THE RULING CLASS OR IF YOU PREFER THE POWER ELITE

 Harry Targ

I heard from a Cuban scholar a long time ago that the US has one ruling class with two political parties. Most of both parties support the military/industrial complex, genocide in the Middle East, kidnapping leaders of other countries, and starving Cubans. I am not advocating ignoring the electoral arena, What I am advocating is we support candidates who are committed to social and economic justice, peace, and environmentalism. And despite what many Democrats claim these are the concerns most voters have, particularly young voters.

And for an update see:

https://whorulesamerica.ucsc.edu/power/class_domination.html

On Cuba: North Meridian Review

 North Meridian Press

“The Threat of a Good Example: The Cuban Revolution Still Faces United States Imperialism,” Essay, Harry Targ.

Jun 2

Obama Opens the Door and Trump Closes It

On December 17, 2014, President Raul Castro and Barack Obama announced that the U.S./Cuban relationship would change.  The United States and Cuba, President Obama said, would begin negotiations to reestablish diplomatic relations, open embassies, and move to eliminate the U.S. economic blockade and restrictions on American travel to the island. This announcement was broadly celebrated by nations everywhere, the Pope who had lobbied Washington for the policy change, and Americans and Cubans alike. Of course, in both countries there were skeptics and the strong and vocal Cuban American lobby immediately condemned the announced policy changes.

Shortly after the announcement the United States and Cuba reestablished the normalization of relations and several steps were taken by both countries including:

·Freeing the last three of the Cuban Five by the United States and the release by Cuba of U.S. agents Roland Sarraff Trujillo and Alan Gross from Cuban prisons.

·Easing restrictions on remittances from Cuban/American families to relatives on the island.

·Using executive action in the United States to loosen restrictions on American travel to Cuba and reestablishing the capacity for banking connections with the island.

·Authorizing flights from the United States to Cuba by multiple airlines.

·Giving authority to some companies to invest in small businesses in Cuba and the increase in trade of selected U.S. commodities, primarily agricultural products and building materials.

·Taking Cuba off the State Department list of sponsors of terrorism

And President Obama deliberated with President Raul Castro at the April 2015 meeting of the Summit of the Americas in Panama, communicating the image of the return to normal diplomatic relations.

However, much needed to be done to complete the normalization of diplomatic relations.   The U.S. economic embargo had not been lifted. The Helms-Burton Act, which prohibits foreign companies from having commercial relations with the island and then the United States, has not been repealed. And the House of Representatives passed a resolution that challenged President Obama’s executive authority to expand the categories of U.S. citizens who could travel to Cuba without applying for a license from the Treasury Department. In addition, many issues of relevance to the two countries such as those involving immigration, control of drug trafficking, and cooperation on disaster relief were not yet resolved.

Most Americans, including Cuban/Americans, supported the full normalization of relations. But a small number of politicians from both political parties who opposed normalization of relations were using their legislative and public political leverage to reverse the will of the American and Cuban people. One example was the misrepresentation of the case of Assata Shakur, who lived in Cuba for over thirty years. Shakur, a former member of the Black Panther Party was tried and convicted on dubious grounds of murdering a police officer in New Jersey and who fled to Cuba in 1984, was being used by anti-Cuban activists to resist the normalization of relations, claiming that Cuba is harboring “terrorists.”

However, the dramatic gestures by Presidents Obama and Castro set the stage for the normalization of diplomatic relations. But as Secretary of State John Kerry suggested more work needed to be done.

"The restoration of diplomatic ties will also make it easier for our governments to engage. After all, we are neighbors, and neighbors will always have much to discuss in such areas as civil aviation, migration policy, disaster preparedness, protecting marine environment, global climate change, and other tougher and more complicated issues. Having normal relations makes it easier for us to talk, and talk can deepen understanding even when we know full well we will not see eye to eye on everything."

-Secretary of State Kerry’s Remarks at Flag Raising Ceremony, 2015

Trump Reverses Modest Improvements in US-Cuban Relations

With God’s help, a free Cuba is what we will soon achieve… I am canceling the last administration’s completely one-sided deal with Cuba.

-President Donald Trump, New Cuba Policy in Speech in Miami’s Little Havana, 2017

With these words, President Trump early in his first term announced the return to the almost 60-year Cold War against Cuba, a war that has cost the people on the island and their relatives in the United States dearly. He initiated efforts to resume travel restrictions, limit trade and investment on the island, and to punish US citizens who traveled to Cuba on their own. These policy changes were motivated primarily by Trump’s promises to a dwindling sector of Cuban Americans in the Republican Party (and a few Democratic politicians as well). Although economics, geopolitics, and white supremacist ideology have long shaped United States foreign policy, narrow and short-term political calculations seemed to have motivated the reversal of modest US openings to Cuba that had been put in place during the Obama Administration.

The influence of the Cuban American right-wing was blatantly obvious in the rhetoric and actions of Trump administration officials. They made the calculated decision to stop and reverse the process of dialogue with the Cuban government, which most US foreign policy experts viewed in a positive light.  President Biden did not reverse Trump’s first term Cuba policies as he had promised The United States resumed a construction of the imagery of a Cuba that was a security threat and adversary.

