REMEMBERING 9/11s: a revised repost

 Harry Targ

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 in New York, 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. 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 (even though the Taliban government had nothing to do with the 9/11 attack). On October 6, 2001, that war was initiated and continued until August 2021 (even though Bin Laden was killed in May, 2011).

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 too continued for years.

Over the last two decades, 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 over 700 military installations around the world, declared the great land and sea area around the globe at the equator the “arc of instability,” and 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. Every president from Bush on declared that United States military overreach to be in the national interest of the country and to serve the humanitarian interest of the world. In recent years U.S. military programs have included the use of computer operated aircraft, drones, that can target and kill anywhere based on decisions from command headquarters halfway around the globe. And the United States continues to have close ties with Israel and share in the launching of the war on Iran in February 2026.

Meanwhile at home, the Patriot Act extended the prerogatives of the government to launch a program 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. And now ICE targets political opponents, immigrants, and others for kidnapping or murder.

In addition, domestically, the decade since 9/11 was characterized by sustained assaults on the basic living standards of the bottom 90 percent of the population in terms of wealth and income. Unemployment rose dramatically. Job growth ground to a halt. Health care benefits declined while costs skyrocketed. Virtually every public institution in America, except the military, was threatened by budget cuts: education, libraries, public health facilities, highways and bridges, fire and police protection, environmental quality. And over the two decades of war and military spending, these domestic problems have persisted, and with the pandemic people have been made more vulnerable. As the Cost of War summarized recently:

 An estimated 3.6-3.8 million indirect deaths have occurred in post-9/11 war zones, including in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iraq, Syria, and Yemen, as of 2023. The total death toll in these war zones could be at least 4.5-4.7 million and counting, though the precise mortality figure remains unknown. Some people were killed in the fighting, but far more, especially children, have been killed by the reverberating effects of war, such as the spread of disease and malnutrition. 

https://costsofwar.watson.brown.edu/paper/overview-true-costs-post-911-wars

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 much of the population to the wealthy and political/military elites. In both cases, draconian economic policies and constraints on 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; and how this war, it was said, must be waged at whatever cost to the lives and economic resources of the country. And, as with the Cold War, military spending took priority over every other activity for which the government had a role. 9/11/73 caused the Chilean people pain and suffering that they are still working to overcome. Unless the American people mobilize to challenge the policies, foreign and domestic, that were justified by the tragedy of 9/11, the United States will continue to move down a similar path the Chilean people traveled after their 9/11.

 

LABOR DAY BRINGS THOUGHTS OF SOCIALIST ALTERNATIVES

Harry Targ

(This essay was written a decade ago. However, the need for solidarity among a newly rising global working class is needed now more than ever to combat war, white supremacy, neo-fascism, and climate disaster. The spirit of such as May Day globally and Labor Day in the United States survive everywhere as people seek to work with others to secure empowerment. Give support and thanks to workers of all kinds who are rising everywhere and who are saying “no” to exploitation and imperialism.

Sketching Today’s Global Political Economy

During the latest phase of monopoly and finance capital (1945- to the present) enormous changes have occurred and are occurring in the global political economy. First, the United States emerged as a superpower and in an effort to crush the threat of socialism around the world committed itself to constructing a “permanent war economy.” This permanent war economy would create the military capacity to destroy alternatives to global capitalism, stimulate and maintain a high growth manufacturing economy, justify an anti-communist crusade to crush the left in the United States, and co-opt and/or repress working class demands for change. In addition, the permanent war economy would occasion the perpetuation of racism and patriarchy in public and private life.

As the years passed corporate rates of profit began to decline as a result of rising competition among capitalist states, over-production and under-consumption, an increasing fiscal crisis of the capitalist state, and rising prices of core natural resources (particularly oil). With a growing crisis, global corporate and finance capital shifted from investments in production of goods and services to financial speculation. Thus, capitalist investment steadily shifted to financialization, or the investment in paper-stocks, bonds, private equity and hedge funds and other forms of speculative investment. Financial speculation was encouraged by state tax policies, “free trade” agreements, an expanded international system of indebtedness, and increased reliance on consumer debt. Now, the Trump Administration is using trade as a weapon to force allies to comply with US economic needs. 

