THE STRUGGLES OVER WHAT IS EDUCATION

 Harry Targ

Intellectuals, the Critical Organic Discourse Model, and Higher Education

The red scares of the past rekindled debate in the 1960s concerning the role of higher education and faculty as to research, teaching, and activism.  Those propagating the red scare insisted that education should focus on celebrating American society, history, and institutions.  Anything less, to them, constituted bias and a violation of the principles of academic freedom.  In addition, educators, it was argued, should not engage in political activism.  Being an academic and being a citizen must remain separate.

While the American Council of Trustees and Alumni (ACTA), a Koch Foundation supported organization, and others complained about the negativity of those reflecting on United States history, more sophisticated red scare spokespersons, including David Horowitz who founded a variety of rightwing academic organizations in the 1990s, emphasized one or another of two different approaches to the academy.  Some argued that the professorate must be “fair and balanced” in their academic work.  That is, they should in the classroom present all points of view, indicating favoritism to none.  Presumably their research and writing should strive for this balance as well. (Some asked whether portraits of the inquisition or 20th century fascism necessitated telling “both sides of the story”).

Parallel to the fair and balanced position was the argument that teachers and researchers should be objective, that is, apolitical, and indifferent to the merits of competing sides to a conflict being studied.  The objectivity standard required that the professor abstain, in his/her public role, from participation in society.  (It should be noted that some targets of the red scare attacks responded by claiming they were fair and balanced and objective, and occasionally their students have defended them on these grounds as well).  In fact, when Horowitz was asked on national television if he had proof that his victims had not been fair and balanced and objective in the classroom, he was forced to admit that he had no way of knowing since he and his researchers had not had occasion to observe the professors in question. (Horowitz authored The Professors: The 101 Most Dangerous Academics in America, 2006).

While being fair, balanced, and objective are worthy goals, they stand in contradiction to the history of the university.  What I call the critical and organic discourse model is a more appropriate standard of scholarship, teaching, and engagement for these critical times.  It has several dimensions: speaking truth to power; critically reflecting on all institutions and processes in society, privileging unpopular ideas, and applying those ideas in social settings where they may be helpful to bring about change.

The last point, inspired by Gramsci’s idea of the “organic intellectual” and the discussions by Russell Jacoby and others about the role of the “public intellectual,” suggest that knowledge in the end comes from and should be used in support of those in society who have been disenfranchised politically, economically, and culturally.  As Gramsci put it, “The mode of being of the new intellectual can no longer consist in eloquence, which is an exterior and momentary mover of feelings and passions, but in active participation in practical life, as constructor, organizer, ‘permanent persuader,’ and not just a simple orator. . .”  Gramsci’s “organic intellectual” is the intellectual who is connected to various social groups or movements and acts in concert with and stimulates the activities of such groups.  The organic intellectual in class society is linked to the project for historical change of the working class.  Historically the university has not served their needs, and those who embrace this model of teaching, research, and engagement should stand with the disenfranchised, such as the working class.

The New Context

https://www.aaup.org/reports-publications/aaup-policies-reports/policy-statements/statement-political-interference

In sum, the most important elements of the critical and organic discourse model involve giving voice to the voiceless and engaging in education, research, and activity to pursue peace, social, and economic justice.

However, since the rise of candidate and President Trump and his MAGA allies, the pervasive influence of the Koch Foundation and its various instrumentalities such as the State Policy Networks and ACTA, and US escalated military involvement in Ukraine and support for Israeli violence in the Middle East, a new “red scare” has emerged. Politicians of both political parties have launched in Congress and state legislatures attacks on what was known as academic freedom.

The state of Indiana is just one example.. Faculty are being subjected to regular reviews about the content of their curricula; their syllabi are subject to scrutiny by those who may not be familiar with the subject matter; students are encouraged to report any discomfort they may feel in a class; and certain stances inside the classroom or out by faculty who criticize United States history, polices or practices can be deemed  supportive of authoritarianism or “antisemitism”.

In short, the university as a place where students are exposed to the breathe of ideas from the past, debate new ideas, and are encouraged to develop their own identities and perspectives on the world based upon their educational experiences is being replaced with a site for indoctrination to whatever political or economic dogma is being promoted at the current time. This is a very dangerous time for the survival of higher education.

