Harry Targ Diary of a Heartland Radical
These essays were written at and after Trumpism arose and the brazen rise of white supremacist movements. ALSO, it was written over time when social movements, including the Bernie Sanders campaign, Black Lives Matter and No Kings captured the imagination of many young people, people of Color, immigrant activists and others. While changes are occurring at breakneck speed the analysis of capitalism and the envisioning of socialism described below seem still relevant, even as we approach the NOVEMBER 2026 Congressional elections.
THE MATERIAL REASONS FOR THE CURRENT INTEREST IN SOCIALISM
Introduction
The twenty-first century economic reality has created a new class society with a dominant class of concentrated wealth at one extreme and a growing class of economically insecure in the other. More and more of those in the latter have become political activists, particularly among the young. This new class society in the United States parallels similar economic changes in both rich and poor countries. As a result of the changes in global and domestic economies social movements have arisen over the years everywhere. From Cairo, Egypt to Madison, Wisconsin, from Greece to Chile, from Syriza and Podemos to the Sanders campaign, to the No Kings rallies and mayoral campaigns in our own day the cry for change, often a demand for socialism, is spreading. The outcome of this new activism is unclear but for the first time in a long time, the prospects for positive social and political change look promising.
The New Class Society
In 1999, Robert Perrucci and Earl Wysong published the first of four editions
of a perceptive sociological analysis that identified what the authors
identified as “the new class society.” They employed a Marxist and Weberian
analysis of class that combined workers’ relationships to the means of
production with their organizational position.
Using data reflecting
their synthetic definition of class, these authors concluded that the popular
portrait of a U.S. class system consisting of a small ruling class, a large
“middle class,” and a small percentage of economically and politically marginalized
people was, by the 1970s, no longer an accurate way to describe society. The
class system of the days of relative prosperity from the 1940s until the late
1960s, which looked like a diamond with a broad middle, had become a class
system looking like a “double diamond.”
In the new class society, the first diamond, the top one,
consists of the “privileged class” composed of a “super-class,” “credentialed
class managers,” and “professionals.” All together these representatives of
privilege constitute about 20 percent of the population. All the others
constitute a “new working class,” some living in relative comfort but most
engaged in wage labor with the constant threat of job loss and wage stagnation,
some modestly self-employed, and a large part-time labor force. This is the
second diamond representing 80 percent of the population.
In short, the political
economy that emerged nearly fifty years ago is one in which a shrinking ruling
class that owns or controls capital has accumulated enormous wealth and
dominates today’s economy. At the other end an increasingly insecure working
class in terms of jobs and income has grown exponentially.
Peter Temin, an MIT economist, confirms the earlier sociological work in his new book “The Vanishing Middle Class.” This book also identifies an emerging two-class society with wealth and power concentrated at the top and poverty and powerlessness at the bottom. In what Temin calls the “dual economy,” the ruling class consists of the finance, technology, and electronics sectors (FTE), representing the top twenty percent as opposed to “the low wage sector;” clerks, assemblers, laborers, and service workers who provide the comforts and profits for the top twenty percent.
In summary, both volumes
suggest that in terms of wealth and power conflicts of interest have to be seen
not between the one percent and everyone else but between the twenty percent
who own/control/ or administer the capitalist system and the eighty percent who
constitute increasingly marginalized labor serving the interests of the wealthy
and powerful.
The Precariat
Guy Standing, a British
economist, has written about the “precariat,” a growing portion of the
worldwide work force, Temin’s “ low wage sector,” who live in economic
insecurity. The term, precariat, refers to a synthesis of the idea of the
proletariat, workers who sell their ability to provide labor to a capitalist
for a wage, and precarity, or economic existence that is unpredictable,
marginal, and insecure. Job scarcity and wage stagnation increasingly is
experienced by workers with professional skills and credentials as well as the
traditional working class.