Multinational corporations which continued to produce goods and services sought to overcome declining profit rates. This, they concluded, could only be achieved by reducing the costs of labor. To overcome the demand for higher real wages, health and other benefits, and worker rights, manufacturing facilities were moved from core capitalist states to poor countries where lower wages were paid. Thus, in wealthier countries millions of relatively high paying jobs were lost while production of goods increasingly moved to sweatshops in poor countries. Beginning in the late 1970s wealthy capitalist states experienced deindustrialization.

Finally, assisted by technological advances, from computers to new forms of shipping, financial speculation and deindustrialization fueled the full flowering of globalization, or the radically increased patterns of cross border interactions-economic, political, and cultural. Globalization began to transform the world into one integrated global political economy. 

And today the new system of artificial intelligence and attendant financial supports, the construction of data centers, and the articulation of dystopian visions of the future advocated by Silicon Valley elites are driving further transformation of the system of monopoly capitalism into new uncharted and dangerous directions for humankind and the environment.

In short, we may speak of a four-fold set of parallel political and economic developments that have occurred since the end of World War II, in which the United States has played a leading role: creating a permanent war economy, financialization, deindustrialization, and globalization.

Should We Be Thinking About Socialism Today?

A rich and vital set of images of a socialist future comes down to us from the utopians, anarchists, and Marxists, the martyrs of the first May Day, the marchers of the first Labor Day and the variety of experiments with socialism attempted in Asia, Eastern Europe, Western Europe, Africa, and the Caribbean. Extracting from the multiple reasons why individuals and movements chose socialism one reason stands out; that is, that capitalism historically is and has been a cruel and inhumane system, a system borne and fueled by slavery, genocide, super exploitation of workers, tactics of division based on race and gender, and an almost total disregard for the natural environment that sustains life. Building a permanent war economy, financialization, deindustrialization, and globalization are merely extensions of the cruel and heartless pursuit of profit which has been the fundamental driving force of the capitalist mode of production.

Drawing on the history and the images of a better future coupled with the brutality of the capitalist era, we might conceive of a 21st century socialist future that has four main dimensions.

First, we need to build institutions that are created and staffed by the working classes and serve the interests of the working classes. While scholars and activists may disagree about what “class” means in today’s complicated world, it is clear that the vast majority of humankind do not own or control the means of production, nor do they usually have an instrumental place in political institutions. Therefore, socialism involves, in the Marxist sense, the creation of a workers’ state and since most of us are workers (more than 90 percent of the US population for example), a state must be established that represents and serves the interests of the many, not the few.

Second, our vision of socialism is a society in which the working classes fully participate in the institutions that shape their lives and in the creation of the policies that these institutions develop to serve the needs of all the people.

Third, socialism also implies the creation of public policies that sustain life. Socialism in this sense is about good jobs, incomes that provide for human needs, access to health care for all, adequate housing and transportation, a livable environment, and an end to discrimination and war.

Fourth, socialism is also about the creation of institutions and policies that maximize human potential. A socialist society provides the intellectual tools to stimulate creativity, celebrate diversity, and facilitate writing poetry, singing and dancing, basking in nature’s glow, and living, working, and loving with others in humanly sustainable communities.

Today we remain terribly far from any of these dimensions of socialism. But paradoxically, humankind at this point in time has the technological tools to build a mass movement to create a socialist future. We can communicate instantaneously with peoples all over the world. We can access information about the world that challenges the narrow ruling class media frames about the human condition. We have in the face of brutal war, environmental devastation, enduring racism, super exploitation of workers everywhere mass movements of workers, women, people of color, indigenous people, and youth who are demanding changes. Increasingly public discourse is based upon the realization that our future will bring either extinction or survival. Socialism, although it is not labeled as such, represents human survival.

Where do we who believe that socialism offers the best hope for survival stand at this critical juncture? We are weak. Many of us are older. Some of us have remained mired in old formulas about change. Nevertheless we can make a contribution to building a socialist future. In fact we have a critical role to play.