 

REMEMBER THOSE WHO PROTESTED WAR ALSO!

 Harry Targ

(Originally posted  Monday 30, 2011)

"In a society where it is normal for human beings to drop bombs on human targets, where it is normal to spend 50 percent of the individual's tax dollar on war, where it is normal...to have twelve times overkill capacity, Norman Morrison was not normal. He said, 'Let it stop.' "(a gravesite speech by John Roemer at the funeral of Norman Morrison quoted in Hendrickson, Paul. The Living and the Dead. New York: Alfred Knopf, 1996).

On November 2, 1965, Norman Morrison brought his daughter with him to the Pentagon. Outside the office of Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara, Morrison set himself on fire to protest the escalating war in Vietnam. His daughter, Emily, somehow was passed to others and survived the flames. Morrison, however, died as he had lived, protesting the bombing of villages in South Vietnam, killing innocent men, women, and children.

I was part of an educational tour to Vietnam last March. We were taken to a powerful museum, known as the War Remnants Museum in Ho Chi Minh City. On the second floor an exhibit featured images of international solidarity with the Vietnamese people during the American war. Included there was a framed copy of an American newspaper account of Morrison’s self-immolation. Earlier, in Hue, we had seen an exhibit of the automobile used by a Buddhist Monk, Thích Quảng Đức, who killed himself in protest of the brutality of the Diem regime in South Vietnam. Presumably this act inspired Morrison’s tragic protest.

I had forgotten Morrison’s dramatic act, and the acts of several others who bravely sacrificed their bodies and lives to oppose the murderous war in Vietnam. Today, Memorial Day, 2011 I thought about Morrison, the exhibit at the Vietnamese Museum, and parallel acts of self-sacrifice.

First, on reflection, I am in awe of the courage and self-sacrifice of the acts of these brave and principled people. Yet, I wish they had not made the ultimate sacrifices they did and had put their courage and willingness to sacrifice to the long-term struggles of the peace movement to end war.

However, I believe we must “take back” Memorial Day from those who celebrate war, see sacrifice only from those who kill and die, and ignore the bravery of the men and women everywhere who fight to end war. We mourn those who were sent off to fight in ignoble wars in the name of the United States. Also we must declare Memorial Day as a day to remember all the Norman Morrison’s who have said “no” to war and empire.

THE THREAT OF A GOOD EXAMPLE: THE CUBAN REVOLUTION STILL FACES UNITED STATES IMPERIALISM

 Harry Targ

     

Before Fidel Castro’s 26th of July Movement seized power in Cuba in January, 1959, the United States had long controlled the island nation ninety miles from its shores. The country was ruled by dictator, Fulgencio Batista, a close ally of the United States, who, through repression and corruption, generated large-scale opposition in the countryside and the cities. In 1958 the State Department urged Batista to turn control over to a caretaker government, to forestall the victory of Fidel Castro, Che Guevara, Camillo Cienfuegos, Vilma Espin, and their growing guerrilla armies, who were on the verge of overthrowing the dictator. Batista rejected the pressure to flee. His U.S. backed armies and police were defeated. The revolutionaries were victorious.

Before the revolution, United States investors controlled 80 percent of Cuba’s utilities, 90 percent of its mines, 90 percent of its cattle ranches, its three oil refineries, half its railroads, and 40 percent of its sugar. In a land rich with human and natural resources and a modern infrastructure and a tourist sector second to none in the Hemisphere, 600,000 Cubans were unemployed, more than half the population lived in slums, and one-half the population had no access to electricity. Forty percent of the Cuban population was illiterate; most Cubans spent much of their income on rent, and among wealthy Cubans, 1.5 percent of landowners owned 46 percent of the land.

When the Castro-led revolutionaries assumed office, they began to develop a series of policies to alleviate the worst features of Cuban poverty. The revolutionary government invested in housing, schools, and public works. Salaries were raised, electrical rates were cut, and rents were reduced by half. On a visit to the United States in April, 1959, Castro, who had proposed a large-scale assistance program for the Western Hemisphere to the Eisenhower Administration, was ignored by the President.