Standing argues that all
across the globe workers, particularly young workers, live in situations of
economic insecurity and unpredictability, irrespective of credentials, that in
the past guaranteed jobs and living wages. Of course, the precariat do not have
any of the guarantees of union membership and their skills leave them often
working on a part-time contract basis and in isolation from fellow workers. In
addition the precariat include workers in the “informal sector.” These are
workers who often will do anything to survive from day to day: for example, day
labor, street vending, drug dealing, petty crime, or prostitution.
Accumulation by
Dispossession
David Harvey, a Marxist
geographer, revisited Marx’s description of primitive accumulation in his book,
“The Seventeen Contradictions of Capitalism.” Capitalism was created on
the backs of slaves, the slaughter of indigenous people, and the expropriation
of already occupied land. In other words, through kidnapping, forced labor,
slaughter, and occupation, capitalism was born. The expropriation of resources,
people, and land led to the accumulation of wealth that spurred development and
growth.
Harvey then argues that the primitive accumulation of the fifteenth century is similar in outcome to the “accumulation by dispossession,” of the twenty-first century. Today workers lose their property and their personal income in a debt system that sucks their scarce earnings and property. Examples include defaults on mortgage loans and bank repossessions and governmental decisions to confiscate property for purposes of urban redevelopment. Accumulation by dispossession, while not as violent as in the era of primitive accumulation, has the same outcome: expropriating the value of the work of the many for the riches of the few.
Growing Economic
Inequality and Urban Decay and Gentrification
Virtually every study of
the distribution of wealth and income in the United States demonstrates a
dramatic increase in inequality. Also studies sponsored by international
organizations report that despite declines in worldwide absolute poverty, the
trajectory of growing inequality in wealth and income is a central feature of
the global economy. In addition, declining inequality between countries, such
as that between China and the countries of the European Union, have occurred
while inequalities within these countries have widened. In the United States
income and wealth inequality which declined from the 1930s until the 1960s has
returned to levels not seen since the 1920s.
The patterns of
inequality are visible in geographic spaces as well. As more and more people
are forced to migrate to cities, what Mike Davis calls “global slums,”
demarcations of areas of opulence and poverty become visible. Members of the
top twenty percent are consumers of expensive living spaces, elite schools, and
vibrant recreational facilities. They also lobby for public funds to create
recreational attractions that entice tourists to bolster local economies.
Gentrified city spaces are protected by fences and police.
On the other hand, the
bottom eighty percent live in varying degrees of poverty. Housing stocks
crumble, neighborhoods are overcrowded, public services are increasingly
underfunded, and populations are left to lead lives of quiet desperation and
intra-community violence. In the new class society different sectors of the
population live in isolation from each other, except when political conflict
and violence spread across communities.
Also in the new class society youth become pessimistic about their futures. Despite the fact that media and academic studies claim that upward mobility is tied to scholastic achievement, the schools they attend are underfunded. And the cost of higher education, the main source of credentialing the young, has become prohibitively expensive. For those who accumulate massive student debt the experience feels like a modern-day variant of indentured servitude. Jobs for those who do not attend college are scarce and reside primarily in the low-wage service sector. And so-called STEM jobs (science, technology, engineering, and mathematics) are not as plentiful as college promotional brochures suggest. Along with the precarity of the traditional working class is a rising precarity of a new working class of highly educated but unemployable young people.
Racism
Manning Marable
published a perceptive essay in 2006 entitled “Globalization and
Racialization.” In it he adapted, based upon the twenty-first century global
political economy, the prophetic statement by W. E. B. Du Bois that the problem
of the twentieth century was the color line. Marable suggested that the new
global political economy was based upon capital flight, as well-paid
manufacturing jobs left the United States for sweatshops in the Global South.
Unemployment increased in the United States. Downward pressures on wages
and benefits paid workers in poor countries reduced the economic conditions of
US workers. The decline of organized labor in the United States and the Global
South weakened the bargaining position of workers everywhere.
Marable suggested that
the people most vulnerable to the massive changes in the global economy were
the already marginalized people of color. Unemployment rates in poor and Black
communities skyrocketed, particularly among youth. The new gentrification and
shift in politics from welfare state capitalism to austerity led to declining
public services in poor communities. This has had particularly devastating
impacts on educational institutions.