We must articulate systematic understandings of the global political economy and where it came from: permanent war, financialization, deindustrialization, and globalization. We need to articulate what impacts these processes have had on class, race, gender, and the environment. In other words, we need to convince activists that almost all things wrong with the world are connected and are intimately tied to the development of capitalism as the dominant mode of production.

We need to take our place in political struggles that demand an expanded role for workers in political institutions. We need to insist that the working classes participate in all political decisions.

We need to work on campaigns that could sustain life: jobs, living wages, single payer health care, climate change etc. Our contribution can include making connections between the variety of single issues, insisting that participants in mass movements take cognizance of and work on the other single issues that constitute the mosaic of problems that require transformation. We must remember that in the end the basic policies that sustain life require building socialism. Most struggles, such as those to achieve living wages or a single payer health care system for example, plant the seeds for building a broader socialist society. We can incorporate our socialist vision in our debates about single issues: if we demand a living wage, why not talk about equality for example?

We need to rearticulate our belief that human beings have a vast potential for good, for creativity, and given a just society, we all could move away from classism, racism, and sexism. We could pursue our talents and interests in the context of a sharing and cooperative society.

By working for institutional incorporation (empowerment) and life-sustaining and enhancing policies we will be planting the seeds for a socialist society.

“In our hands is placed a power greater than their hoarded gold,
Greater than the might of armies, magnified a thousand-fold.
We can bring to birth a new world from the ashes of the old.
For the union makes us strong”

From “Solidarity Forever,” Ralph Chaplin lyrics, 1915.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R8eK9ZXf-Ow

LABOR CELEBRATES ITS HISTORY

  Harry Targ

LABOR DAY PARADE, 1882. The first Labor Day Parade, held in Union Square, New York City, by the Knights of Labor on 5 September 1882. Wood engraving from a contemporary American newspaper.

https://www.granger.com/results.asp?image=0041831

        On the morning of September 5, 1882, 30,000 men and women bricklayers, freight handlers, printers, blacksmiths, railroad workers, cigar makers, furriers, seamstresses and other workers lined up to begin the first Labor Day march in New York City. Many of the marchers carried signs with such messages as "Labor Will Be United," "Eight Hours for Work-Eight Hours for Rest-Eight Hours for What We Will" and "Strike With the Ballot."

            The New York Central Labor Union spread the word about Labor Day and two years later a national labor organization, the Federation of Organized Trades and Labor Unions, resolved at its convention that the first Monday in September be set aside as labor's national holiday. It was to be celebrated by all workers, Black and white, women and men, young and old, skilled and unskilled, industrial and craft. After years of labor-initiated celebrations, the Haymarket Affair of 1886, and the rise of a worldwide anarchist and socialist workers’ movements, and growing support for a Labor Day in cities and states around the nation, Congress finally adopted Labor Day as a national holiday in 1894.

            The original Labor Day was designed to symbolize the demand for the 8-hour day, a healthy work environment, adequate rest, and basic health and other benefits. It also was designed to express the pride that workers felt about their role in the production of all the goods and services in the society. Finally, Labor Day was a time to mobilize workers for the ongoing struggle to achieve a fair and living wage, safe and productive worksites, basic economic security, and worker participation in economic and political decision making.

            The specific issues of the 21^st century are different than the 1880s but the general concerns of workers remain the same.

          -Workers must stop plant closings and the millions of good jobs that have been lost because of capital flight.

          -Workers must stop the shift in the economy from well-paying jobs to part-time and minimum wage jobs. Workers must reverse the 30-year decline in real wages that Americans have experienced.

       -Workers must challenge the decline in health and safety in the workplace.

         -Workers must struggle to reverse the rise in the numbers of homeless people and the declining ability of people to pay for health care.

        -Workers must join with their brothers and sisters from Mexico, Canada, Asia, and Africa to oppose the pitting of underpaid and overworked men and women in one country against men and women in other countries using the excuse of "free trade."

        -Workers must oppose new technologies, such as artificial intelligence and data centers, as long as they destroy jobs, communities, and the environment.

           -Workers must fight back against a state repression (ICE) that kidnaps workers who are defined as "illegal." No worker is illegal.

