent dignity" and "equal and inalienable rights of all members of the human family" as the "foundation of freedom, justice, and peace in the world." The preamble declared the commitment of the signatories to the creation of a world “…in which human beings shall enjoy freedom of speech and belief and freedom from fear and want…”

The Universal Declaration of Human Rights consisted of thirty articles, with varying degrees of elaboration. The first 21 articles refer primarily to civil and political rights. They prohibit discrimination, persecution for the holding of various political beliefs, slavery, torture, and arbitrary arrest and detention. Persons have the right to speak their mind, travel, reside anywhere, a fair trial if charged with crimes, own property, form a family, and in the main to hold the rights of citizenship including universal and equal suffrage in his or her country.

The remaining nine articles address what may be called social and economic rights. These include rights to basic social security in accordance with the resources of the state in which the persons reside; rights to adequate leisure and holidays with pay; an adequate standard of living so that individuals and families have sufficient food, clothing, shelter, and medical care; and education, free at least at the primary levels. In addition, these nine articles guarantee a vibrant cultural life in the community, the right to enjoy and participate in the arts, and to benefit from scientific achievements.

While each article in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights provides a rich and vivid portrait of what must be achieved for all humankind, no article speaks to our time more than Article 23. It is one of the longer articles, identifying four basic principles:

*Everyone has the right to work, to free choice of employment, to just and favorable conditions of work, and to protection against unemployment.

*Everyone, without discrimination, has the right to equal pay for equal work.

*Everyone who works has the right to just and favorable remuneration ensuring for himself (or herself) and his (her) family an existence worthy of human dignity, and supplemented, if necessary by other means of social protection.

*Everyone has the right to form and to join trade unions for the protection of his (her) interests.

Using the language of our day, the principles embedded in Article 23 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights constitute a bedrock vision inspiring the global 99 percent to rise up against their exploiters from Cairo to Madison, to Wall Street, to cities and towns all over the world. But the global political economy is broken. The dominant mode of production, capitalism, increasingly cannot provide work, fair remuneration, and rights of workers to speak their mind and organize their own associations. In addition, the economic system cannot provide a comfortable way of life because the value of what workers produce is expropriated by the top one percent of global society.

Right to Work laws, for example, which can be found in over twenty states allow workers to gain the benefits of union representation on the shop floor without joining unions or paying for union services which are provided to all workers. The basic goal of RTW laws is to bankrupt the labor movement. The result, as data suggests in every state, is to reduce rights, benefits, and working conditions for all workers. The National Right to Work Committee, the American Legislative Exchange Council, and other rightwing groups funded and organized by the one percent, want to eliminate hard-fought worker rights which will reduce the costs of labor, wages, working conditions, and the standard of living of all workers, unionized or not.

Data about the world and data about the United States make it clear that there has been a forty-year trajectory in the direction opposite to the rights enshrined in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Global inequality is growing. The rights and abilities of workers to form unions are shrinking. Standards of living of most of humankind are declining. The ability of most workers to acquire secure jobs is declining. Globally there has been a quantum shift from agricultural, manufacturing, and service employment to the informal sector, oftentimes “street hustling.” In 2020, the global pandemic has afforded the capitalist class the opportunity to increase exploitation and immiseration.

But the good news in 2022 is workers of all kinds-from factory workers, to service employees, to health care professionals, to teachers- are fighting back and broad publics support the right of workers to organize.

In the end, anti-worker politics in the United States, like anti-worker politics virtually everywhere around the globe, violate the fundamental principles of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, especially its precious Article 23. On this Labor Day weekend progressives must recommit to the fundamental proposition that the workers’ agenda is fundamentally the human rights agenda.

To paraphrase Joe Hill: “Don’t Mourn, Organize!”

 

“I hate a song that makes you think that you are not any good. I hate a song that makes you think that you are just born to lose. Bound to lose. No good to nobody. No good for nothing. Because you are too old or too young or too fat or too slim or too ugly or too this or too that. Songs that run you down or poke fun at you on account of your bad luck or hard travelling. I am out to fight those songs to my very last breath of air and my last drop of blood. (Woody Guthrie).

 

MILWAUKEE CUBA CARAVAN HIGHLIGHTS THE DAMAGE CAUSED BY THE US BLOCKADE AND THE TRAGIC FIRE IN MATANZAS

Harry Targ

Thirty Cuba solidarity activists heard updates, Sunday, August 28, on how the people of the island are adapting to the ongoing impacts of the US economic blockade and the recent fire at an oil depot in Matanzas, fifty miles from Havana.  Three members of the Party for Socialism and Liberation gave report backs from a recent visit to the island, which included the delivery of humanitarian assistance, part of the Hatuey Project.  The updates preceded a car caravan, one of many around the country, demanding an end to the US blockade of Cuba.