With declining economic
opportunities, a growing sense of hopelessness, draconian government policies
such as the wars on drugs and crime, literally millions of African Americans,
and other people of color, have become victims of mass incarceration, what
Michelle Alexander calls “The New Jim Crow.” Finally, many states have laws
that prevent former felons from voting. The Marable framework, which he refers
to as “global apartheid” and “the New Racial Domain,” thus links globalization
of production to racism; particularly growing unemployment and urban decay,
criminalization, mass incarceration, and voter disenfranchisement.
Neoliberalism: the Latest Stage of Capitalism
The so-called “golden
age of the US economy,” 1945 to 1968, may have been an anomaly in American
history. The United States emerged from World War Two as the economic and
military hegemonic power. The war led to a fourfold increase in United States
trade compared with the late 1930s. In 1945 it produced about 2/3 of all the
industrial goods manufactured in the world and US investments constituted about
¾ of all the world’s investments. With fears of stagnation accompanying the
war’s end, the Truman Administration launched a massive program of military
investment to forestall declining demand for US goods and services.
In terms of
international relations, the United States played an instrumental role in
establishing powerful international economic institutions, such as the
International Monetary Fund and World Bank. It helped rebuild an anti-communist
Europe through a massive financial aid system. It later established foreign
assistance programs for newly “independent” countries requiring their
commitment to the maintenance of a global capitalist system.
At home a United States
economy was created that stimulated high mass consumption. People were
socialized to believe that their self-worth was determined by the quantity and
quality of goods and services they consumed. The new communication medium,
television, educated viewers as to the products that were available (as well as
the enemies overseas who were the threat to the domestic consumer society).
However, by the late
1960s, markets were glutted and demand for goods lessened even though wages and
benefits for some workers increased. Federal and state governments had been
increasing services such as education, health care, and transportation. Both profit
rates and consumer demand declined. Growing political protest against the
Vietnam war and racism across the country added to emerging economic
stagnation.
By the 1970s, the squeeze on profits and reduced demand, was exacerbated by Middle East wars and large increases in the price of oil, which made some corporations and banks richer while economic stagnation, including both high inflation and unemployment, ensued. At this point, the United States economy began a shift to what David Harvey calls “financialization.” A small number of banks and corporations, mostly US but also European and Japanese, began to shift from encouraging manufacturing growth to financial speculation. A “new” debt system was encouraged, one in which oil-poor countries borrowed more and more money from bankers to pay for continued oil imports. In exchange debtor nations would promise to carry out new economic policies at home: cut government spending, privatize public institutions, deregulate domestic economies, and shift economic activities from production for domestic use to production for sale in the world market.
Thus, the new era of
“neoliberal globalization” was initiated. The new system was driven by
financial speculators, declining autonomy of nation-states, and the downsizing
of wages and benefits everywhere. At the same time rates of profit for
speculators increased and smaller numbers of banks and other financial
institutions increasingly dominated the global economy. This system was
initiated in the Global South, spread to Western Europe and after the fall of
the Soviet Union and its allies to Eastern Europe. In the 1980s neoliberalism
was embraced by Prime Minister Thatcher in Great Britain and President Ronald
Reagan in the United States. The best way to characterize policy in the age of
neoliberal globalization is “austerity,” reducing the economic opportunities of
the many for the benefit of the few.
Neoliberal globalization
is the systemic source of the new class society (or the dual economy), the rise
of the precariat, accumulation by dispossession, growing inequality and urban
gentrification, and the expansion of racism.
A Revitalized Interest
in Socialism in the Twenty-First Century
As history has shown,
the accumulation of wealth and power by ruling elites, or dominant classes,
never goes unchecked. The drive for domination breeds resistance. And
resistance takes many forms: traditional revolutionary practices, building
alternative economic and political institutions, non-violent refusal to obey
the institutions that support economic misery and political repression, and
where practical, participation in electoral processes. Social change is
many-sided and several strategies together are most likely to bring positive
results.