(The problem of the land, the problem of industrialization, the problem of housing, the problem of unemployment, the problem of education and the problem of the people’s health: these are the six problems we would take immediate steps to solve, along with restoration of civil liberties and political democracy (Fidel Castro, “ History Will Absolve Me,” Castro Internet Archive, www.marxists.org/history/cuba/archive/castro/1953)

Returning from a hostile visit to Washington, Castro announced a redistributive program of agrarian reform that generated opposition from conservative Cuban and American landowners. These policies involved transfers of land to the Cuban people from the huge estates owned by the wealthy. The Eisenhower administration responded by reducing the quantity of United States purchases of Cuban sugar. Cuba then nationalized the industry.

In February, 1960 Cuba signed trade agreements with the former Soviet Union. The Soviets agreed to exchange their oil for sugar no longer purchased by the U.S. When the U.S. owned oil refineries refused to refine the Soviet oil, the Cuban government nationalized them. An aide to President Eisenhower recommended that the US launch an economic blockade of the island to starve the Cuban people. Then, the argument went, they would rise up against their new government.

In July, 1960, the U.S. cut all sugar purchases. Over the next several months the Cuban government nationalized U.S. owned corporations and banks on the island. Therefore, between the spring of 1960 and January 1961 U.S. and Cuban economic ties came to a halt and the island nation had established formal diplomatic relations with the Soviet Union. Shortly before Eisenhower left office, the break was made symbolically complete with the U.S. termination of formal diplomatic relations with Cuba.

As U.S./Cuban economic and diplomatic tensions were escalating, President Eisenhower made a decision that in the future would lead the world to the brink of nuclear war. In March,1960, he ordered the Central Intelligence Agency to create a Cuban exile force that would invade the island and depose Fidel Castro. Even the State Department knew at that time that Castro was enormously popular.

In April, 1961, the newly elected President Kennedy was presented with an invasion plan by the CIA. The agency claimed that the right-wing Cubans would be greeted as heroes when they landed at the Bay of Pigs. After the Castro regime was overthrown, all private assets would be returned, and a Batista-like government would be reestablished.

The Bay of Pigs invasion, April 17-19, 1961, was launched by fifteen hundred Cuban exiles. It was an immediate failure:  close to 300 invaders were killed and the rest captured. No uprising against the revolutionary government occurred. Kennedy was criticized in the United States for not providing sufficient air support to protect the invading army. The critics ignored the fact that the revolutionary government had the support of workers and peasants who would fight to defend it.

After the invasion attempt failed, President Kennedy warned of the danger of the “menace of external Communist intervention and domination in Cuba.” He saw a need to respond to Communism, whether in Cuba or South Vietnam. In the face of perceived Communist danger to the Western Hemisphere, he reserved the right to intervene as needed. The lesson he drew from the Bay of Pigs was the need for escalated adventurism, not caution Every administration, with the exception of the opening of US/Cuban relations during the Obama presidency, has maintained the economic blockade and in other ways sought to undermine and/or overthrow the Cuban Revolution. And today the Trump Administration is continuing this tradition-placing Cuba on the list of terrorist nations, demanding that other countries withdraw their commercial ties with Cuba, and blocking Cuban access to oil, And now, the Trump Administration has indicted former Cuban President Raul Castro because the Cuban government shot down an anti-Cuban spy plane in 1996.

The Issue is U.S. Imperialism and Cuba as an Alternative for the Global South

As described by Stephen Kinzer in Overthrow (Times Books, 2006) the United States had been engaging in efforts to undermine and overthrow independent governments around the world, and particularly in the Western Hemisphere, ever since it took Hawaii in the 1890s. In fact, the Cuban revolution of 1898 against Spanish colonialism was usurped by U.S. forces followed by a full-scale occupation of the country, the institutionalization of a protectorate until 1934 and then indirect economic and political domination, lasting until 1959.

Further, as so many accounts of U.S./Cuban relations suggest, the interests of the Cuban people never figured in U.S. policy toward the island. The economic blockade and diplomatic embargo of the island amounted to a 66-year effort to strangle, not only the regime, but the Cuban people. A truism of US policy is and has been that others must be forced to sacrifice for the U.S. imperial agenda.

Also, the Bay of Pigs fiasco suggests that U.S. foreign policy decision-makers almost always misjudged the will of the people who would be subjected to military action. Ruling classes, by their very nature, are unable to understand the interests, passions, and visions of the great masses of people. The Director of the CIA in 1961 and other members of the President’s inner circle were incapable of understanding that the Cuban people supported their revolution, so they ignored State Department polling data.