Sam Doucas, Erica Steib, and Alexa 'Lex' Nutile spoke about Cuba’s justified reputation for providing health care for all of its citizens. They pointed out that Cuba’s infant mortality rate is less than that of the more developed United States. However, because of the 62-year US economic blockade, the Cuban health care system is short of vital medicines and diagnostics and surgical equipment to facilitate health on the island. To help support Cubans’ health, the three PSL members joined with others in the Hatuey Project to bring medical supplies to support maternal care on the island.

Also, the speakers reported that despite the severity of the economic blockade, the United States in the Trump period adding 240 additional restrictions on international commerce with Cuba, the Cuban people still support their government and health and welfare programs. Since Trump left office, the Biden administration has not honored its campaign promise to reverse the new restrictions and thus reduce their horrific effects on the Cuban people. US policy remains to isolate and starve the Cuban people until they surrender and overthrow their government.

Art Heitzer, a founder of the Wisconsin Coalition for the Normalization of Relations With Cuba (wicuba.org), pointed out that the lightning that struck the massive oil depots in the city of Matanzas on August 5 has made access to energy resources on the island even more scarce. The United States, he said, had already been interfering with Cuban oil imports, such as from other US sanctioned countries (Venezuela, Iran, and Russia) from shipping vital oil resources in the open seas. And while several nations, including Mexico and Venezuela promptly sent firefighters and material aid to Cuba after the fire began, the only response from the United States to the island’s biggest fire ever, was to offer a half hour phone conversation to provide “expert information to deal with the fire.”

(At a recent local event the Party for Socialism and Liberation raised $5,405 for the Hatuey Project to support the victims of the Matanzas fire. To donate, please go to https://www.hatueyproject.org/donate/)

The speakers encouraged US citizens concerned about Cuba’s economic difficulties, including citizens with relatives on the island, to demand an end to the cruel and inhumane economic blockade of the island. Even a return to the modest opening of US relations toward Cuba in the Obama years would allow for improvements in health care, the growth of small businesses, housing renovations, and the resumption of Cuba’s vibrant tourist industry. The Cuban people, the speakers noted, appreciate the solidarity that so many in the US show to their revolution.

The informative and spirited talks, in front of the Zao MKE Church, were followed by a 16-car caravan ride around Milwaukee’s northside, including the campus of the University of Wisconsin at Milwaukee to educate people on the streets about the pain and suffering caused by the blockade. Speakers also urged those concerned about the US policy to starve the Cuban people to join the Wisconsin Coalition to Normalize Relations With Cuba.

The Coalition can be reached at:

Wisconsin Coalition to Normalize Relations with Cuba
PO Box 1848
Milwaukee, WI 53201
414 628-2547

wicubacoalition@gmail.com

website. www.WiCuba.org.

More information and ways to help Cuba can be found at the “Let Cuba Live” website at www.LetCubalive.info.

 

 

 

(Edited by Art Heitzer).

 

THE FUNDAMENTAL CONTRADICTION BETWEEN DEMOCRACY AND CAPITALISM

 

https://www.visualcapitalist.com/mapped-the-wealthiest-billionaire-in-each-u-s-state-in-2022/?fbclid=IwAR2PtU9mIMQw-STW0E0kLKHcemgeZvFB1UblYxjfU19eQuc4iH4p2ryhmEI

Harry Targ 

(The image above posted on Face Book by Jonathan Nack reminded me of this April 30, 2018 post)

"What we are seeing today is a new iteration of that very old impulse in America: the quest of some of the propertied (always, it bears noting, a particularly ideologically extreme-and some would say greedy-subsection of the propertied) to restrict the promise of democracy for the many, acting in the knowledge that the majority would choose other policies if it could." (Nancy MacLean, Democracy in Chains: The Deep History of the Radical Right’s Stealth Plan for America, New York, Random House, 2017, 5).

“Democracy in Chains”: Multiple Themes

Friends of mine insisted I read Nancy MacLean’s recent book, Democracy in Chains. Their enthusiasm for the book was so great that I finally picked it up. I found it profound as to how it addressed issues of political theory, consciousness, and political practice.

First, the book is a narrative biography of one scholar of political economy, James Buchanan, who has had a significant impact on the development of “public choice” theory in political science, sociology, and economics. In addition, the text uses his biography to develop larger theoretical, historical, and political themes.

Second, it is a book about what used to be called the “sociology of knowledge”; that is how ideas are developed, disseminated, institutionalized, and become dominant ways in which academic disciplines address the subject matter they study.

Third, Democracy in Chains addresses the development of democratic theory, relating contemporary ideas about public participation in decision-making to eighteenth and nineteenth century American political theory. Significantly, it addresses Professor Buchanan’s attraction to Southern anti-federalist John C. Calhoun.

Fourth, the book provides a rich description of the theory of “free markets” developed by the Austrian school of economics founded by Ludwig von Mises and Fredrich Hayek and institutionalized by the economics department at the University of Chicago.