History shows also that
struggles for change are broadly political, require organization, mass
mobilization, and education. Change requires analyses of the causes of the
problems needing solution and a vision of what a better future
might look like. And there is an inextricable connection between the causes of
the problems, the tactics needed to change the situation, and a vision of a
better society.
The analyses above highlight the changing character of the global political economy, emerging class structures, and the growing vulnerabilities of literally millions of people: young and old: Black, Brown, and White; female and male; gay and straight; and at all levels of education and training. At the root of the problem is the capitalist system, a system whose reason for being is the maximization of profit. People today are talking about a new society, a socialist society. Socialism implies a political economy in which people contribute their talents, their labors, for the public good and share equitably in the product of their labor. And socialism presumes democratic participation in work places, the political system, and the community.
References
Robert A. Perrucci and
Earl Wysong. The New Class Society, Rowman and Littlefield,
1999 (the first of four editions).
Peter Temin, The
Vanishing Middle Class: Prejudice and Power in a Dual Economy, MIT
Press, 2017.
Victor Tan Chen, “The Dual Economy,” Working Class Perspectives, https://workingclassstudies.wordpress.com/2017/07/24/the-dual-economy/
Guy Standing, The
Precariat: The New Dangerous Class, Bloomsbury Academic, 2014.
David Harvey, Seventeen Contradictions and the End of Capitalism, Oxford University Press, 2015.
Mike Davis, Planet
of Slums, Verso, 2017.
Harry Targ, Challenging
Late Capitalism, Neoliberal Globalization and Militarism, Lulu.com,
2006.
Manning Marable,
“Globalization and Racialization,” ZNET, zcom.org, March 2,
2009.
Various articles on political economy,
social movements, peace and justice in Harry Targ, Diary of a Heartland
Radical, www.heartlandradical.blogspot.com
Harry Targ
(I belong to the Committees of Correspondence for Democracy and Socialism
which is having its national convention from July 23-26 in San Francisco, www.cc-ds.org One
workshop will address the issue of socialist education. The comments below were
written for that workshop but address the more general question of how any
progressive organization might address the educational component of their
political work).
Almost a decade ago, one of the leaders of a socialist group I belong to (the
Committees of Correspondence for Democracy and Socialism or CCDS) proposed that
the organization develop a Socialist Education Project. The proposal came at a
time when the promise of the “new economy” built on the growth of the Silicon
Valley had begun to fade. Neo-liberal globalization, so much celebrated by
every administration since the late 1970s, continued to generate inequalities
in wealth and income all around the globe. Despite the short Clinton
administration economic recovery unemployment rates of five or six percent
continued. The process of financialization, that is a systemic economic shift
from the production of goods and services to financial speculation, undergirded
the growing pathology of capitalist development. In this economic and political
environment mainstream commentators began to write about the insights that Marx
and his followers brought to the study of capitalism. So it seemed to us in
CCDS that a socialist political organization needed to explore rigorous study
of the evolution of capitalism, Marxist analysis of how it works, and the
logical possibilities for alternatives to it, particularly socialist ones.
The SEP then began. Local CCDS activists launched study groups. Members of the
SEP committee generated reading materials to support local study groups. Some
materials were assembled as “modules,” or integrated short courses with
readings, questions for study, and bibliographic suggestions. These were placed
on a new SEP web page. Study groups on the West Coast, the Midwest, and the
South came and went. Only a few still survive.
The political and economic landscape has changed from the point at which the
idea of a SEP was first conceived. The economic crisis today is considerably
more dramatic and far-reaching than a decade ago. Real unemployment rates,
hitting peoples of color the hardest, approach 15 percent. The financialization
of the economic system has reached new levels, institutionalizing the ruling
class power of the financiers. Internationally, the United States has embarked
on at least two wars this century and nearly 800 U. S. military bases can be
found around the world. “Normal” military budgets and war costs approximate a
$1 trillion a year.
Politically resistance to neo-liberal globalization and finance capital has
grown as well. Many nations of the Global South have begun to organize against
western imperialism. In the United States itself, an extraordinary mobilization
occurred, particularly among youth, to elect the first African American
president of the United States. The political terrain today has shifted from an
environment in which progressives must “fight the right” to one in which U.S.
politics is more opaque; some times progressive, sometimes centrist, sometimes
right wing.