In 2026 Trump escalated the economic blockade of Cuba, threatening to punish any country that continued to engage in commerce with the island.  (He had already put Cuba back on the “state sponsor of terrorism” list in January, 2025). The most brutal part of the renewed policy now is the blockade of Cuba’s access to oil. The island now suffers blackouts, shortages in transportation, energy access to hospitals and schools and  in the main the United States has enshrined the policy of starving Cuna, an approach to the island that was recommended to President Eisenhower in 1960 to create hunger and desperation  among the Cuban people.

And during the spring of 2026 the Trump administration moved a battleship and troops to the Caribbean, threatening a US war on Cuba.

To compound this, US courts have issued an indictment of Raul Castro for his leadership of the island when a Cuban/American alleged humanitarian plane flew near the island and was shot down. In short, the Trump administration reversed the modest Obama policies toward Cuba in his first term (and Biden did not act to return to the Obama era) and escalated the brutal attacks on Cuba in his second term, including starving the Cuban people and making permanent the threat of war against them.

Where did the Revolution Come From: A Short History

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,” 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 revolt 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.

In fact, nations and peoples who seek their independence (as reflected in the idea of revolution) constitute a threat that must be undermined. And to this, American Imperialism marches forward.

Harry Targ is a Professor Emeritus of Political Science at Purdue University who specializes in United States foreign policy, international political economy, international relations, and peace studies. He is also a prominent progressive political activist, author, and socialist organizer. His book Strategy of an Empire in Decline is available at North Meridian Press.

REVISITING THE NEED TO CHALLENGE HOW MOST PEOPLE THINK ABOUT THE WORLD

 Harry Targ

I read about the dangers of federal deficit, the connection between markets and democracy, capitalist institutions and human well-being, insurance companies and quality health care, the virtues of AI, and the historic victories for peace and justice resulting from supporting Israeli genocide, bombing Iran, kidnapping the leaders of Venezuela, and starving whole populations of Cubans and citizens of over 30 nations.

I am reminded of Antonio Gramsci’s perceptive analysis about how people are ruled as much by what they learn to think and believe as by the use of force. Ideological hegemony refers to the idea systems that ruling classes construct to create willing and pliant citizens in political regimes that lack moral legitimacy or economic rationale.

I am also reminded of theorists from the neo-Marxist Frankfurt School, particularly Herbert Marcuse, who wrote about how the fundamental contradictions in peoples’ lives-- capitalists versus workers and rule by the few versus the possibility of the rule by all-are transformed into unanimity of thinking among people whose interests should make them adversaries not collaborators. Marcuse’s postulate of a “one-dimensionality” in political thinking in the United States was the resultant of the campaigns of the ideological institutions-- media, education, and the political process.

Ken Kesey, in One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, used an interesting metaphor for society, a ward in an institution for the mentally ill ruled by a nurse who sought to dominate the patients through discipline, sedation, and the projection of the belief system that any independent thought was pathological. Somewhere in the novel Kesey refers to an ideological “fog machine.” The reader could almost feel how the patients of the mental ward experience the thick and blinding fog in the air hampering vision and even breath. Kesey gives the reader hope by describing the arrival of a new patient in the ward, Randle McMurphy, who sees through the fog machine and commits his life to helping his fellow inmates rebel against it. While he personally does not survive the struggle, some of the most docile of inmates escape, destroying the ideological hegemony of the system.

I am also reminded of the great Hoosier writer Kurt Vonnegut who describes an Indiana woman who roams through airplanes looking for Hoosiers. Vonnegut describes her quest as pursuit of a “false karass.” It is false because there is nothing about being a Hoosier that automatically leads to shared interests.

For years we have been sold an ideological package of lies. The recent rendition begins with 9/11. The world consists of large numbers of persons of color, especially Muslims, who want to kill us. We need to kill them first. Preemptive attack on those who we would expect to hate us is OK. International Law says so. U.S. diplomatic history says so.

Why should we be afraid? Why should we be prepared to kill? We must be vigilant because they hate our freedom. They want to destroy the natural evolution of societies from autocracies to market-based democracies. We must be fearful, vengeful, and ready to act for the benefit of the world.

Over the last several months, mass movements have emerged projecting very different, even counter-hegemonic ideas about democracy, war and peace, immigrant rights, and the environment, and some have begun to dialogue about building a better world. Young people, workers, women, secularists, opponents of government ICE thugs have started going out in the streets and, in addition, registering their concerns in the electoral arena. Slowly but with determination they are demanding democracy and economic justice. Workers, students, women, political progressives, health care advocates, educators began to stand up and say “no” to the steamrolling right-wing political machine,

For Republicans and many Democrats the problems we face are not capitalism, or austerity policies, or the military/industrial complex. No for them the problem is government. So the forces of ideological hegemony say we need to keep our guard up and be prepared to kill those who threaten us, abroad and at home. Criminal justice systems and norms against violence are to be ignored. At home we must challenge the idea that government must serve the needs of the people.

We on the left must respond to the ideological crusade. While Randle McMurphy in the Kesey novel was a lone actor, progressives need to work together to challenge the fog machine. We need to convince our brothers and sisters that killing and capitalism are antithetical to human needs.

 

 

 

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.