         -And finally, it is clearer now than ever that worker solidarity worldwide is needed to stop militarism, wasteful military spending, and war.

          To achieve these goals, workers have to combat the economic and political assault on trade unions which reached massive proportions in the 1980s and 1990s. Without trade unions, there would have been no Labor Day proclaimed in 1882 and there would be no Labor Day in 2026.

 

 Hard Ball Press

https://www.hardballpress.org/

 

WAR, MILITARISM, AND RESISTANCE: A DIALECTICAL VIEW (a repost): Still Relevant in 2026

 Harry Targ

(originally posted on Monday, October 1, 2018)

The remarks below and the essay that follows review the historical narrative about imperialism and resistance that are familiar to us but sometimes forgotten. The original presentation is ten years old but seems to remain relevant. despite some significant historical changes. The patterns of resistance in Latin America, from ALBA, Cuba, the Bolivarian Revolution have weakened but the BRICS have increased their organizational efficacy. And, of course, the growing global resistance to Israeli genocide and the US war on Iran have become main foci of global attention. Slowly some on the left have begun to revisit international institutions such as the United Nations system and have encouraged cross-national efforts at solidarity. The world is changing but the core elements of the system of imperialism  ,permanent war, and resistance remain. And the tasks of those of us who support peace and justice remain the same as well. (Sept4ember 3, 2026)

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

While aspects of the global order have changed since this essay was written, the main elements--imperialism, militarism, and resistance--remain. In recent days, countries of Europe, Russia, and China have begun to dialogue in opposition to United States global hegemony. While instabilities in the Global South continue, grassroots movements seeking autonomy from neoliberal austerity survive in Venezuela, and models of economic development continue to progress in countries such as Cuba, and China and Russia are further connecting with the Global South. Undergirding this are grassroots mobilizations growing against neo-fascism, racism, sexism, exploitation, and environmental devastation. The Trump administration, through dramatic increases in military spending, a proposed militarization of space, increased covert interventions, confrontations with Russia and China and traditional allies in Europe and North America, is desperately trying to forestall the declining relative power of the United States in the world. This ironically is speeding the growth of resistance. (HT)

Imperialism

I still find compelling the main points about modern imperialism articulated by Lenin in his famous essay on the subject. Reflecting on the transformations of capitalism from its early manufacturing days until the twentieth century he argued that economic concentration had replaced a multiplicity of semi-independent economic actors, manufacturing capital had merged with financial institutions creating a system of monopoly finance capital, and as a consequence the export of capital--what we would call today foreign investment, financial speculation, and the debt system--would replace the export of commodities as the dominant form of economic exchange on a global basis. During some periods capitalist states would divide up the world each extracting wealth of all kinds from its own sphere of influence and during other periods they would engage in competition and even war to pursue profits. Lenin could not foresee a time, from the mid-20^th century until now, when resistance would come not only from competing and militarized capitalist states but from masses of people in colonized, neocolonial, and dependent societies.

The Cold War and Post-Cold War International Systems

The latest phase of the system Lenin described was constructed at the end of World War II. The United States emerged from the war as the most powerful nation and used military, economic, political, and cultural tools to enshrine its dominance. This meant building a system to crush the emerging Socialist Bloc, controlling the drive toward independence of former colonies, and shaping the politics of lesser but significant capitalist states. To achieve these difficult goals, the United States began to construct a “permanent war economy.”

By the 1960s, the United States capacity to control the economic and military destiny of the world was severely challenged. The Tet Offensive of January, 1968 represented a metaphoric great divide as U.S. presumptions of hegemony were sorely challenged by a poor but passionate Vietnamese people’s army. From the late 1960s onward the U.S. was challenged not only on the battlefield but in the global economy. Rates of profit of U.S. corporations declined. Industrialization had led to overproduction. Working classes in the United States and other capitalist countries had gained more rights and privileges. Socialist countries were experiencing significant growth spurts. Countries of the Global South began to demand a New International Economic Order that regulated the way global capitalism worked. In addition, inter-capitalist rivalry grew. On top of all this the price of oil increased markedly.