Finally, as recent policies toward Venezuela; interventions in Iraq, Iran, Afghanistan and Ukraine; and the so-called Asian pivot all suggest is that the United States since the dawn of the twentieth century has pursued global hegemony. Any challenge to that hegemony, such as the Cuban Revolution, is defined as a security issue. It fact, nations and peoples who seek their independence as reflected in the idea of revolution constitute a threat that must be undermined.

The Vision of the Cuban Revolution Remains

...the Cuban revolution (even until this day) has constituted a living experiment that most progressive forces around the world identify with. Even though each society has its own history, class structure, level of development, and revolutionary potential, Cuba’s desire to create a government to serve its people and at the same time to transform them from a traditional consciousness to a revolutionary consciousness is shared by progressives everywhere. For progressives, Cuba is a laboratory, a grand social experiment that will provide knowledge for others as they seek fundamental change in their own societies... Cuba’s successes in the years ahead are successes of all progressive forces and, similarly Cuba’s defeats are defeats for all who wish to create egalitarian and humane societies.

(Cuba and the USA: A New World Order? International Publishers, 1992, 6):

THE INCREASED ROLE OF RELIGION IN US POLITICAL LIFE (a repost)

Harry Targ

The Christian National Agenda and Neofascism Continue on May 17, 2026:

 democracynow.org/2026/5/18/white_house_prayer

https://godandcountrythemovie.com/

I live in North Central Indiana, a state that has moved to the right over the last twenty years, largely because of the efforts of leading Republicans to crush the prominence of the labor movement and the shift of the Indiana Democratic party to neoliberalism in the Clinton era.

However, in Tippecanoe County there have emerged a variety of organizations which are concerned about the twenty-first century attack on women, the rise of racism, rightwing legislative attacks on education, and the erosion of the environment, and, undergirding all of this, democratic institutions. In addition, peace and justice groups have blossomed on the campus of Purdue University, so much so that the Purdue Administration has reversed a tradition initiated in 2007 to have polling booths on the university campus.

To their credit a number of churches and civic organizations have been showing periodically a powerful new documentary co-produced by Rob Reiner called God and Country. This is a powerful documentary that demonstrates how the radical right has appropriated Christianity to serve political purposes. The film shows that beginning in the 1970s many well-funded groups and leading political operatives associated with the presidential campaign  of Ronald Reagan, such as Paul Weyrich, began to challenge the 200-year constitutional commitment to the separation of Church and State.

The documentary points out, as Nancy MacLean did  in Democracy in Chains, that the resuscitation of the radical right was stimulated by the historic decision ending racial segregation in public schools, Brown v. Board of Education. And while the key stimulus for the right-wing resurgence was racism, the film suggests, the issue that ignited the political and religious right as a mass movement was abortion. It is the latter issue that generated the movement of sectors of Christian evangelicalism to the rightwing, thus connecting Brown with Roe v. Wade.

In sum, politics becomes central to sectors of Christian evangelicalism when  some religious leaders realize  that challenging the separation of church and state can be financially profitable and can lead to enhanced political power. And to connect the dots between religion and politics, the film suggests, selected politicians gained critical support, particularly Ronald Reagan, and in our own day, Donald Trump. The Christian right and the unconstitutional claims about the connections between religion and the state have been promoted by multi-million-dollar support for corrosive media: radio, television, the internet, music, films, and organized efforts to restructure political institutions.

From the film’s point of view, and most of us, there was never in the US constitution any envisioned connections between religion and politics. God and Country, the ‘founding fathers’ declared must remain separate. And most voters learned from their childhood that the separation of church and state was the very essence of US democracy. And this, religious ideologues of the right challenge today.

The film presents a variety of experts who have studied the religious right, including current and former Christian evangelical ministers, who clearly document the “counter revolution” that has occurred in the religious community. The film shows charismatic ministers, beginning with Jerry Falwell, who cross the line between religion and politics for their own gain, financial and political power. The documentary brings the narrative to January 6, 2021 and beyond to show that rightwing evangelicals are willing to “pick up the gun” to insure that God and Country are merged. This the film suggests represents a fundamental threat to democracy and the Trump/Vance campaign is its current instrumentality.