Fifth, the book describes in some detail how scholars such as James Buchanan and wealthy advocates of “free market” philosophies have worked to influence higher education and public policy, not only at the national level but through the states and local government. The book describes how enormously wealthy free marketeers led by Charles and David Koch, their association, the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC), and hundreds of think tanks, lobby groups, and funded politicians have been implementing their policy agenda.

Each of these themes richly developed by MacLean deserves detailed examination and evaluation. As my exuberant friends suggested to me, the MacLean book is a major work of political theory and policy analysis that should significantly energize those progressives who see democracy in the United States as an endangered species.

The Threat to Democracy

But for starters, it is critical in 2018 (and still in 2022) to address one of the central themes developed in her book, the contradiction between democracy and capitalism.

MacLean analyzes central premises of the so-called Austrian school of economics. Nineteenth and twentieth century luminaries from this tradition, particularly Van Mises and Hayek, articulated the view that the main priority of any society, but particularly democracies, is the extent to which markets are allowed to flourish, unencumbered by governments.

According to this view in a truly free society markets remain supreme. In fact, “liberty” exists in a society to the extent economic actors are able to act in the marketplace. Virtually all limitations on economic liberty so defined constitute a threat to “real” democracy. Governments exist only to maintain domestic order (the police power) and to defend the nation from external aggression (defense of national security). Governments provide police protection and armies. And that should be all. In sum, as President Ronald Reagan expressed the market vision: “Government is not the solution. Government is the problem.”

To further illustrate, MacLean describes the brutal dictatorship that overthrew the democratically elected president of Chile, Salvador Allende. Allende, a socialist, was elected by a plurality in the 1970 presidential election in that country and in the spring, 1973 in municipal elections held across the country, Allende’s coalition of parties drew even more votes for their candidates than did Allende in 1970. The United States, based on directives from President Nixon, had already moved to make the Chilean economy “scream” and had initiated contacts with Chilean generals who would be prepared to carry out a military coup against the popular government.  The military coup, ousting Allende from power, was launched, ironically on September 11, 1973.

As MacLean points out, in the aftermath of the coup, General Augusto Pinochet rounded up and killed thousands of Allende supporters, destroyed the long tradition of electoral politics, abolished trade unions, and began the process of ending government involvement in the economy and public institutions. Social security and education were privatized. Policies of nationalization of key industries were reversed. All of the shifts to what the Austrian school called economic liberty were imposed on the Chilean people with the advice of University of Chicago economists, such as Milton Friedman, and later, George Mason University economist, James Buchanan, who was instrumental in recommending “reforms” to the Chilean constitution making return to democracy more difficult. Subsequently only a few other dictatorships in Latin America showed any sympathy for the Pinochet regime with most of the world condemning its domestic brutality. But as MacLean reports, Milton Friedman and his colleagues never condemned the Chilean regime and Buchanan regarded it as a paradigmatic case of economic liberty, a model which the world should emulate.

Although the Chilean case represents an extreme example of dictatorship and free market capitalism, she uses it to illustrate a central point. In most societies, and the United States is no exception, majorities of people endorse government policies that can and often do serve the people. As a rule citizens support public transportation, schools, highways, libraries, retirement guarantees, some publicly provided health care, rules and regulations to protect the environment, as well as police and military protection. The problem for Buchanan and his colleagues is that each one of these government programs. except for the police and military, constrains the “liberty” of entrepreneurs to pursue profit.

To put it simply, if citizens of the United States were asked if they supported public programs, majorities would say “yes.” Although there have been extraordinary constraints on majority rule, even enshrined in the US constitution, the history of the United States can be seen as a history of struggle to improve and achieve majoritarian democracy. Demands for voting rights for women, African/Americans, non-propertied and low-income workers and others have been basic to the American experience. The great anti-colonial struggles of the twentieth century across the globe were premised on the vision of individual and collective sovereignty of the people. If economic liberty is conceptualized as inversely related to majoritarian democracy, then capitalism and democracy are incompatible.

Nancy MacLean, based on this fundamental contradiction, develops a narrative of efforts by celebrants of economic liberty, the Koch brothers and their allies, to build campaigns in virtually every state and locale to disenfranchise people. ALEC affiliates in state legislatures over the last decade have promoted legislation to suppress the right to vote, eliminate the rights of workers to unionize, disempower city councils, eliminate the right of local governments to make fiscal decisions, and to enshrine in curricula in K to 12 education systems and the universities ideologies about the virtues of economic freedom. There are powerful political pressures to privatize every existing public institution. Again, the best government is no government (except for the maintenance of police force to squelch demands for change and military power to protect the nation at home and abroad).

So Democracy in Chains is as rich in analysis and warning as my friends have suggested. Much more needs to be disaggregated and discussed. But for starters Nancy MacLean is warning us that there is a powerful drive, based on wealth and power, in the United States to destroy democracy. This democracy, while flawed, has been fought for since the founding of the United States. Its continuation, leaving aside its need for improvement, is under fundamental threat.