The response of the global capitalist powers (the G7 countries) to the crisis of capitalism was a dramatic shift in the pursuit of profit from the production of goods and services to what became known as financialization, or financial speculation. The banks Lenin talked about became instrumental. With rising oil prices, oil rich countries awash in new profits, and banks swelling with petrodollars, nations were enticed and forced to borrow to pay for the oil that cost many times more than it had in the recent past. The global debt system was launched. When the United States freed the dollar from the gold standard, currencies themselves became a source of speculation.

The debt system gave international financial institutions and banks the power to impose demands on countries that required loans. Thus, the IMF, the World Bank, regional international banks, and private institutions demanded that the world’s countries open their doors to foreign investors, cut their government programs, privatize their economies, and shift to exporting commodities to earn the cash to pay back the bankers. The era of neoliberalism was advanced by globalization, the scientific, technological, and cultural capacity to traverse the globe. No geographic space could maintain autonomy from global capitalism. So a Cold War that was launched by creating a permanent war economy was transformed by financialization, neoliberalism, and globalization. With the shift of work from higher wage capitalist centers to low wage peripheries, deindustrialization became a common feature of the economic landscape.

By the 21^st century the system of neoliberal globalization was facilitated by new techniques of empire. Wars which traditionally had been fought between states were now fought within states. The United States established a military presence virtually all across the globe with an estimated 700 to 1,000 military installations in at least 40 countries. Major functions of the globalization of military operations had become privatized so massive U.S. corporations gained even more profits from war-making than they had during the days of the Cold War. The military—public and private—began to engage in assassinations and covert “humanitarian interventions.” And, aided by new technologies, the United States and other capitalist countries, using unmanned aerial vehicles or drones, could make war on enemies without “boots on the ground.” As we have learned, intelligence gathering, spying on people, has immeasurably advanced as well.

To put it succinctly, while imperialism remains generically as it has been throughout history today:

-Imperialism has become truly global.

-The military continues to be big business, sucking up at least half of the federal budget.

-The United States has developed the capacity to fight wars without soldiers on the ground.

-Empires, particularly the United States empire, kill with impunity.

-The connections between economic interest and militarism remain central.

-Ideologies defending 21^st century military interventions vary from those neoconservatives who argue that the United States must use its power to maximize our global position to the humanitarian interventionists who claim that the United States acts in the world for good.

Resistance

This narrative is not unfamiliar to us. What is less familiar is the idea that throughout history the forces of domination have been challenged by resistance, sometimes successfully, sometimes less so. It is important to note that the drive for U.S. hegemony, for example, has been affected by resistance. A recent articulation of this narrative appears in the writings of Vijay Prashad, who has described the efforts of the newly independent nations of the Global South to achieve political and economic sovereignty. Many of these efforts from the 1950s to the 1970s faltered at the steps of the debt system and neoliberal globalization. But the struggle has continued. In addition, there have been examples of people such as the Cubans and the Vietnamese who, with much pain and suffering, were able to achieve some measure of economic sovereignty and political independence.

21^st century movements for change are varied and complicate the efforts of imperialism to achieve its goals. Resistance includes the following:

-Mercosur, a trade organization that includes Argentina, Brazil, Uruguay, Venezuela, Chile, and others waiting for admittance constitutes the third largest trading bloc in the world.

-The development of collaborative relationships among powerful Global South nations. For example, representatives from the BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa) recently met to chart an independent agenda in global affairs.

-The Bolivarian Alliance for the Peoples of Our America (ALBA) consists of ten Latin American/Caribbean countries which are launching a program of economic integration and political cooperation.

-The Community of Latin America and Caribbean States (CELAC) is a new grouping of some 33 Western Hemisphere nations, minus the United States and Canada, which will seek to expand regional collaboration.

-Individual nations, based on their historic resistance to imperialism, such as Cuba, Vietnam, Venezuela, and Bolivia, continue to inspire activists.

-The United Nations system, considerably weakened from the days of the Cold War, still engages in global mobilizations through its conferences, support for some progressive NGOs, and projects involving education, development, and peacekeeping. Affiliated organized such as the International Labor Organization pursue goals that are sometimes independent of imperial agendas.