This is a powerful film that deserves to be shown regularly before the election (and beyond) as it is being shown in my Indiana community.

Having said that I want to note two caveats in reference to the film. First, while it powerfully addresses racism and patriarchy, it does not address adequately the class character of the radical right, both its membership and why its devotees have drifted to the right. The only references to economic issues are two powerful, but undeveloped, comments by Reverend William Barber, who through his New Poor People’s Campaign, and his new book, points out that one third of eligible American voters are poor. (One participant in the film showing I attended correctly pointed out the important role of the politics of fear and resentment drawing voters to the far right).

In addition, the film speaks to Christians, albeit in a powerful way, but does not address those who have moved to the radical right who are not Christians. Communities committed to uncovering the roots of the radical right and its constituencies might show a documentary about Jewish fundamentalism as well, such as the new film Israelism.

Again, despite its shortcomings, I applaud those in my community who have organized the showings of God and Country and I regard multiple showings of films like it as a kind of political movement bringing concerned citizens together for education, discussion, and organizing to defend democracy

COMEDIANS: The New Revolutionaries

 Harry Targ

(As Stephen Colbert nears the end of his run as a host on late night television, it is becoming clearer than ever that the forces of repression seek to crush what Michael Denning called "the Cultural Front," including the comedians. That is in popular culture today the most penetrating critiques of the drift toward American fascism are found among the comedians. And reflecting on our past, the era of the Spanish American War, Jim Crow, McCarthyism and now Trumpism, it is the comedians who have popularized and legitimized critiques of  the rich and powerful. As with other sectors of progressivism, our comedians need to be defended.)

https://youtu.be/nzkAKrXLZoI?si=L8jb9y_6ZLp5ex6N

Reddit

"Workers of the world, unite! You have nothing to lose but your chains!". ^{Karl Marx}

“Comedians of the world unite. You have nothing to lose but your jokes.” Harry Targ

 The twenty-first century is strange. Most of the modest social benefits provided by many governments are being reversed. Contrary to expectations in a “post-Cold War” world, violence has increased and competition between Cold War adversaries continues. And to quote from Vijay Prashad, we are living in an “age of cruelty.” We are helpless observers as a holocaust is being perpetrated on the people in Gaza. And while a police state is rounding up “illegals,” convicted felons are being pardoned, (and some elected or appointed to office), masses of people are hitting the streets to protest virtually all these egregious immoralities perpetrated by ruling classes and political elites. And it has gotten to the point with these horrific developments that we must look to comedians to save us.

And before we look askance at a defense of comedians, we should recognize that they historically have stimulated us to think about the human condition. Paradoxically profit and criticism have over the years conflicted. In the post World War Two period a panoply of comedians have surfaced who generated popularity and profit, and at the same time challenged the evils of capitalism, war-making, class antagonisms, racism, and patriarchy.

For those of us growing up in the fifties Tom Lehrer was cheerfully accessible while communicating ideas about atomic war, hate, and militarism. And while Lenny Bruce was too acerbic for some he spawned subsequent generations of very radical comedic talents including George Carlin, Richard Pryor, and Lily Tomlin. And then radical/political humor became mainstreamed on television including Saturday Night Live, the Daily Show and the John Oliver program. Television series such as MASH critiqued war, Other programs, some funny and some serious, analyzed commercialism, greed, ruling classes, and racism.

So now in a period where democratic discourse is more threatened than ever, even more than the McCarthy era of the 1950s, fascist sectors of the ruling class, after attacking the universities, the media, protesters, and “foreigners,” are targeting the comedians, the last refuge of deep criticism of the US political economy. 

As we rise to defend academic freedom in the universities, vibrant curricula in K- twelve educational institutions, the right to protest (and vote) and independent media, we cannot forget the comedians. Historically, they have communicated radical ideas to larger sections of the population than many others who have resisted monopoly capitalism and war.

The Historic Role of Women in Peace and Justice Movements

Harry Targ 

As women and men organized politically during the two Trump administrations, it is critical to reflect on the centrality of women in the struggle for a peaceful world. Campaigns for social and economic justice and women’s movements, and particularly women’s peace movements, are inextricably connected.

In 1915, 1,200 women from diverse backgrounds met in the Hague to create what became the Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom (WILPF). They opposed World War I and would continue to oppose war in the over 100 years of their existence. They also demanded that women play a role in decision-making about all matters of foreign policy, including decisions concerning war and peace.

WILPF, the oldest peace group in the United States was led for many years by Jane Addams, who received the Nobel Peace Prize in 1931.

In 1961 another women’s peace group, Women Strike for Peace, organized a day-long national strike of 50,000 women in 60 cities demanding nuclear disarmament. They opposed nuclear testing, increased radiation in the atmosphere and marched to the slogan, “End the Arms Race: Not the Human Race.” Women Strike for Peace became early opponents of the escalating Vietnam war. Among its prominent spokespersons was soon-to-be Congresswoman Bella Abzug.

Code Pink is a grassroots women-led organization opposing war and militarism. It was organized in 2002 and includes militant activists such as Medea Benjamin and Colonel Ann Wright. Code Pink advocates peace, a human rights agenda, and demands conversion from military spending to spending for health care, green jobs, and the general welfare. They have been active in campaigns for justice for the Palestinian people and in opposition to United States support for violence perpetuated by Saudi Arabia in the Middle East, the US/Israeli wars on Iran, and the continued economic blockade that is starving the Cuban people.

 

(Marlene Targ Brill (Author) Discusses the peace activism of women through 

the stories of antislavery advocates, suffrage movement leaders, social reformers, 

Nobel Peace Prize winners, and antinuclear advocates.)

The writing and activism of Jane Addams has been an important inspiration that runs throughout the educational, advocacy, and militant peace activity of women for the last 100 years. Addams’ classic essay, “Newer Ideals of Peace” was originally published in 1907 and reissued with an introduction by Berenice Carroll and Clint Fink in 2007 by the University of Illinois Press.

In this essay, Carroll and Fink indicate that Addams postulated that the tasks of peace activists must go beyond just stopping war. According to Addams, achieving what peace researchers later called “negative peace,” ending wars, must be coupled with “positive peace.” Positive peace includes transformations of the societies that engaged in warfare. These transformations must include the end of hierarchies of all kinds including patriarchy, paternalism, the criminal justice system, and systems of domination and subordination at the workplace. Addams wrote that there needed to be a theoretical and practical shift from individualism and property rights to community. The spirit of nationalism must be replaced by internationalism. In sum, advocating for social and economic justice was needed along with demanding an end to shooting wars.

We move ahead in these troubled times inspired by the great fighters for racial justice including Frederick Douglass, Harriet Tubman, Martin Luther King, Malcolm X, and Angela Davis. We are also inspired by those who struggled for workers’ rights: Joe Hill, Mother Jones, Paul Robeson, A. Philip Randolph, John L. Lewis, and Sidney Hillman.

And, as the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists Doomsday Clock ticks toward midnight, we desperately need to reacquaint ourselves with our foremothers whose ideas and activism have been central to movements for peace and justice throughout the world.

https://thebulletin.org/doomsday-clock/2026-statement/

STOP THE WARS; AT HOME AND AROUND THE WORLD

 

FOREIGN POLICY: THE ELEPHANT IN THE ROOM (A timely update from a 2017 post which appeared in The Rag Blog)

 Harry Targ

 

An Empire in Relative Decline

United States global hegemony continues to be challenged. As the beneficiary of war-driven industrial growth and the development of a military-industrial complex unparalleled in world history, the United States was in a position in 1945 to construct a post-war international political and economic order based on huge banks and corporations. The United States created the international financial and trading system, imposed the dollar as the global currency, built military alliances to challenge the Socialist Bloc, and used its massive military might and capacity for economic penetration to infiltrate, subvert, and dominate most of the economic and political regimes across the globe.

The United States always faced resistance and was by virtue of its economic system and ideology drawn into perpetual wars, leading to trillions of dollars in military spending, the loss of hundreds of thousands of American lives, and the deaths of literally millions of people, mostly people of color, to maintain its empire.

As was the case of prior empires, the United States empire is weakening. There is now the possibility of a multipolar world emerging with challenges to traditional hegemony coming from China, India, Russia, and the larger less developed countries such as Brazil, Argentina, South Africa, South Korea, and Thailand. By the 1970s, even traditional allies in Europe and Japan had become economic competitors of the United States.