-Global anti-capitalist mobilizations, such as the World Social Forum, have brought together thousands of activists largely from the Global South to discuss the problems faced by workers, women, indigenous people, environmental activists, and others.

-Perhaps most important at this time is the grassroots mobilizations of millions of people all across the globe demanding economic justice, worker rights, gender equality, environmental justice,  and peace. Such mobilizations, while stimulated by local issues, are defined as part of a global movement such as “From Tahrir Square to Madison, Wisconsin.” People worldwide, particularly the young, workers, and women are seeing the common dimensions of struggle against imperialism.

Where Do Left and Progressive Forces Fit?

First, we on the left need to “bring imperialism back in;” that is socialist organizations can through education revisit and revise the theory of imperialism so that it is more serviceable for 21^st century socialist movements.

Second, progressives should link war/peace issues to environmental issues, to gender issues, to class issues, and race issues. As Martin Luther King declared in 1967: “I speak of the poor of America who are paying the double price of smashed hopes at home, and death and corruption in Vietnam.”

Third, every socialist and progressive organization should challenge the permanent war economy. Andrew Bacevich pointed out that the framers of the permanent war economy in the 1940s believed that the role of the citizenry was to remain quiescent, pliant, and supportive of the decisions made by the foreign policy establishment. That assumption must be resisted.

Fourth, local and national work should link economic justice, environmental preservation, and peace. These issues are inextricably connected.

Finally, left and progressive groups should respond to specific imperial transgressions by:

-working to cut military budgets

-opposing drone warfare

-saying no to US military aid to Syrian rebels

-supporting the just demands of the Palestinian people

-challenging the construction of military bases in Asia

-demanding an end to subversion in Latin America

-calling for the release of the Cuban 5

-insisting on the end of the Cuban blockade.

This essay was originally prepared for the national convention of the Committees of Correspondence for Democracy and Socialism (CCDS) on Friday, July 19, 2013, in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.

A Timely Repost: The United States’ political system, we are told repeatedly, is the gold standard for the world.

By Harry Targ | The Rag Blog | October 21, 2014

Through her decades of entertaining on stage and screen, [Joan] Rivers developed numerous classic bits and catchphrases, but three small words stand above the rest: “Can we talk?” (Kelli Bender @kbendernyc, 09/04/2014, also at People.com)

I never liked comedienne Joan Rivers who died recently. But her famous one-line introduction to talk show interviewers and stand-up performances is a powerful reminder that certain subjects might be dangerous to discuss in polite company. Whether the United States’ political system is a democratic one is such a subject.

Everything we Americans have learned since infancy suggests that the United States is a democracy. In fact, the United States political system, we are told repeatedly, is the gold standard for the world.

Distinguished data source Freedom House claims that freedom can only exist in democratic political systems. Democratic systems are those in which governments are accountable, the rule of law exists, and associations and speech are guaranteed to all. Polity IV, another data-based source of information about governments, has a more refined definition of democracy: there are procedures by which citizens can express their preferences about leaders and policies and there exist both constraints on executive power and guarantees of civil liberties. University of Iowa Political Science Professor William M. Reisinger prepared a chart summarizing the key components of democracy reflected in the writings of political philosophers (such as Aristotle), politicians (John C. Calhoun), skeptics (H. L. Mencken), and a variety of contemporary political scientists. He appends to his chart 25 quotations that illustrate variations in the understanding of the concept “democracy.” Reisinger identifies five emphases in most writings on the subject.

“1) it is a dangerous form of government; 2) it includes genuine competition for power; 3) it permits mass participation on a legally equal footing; 4) it provides civil and other liberties that restrict the sphere of state power within the society; or 5) it promotes widespread deliberation about how to make and enforce policy so as to promote the common good.” (William M. Reisinger, “Selected Definitions of Democracy,” uiowa.edu)

The United States does not meet broadly endorsed criteria for a democracy.

Reflecting on these five elements of democracy might lead to a more sober understanding of the United States’ political system than what most people learned in school (from kindergarten through graduate programs in political science). Particularly, looking at Reisinger’s last four features might suggest that the United States does not meet broadly endorsed criteria for a democracy.