The United States throughout this period of change has remained the overwhelming military power, however, spending more on defense than the next seven countries combined. It remains the world’s economic giant even though growth in domestic product between 1980 and 2000 has been a third of its GDP growth from 1960 to 1980. Confronted with economic stagnation and declining profit rates the United States economy began in the 1970s to transition from a vibrant industrial base to financial speculation and the globalization of production.

The latest phase of capitalism, the era of neoliberal globalization, required massive shifts of surplus value from workers to bankers and the top 200 hundred corporations which by the 1980s controlled about one-third of all production. The instruments of consciousness, a handful of media conglomerates, have consolidated their control of most of what people read, see, hear, and learn about the world.

A policy centerpiece of the new era, roughly spanning the rise to power of Ronald Reagan to today, including the eight years of the Obama Administration, has been a massive shift of wealth from the many to the few. A series of graphs published by the Economic Policy Institute in December, 2016 showed that productivity, profits, and economic concentration had risen while real wages have declined, inequality increased, gaps between the earnings of people of color and women and white men grew, and persistent poverty remained for twenty percent of the US population (https://www.epi.org/publication/inequality-2021-ssa-data/ for 2021 data on economic inequality). The austerity policies, the centerpiece of neoliberalism, spread all across the globe. That is what globalization has been about.

Contrary to the shifts toward a transnational capitalist system and the concentration of wealth and power on a global level, the decline of U.S power, relative to other nation-states in the twenty-first century, has increased.  China’s economy and scientific/technological base have expanded dramatically. The wars in Afghanistan, Iraq, and the spreading violence throughout the Middle East have overwhelmed US efforts to control events. Russia, Iran, China, and even weaker nations in the United Nations Security Council have begun to challenge US power and authority. Mass movements increasingly mobilize against regimes supported by the United States virtually everywhere (including mass mobilizations within the U.S. as well).

However, most U.S. politicians still articulate the mantra of “the United States as the indispensable nation.” The articulation of American Exceptionalism represents an effort to maintain a global hegemony that no longer exists and a rationale to justify the massive military-industrial complex which fuels much of the United States economy.

(For more data on military bases see https://www.davidvine.net/bases.html)

Imperial Decline and Domestic Politics

The narrative above is of necessity brief and oversimplified but provides a backdrop for reflecting on the substantial shifts in American politics. The argument here is that foreign policy and international political economy are “the elephants in the room” as we reflect on the outcomes of recent elections. It does not replace other explanations or “causes” of election results but supplements them.

First, the pursuit of austerity policies, particularly in other countries (the cornerstone of neoliberal globalization) has been a central feature of international economics since the late 1970s. From the establishment of the debt system in the Global South, to “shock therapy” in countries as varied as Bolivia and the former Socialist Bloc, to European bank demands on Greece, Spain, Portugal, and Ireland, to Reaganomics and the promotion of Clinton’s “market democracies,” and the Obama era Trans-Pacific Partnership, the wealth of the world has been shifting from the poor and working classes to the rich.

Second, to promote neoliberal globalization, the United States has constructed by far the world’s largest war machine. With growing opposition to U.S. militarism around the world, policy has shifted in recent years from “boots on the ground,” (although there still are many), to special ops, private contractors, drones, cyberwar, spying, and “quiet coups,” such as in Brazil and Venezuela, to achieve neoliberal advances.

One group of foreign policy insiders, the humanitarian interventionists, has lobbied for varied forms of intervention to promote “human rights, democratization, and markets.” 2016 candidate Hillary Clinton and a host of “deep state” insiders advocated for support of the military coup in Honduras, a NATO coalition effort to topple the regime in Libya, the expansion of troops in Afghanistan, even stronger support of Israel, funding and training anti-government rebels in Syria and the overthrow of the elected government of Ukraine. Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton was a major advocate for humanitarian interventionist policies in the Obama administration.

Humanitarian interventionists have joined forces with “neoconservatives” in the new century to advocate policies that, they believe, would reverse the declining relative power of the United States. This coalition of foreign policy influentials has promoted a New Cold War against China and Russia and an Asian pivot to challenge an emerging multipolar world. The growing turmoil in the Middle East and the new rising powers in Eurasia also provide rationale for qualitative increases in military spending, enormous increases in research and development of new military technologies, and the reintroduction of ideologies that were current during the last century about mortal enemies and the inevitability of war.