Does the political system afford “genuine competition for power?” The answer is no for a variety of reasons. Campaigns for office from local through federal positions require enormous amounts of money. Supreme Court decisions have enshrined the right of the wealthy (often the one percent) to pour unlimited financial resources into elections. Koch Brothers affiliates have even invested in local school board elections to influence school curricula and give support to the privatization of education.

Funding of elections is reinforced by rules and regulations limiting political participation to two parties. Also states, from Indiana, Wisconsin and Michigan to the South and Southwest, have imposed rulings making it harder for citizens to vote. Some voter suppression laws, sometimes overturned by courts because of their egregious violation of constitutional principles, have survived serious challenges (such as the Supreme Court decision to allow the Texas disenfranchisement of an estimated 600,000 minority voters) at least for the next election.

In the end money, institutionalized procedures, state laws, and judicial decisions have undermined the possibility of competition for political power.

Money, power, institutions, and media propaganda conspire to limit
political participation.

Everything that has been said above limits equal and mass participation in politics. Money, power, institutions, and media propaganda conspire to limit political participation and the entire weight of the political system works to impair workers, minorities, young people, and the elderly.

In the 1970s, Political Scientist Samuel Huntington wrote a paper for the then influential foreign policy organization, The Trilateral Commission, warning of the “danger of democracy.” The danger he identified all across the globe was the “excess of democracy.” In other words, in the 1970s, (and one would only surmise the condition is worse today) too much participation in politics would challenge the status quo and stability.

Reisinger pointed out that some definitions of democratic states (on his chart six of 25 entries) highlight “civil and other liberties that restrict the sphere of state power within the society.” There is much anecdotal evidence to suggest that in the United States local police have garnered vastly increased power to arrest, charge, kill, and incarcerate more citizens on a per capital basis than most countries in the world. The most overrepresented targets of the expanding police state are young, African/American males but the class character of the criminal justice system has been prevalent as well.

In addition federal government surveillance, criminal conduct by the National Security Agency, and long-standing practices of the Federal Bureau of Investigation to undermine and crush dissent have been significant features of the historical landscape.

Fewer than 10 media conglomerates control most of the information consumed
by the citizenry.

Finally, Reisinger has found some references in discussions of democracy to “deliberation” on public policy to “promote the common good.” Fewer than 10 media conglomerates control most of the information consumed by the citizenry and think tanks generating “expert” analyses are bought and paid for by corporations, government agencies, billionaires, and political parties.

Two recent stories have been ignored in the mainstream media. First, the German government has decided to provide free college education to all its citizens (thus eliminating crippling student debt). This is a policy that should warrant discussion. Second, Cuba has transported a delegation of 160 Cuban health care professionals to Sierra Leone and expects to provide another 260 for Liberia. The first delegation was sent before President Obama announced a U.S. program of medical aid to West Africa.

It could be that if Americans were aware of the special training received by medical personnel in Cuba, particularly in Third World settings, they might suggest that United States and Cuban collaboration would increase the effectiveness of ending the threat of a spreading Ebola epidemic in Africa. These are just two policies worthy of conversation in the United States. (To its credit The New York Times, on its opinion page on October 20, 2014, published an editorial entitled “Cuba’s Impressive Role on Ebola.”)

In sum, the Joan Rivers one-liner is critical now. We need to talk about the reality that the United States is not a democracy. And as a few commentators have pointed out, democracy is dangerous. It is dangerous because the people will be able to participate in the decisions that affect their lives; class, race, and gender will not exclude participation in politics; and the whole reason for democratic institutions is to “promote the common good.” As Pennock put it the ideal democracy is one characterized by:

“Government by the people, where liberty, equality and fraternity are secured to the greatest possible degree and in which human capacities are developed to the utmost, by means including free and full discussion of common problems and interests.” (J. Roland Pennock, Democratic Political Theory, Princeton Press, 1979, 7)

To be clear, the United States is not a democracy. Progressives who believe it is fool themselves at the peril of the country. BUT, rather than disengagement, they should struggle all the harder “inside and outside” conventional political processes to achieve it. And struggles for equality, justice, and a sustainable environment are also struggles for democracy.