In sum, the “elephant in the room” for the peace movement pertaining to US politics must include building opposition to an activist United States economic/political/military role in the world and the long history of United States imperialism.

Finally, it must be articulated that to the extent that economics affects domestic politics the neoliberal global agenda that has been enshrined in United States international economic policy since the 1970s, coupled with humanitarian interventionism, has had much to do with rising austerity, growing disparities of wealth and power, wage and income stagnation, and declining social safety nets at home. As millions of Americans struggle to survive poverty, inadequate access to healthcare, homelessness, a variety of environmental disasters it is time to reinsert visions of a non-interventionist, anti-militaristic foreign policy into our progressive political agenda.

How Should the Peace Movement Respond to the Elephant in the Room?

Somehow this madness must cease. We must stop now. I speak for those whose land is being laid waste, whose homes are being destroyed, whose culture is being subverted. I speak for the poor of America who are paying the double price of smashed hopes at home and death and corruption in Vietnam. I speak as a citizen of the world, for the world as it stands aghast at the path we have taken.

-- Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., April 4, 1967

 

This year, the Science and Security Board of the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists moves the hands of the Doomsday Clock forward, largely (though not exclusively) because of the mounting dangers of the war in Ukraine. The Clock now stands at 90 seconds to midnight—the closest to global catastrophe it has ever been.

--2023 Doomsday Clock Announcement, January 24, 2023

The Peace Movement has been engaged in a variety of separate but interconnected tasks. It may be useful to identify them, see how they are interrelated, and think about ways in which it and other social justice campaigns can more effectively work together in the coming period.

Peace Movement tasks should include the following:

1.Oppose war. In 2022 the war in Ukraine has captured the attention of activists everywhere. Attention also has been paid on other wars, such as in Yemen and Palestine. Peace researchers have often referred to the historic need to end “direct violence”; that is killing. That task remains preeminent.

 

2.Reconceptualize “war” as a problem not only of killing and dying in war but also as a problem of hunger, inequality, environmental spoilation, and powerlessness in a world of power, control, and oppression. Peace researchers have called this “structural violence.” Theorists/activists like Vijay Prashad have argued that the problem of “war,” both direct and structural is more about the divide in resources and power between the countries of the Global North (the traditional imperial powers in Europe and North America) and the vast majority of humankind living in Asia, Africa, the Middle East and Latin America. For Prashad, the war problem is about hundreds of years of exploitation, occupation, military assault, sanctions, and the threat and destruction of the resources and environment of the Global South. From this point of view, the peace movement task is to engage in solidarity with those struggling for their liberation from domination and control.

3.Oppose militarism. Historically peace movements have identified an inextricable connection between growing militarism and war and further a connection between military spending and concentrated wealth in selected military corporations. From this point of view as the old slogan suggests: “war is a racket.” And that "racket” can be seen as directly reallocating societal resources from fulfilling human needs to the construction of more and more weapons. Some theorists referred to the history of United States foreign policy, at least since World War II, as one of creating a “permanent war economy.”

4.Oppose the use of war to achieve pernicious goals domestically. This perspective sees war preparation as tied to efforts to create solidarity at home, to the detriment of domestic social groups seeking significant social change. For example, as World War II  ended, the labor movement sought significant policy changes to improve the rights and conditions of American workers. During the late 1940s, workers were demanding more rights to form unions, national health care, pension systems, and in some unions and communities an end to racism. The emergence of “the Soviet threat” served to stimulate nationalism, a rekindling of the vision of American exceptionalism, and increased repression against those pursuing worker rights and racial justice. In short, the war system, has served to reallocate societal resources and create a virulent nationalism which supports the interests of the wealthy and powerful. The war system, in this sense, is a status quo system. And to justify the war system an increasingly concentrated media institutionalizes narratives justifying war and imperialism.

 

5.Educate, agitate, and organize around these four major tasks. The questions that peace movements need to address include:

a.How to theorize about the interconnections between these four points? How do we develop a compelling narrative that targeted audiences find compelling for them? Young people, people of color, men, women, gays and lesbians?

b.How to network with other peace and social justice organizations?

c.And for now what kind of programs-education, street heat, networking, organizing-  should the peace movement engage in to address the four key elements raised above.