In this context a renewed, revitalized SEP is more relevant than ever. Those of
us who are interestedin envisioning a socialism for the twenty-first century
must ask ourselves what we want to achieve in such a project and how we might
go about trying to achieve it. We need to address three basic sets of
questions.
1. What do we mean by socialism? How is it created? What is the system
(capitalism) that demands the creation of socialism as an alternative? How does
this system work? What kinds of political movements are needed to move history
from the capitalist system to socialism? What theories, commentaries, books,
articles, videos etc. can help us address how capitalism works and the
socialist alternative?
2. If socialism is a way of acting in the world, what can socialist pedagogy,
or ways of learning, help us to build socialism. In other words, what in the
process of education teaches us about being socialists and organizing as
socialists.
3. What specific educational tools can we use to explore the first set of
questions about the nature of capitalism and the meaning of socialism? How do
we use books, articles, videos, music, debates in our study groups?
Fundamentally, what are study groups? How do we create them? How do we recruit
participants? What is most likely to attract them? Do they have to be face to
face encounters? What role for electronic interactions?
I want to address the question of pedagogy, or the process of learning
specifically. I want to argue that there is a socialist practice that is
relevant to how we behave in all social and political settings, including
educational ones. In other words, when we form study groups we need to act like
socialists. People learn political principles through practice as well as
through theory.
Professors of education and educational practitioners, either through formal
training and/or intuition come to the realization that teaching and learning
are done in different ways and these different ways affect what is learned. One
of the most influential educational theorists from the vantage point of radical
socialist change was Brazilian educator Paulo Friere. His book, The
Pedagogy of the Oppressed, influenced revolutionaries and reformers around
the world, particularly at the grassroots in the Global South.
Heather Clayton explored five main points embedded in Freire’s work. According
to her, Paulo Friere emphasized;
1. the importance of dialogue and the fact that the dialogue was two way,
contained in a respectful relationship. It meant that people worked with each
other.
2. ‘praxis’-action that was informed by knowledge and should be linked to
values. But it wasn’t knowledge for knowledge sake; it was to empower people to
use the knowledge to make an impact on their world.
3. building hope for the oppressed. As consciousness is increased, society can
be transformed.
4. the importance of linking education with the real world experiences of the
students.
5. trying to highlight and minimize the differences between teachers and learners (Heather Clayton, “From the Ideological to the Concrete: Ideas from Paulo Friere, Understanding by Design and the Ontario Curriculum and Their Implications to Layered Curriculum,” http://www.help4teachers.com/heatherpaper.htm )
Exploring these points we might suggest the following. First, socialism is not
an idea, “a thing,” but a set of relationships built on mutual respect, even
among those with different points of view. It might be worth mentioning in our
groups that mutual respect is the inter-personal cornerstone of socialism as a
process. The group environment that is based on both equality and the
possibility of self-realization is basic to the kind of society we want to
achieve.
Second, the knowledge we seek, we seek because we want to change the world.
Books and articles, lectures and videos are tools to help us define our values,
assess our historical circumstances, and guide political action. We engage in
study because what we learn and how we learn will have utility for our
practical political work.
Third, knowledge can be empowering. Knowledge provides an explanation of why
human beings are in the situations they are in. That knowledge leads to
explorations about how to change reality. In the sense that knowledge proceeds
action, it is empowering. The more we know, the more likely we will be able to
act effectively in the world.
Fourth, each participant in any study group brings to the group a lifetime of
experience. Economic survival, political activism, and organizational
commitments, all framed by various educational backgrounds insure the richness
of discussion and debate. Since socialist study groups are motivated to
understand the past and the present and to figure out ways to shape the future,
the connections between study and the realities of peoples’ lives is vital.
Fifth, given what has been said already, each study group participant is a
teacher and a learner. Traditional models of education are often hierarchical,
The teacher brings wisdom, knowledge, and methodological skills to the
classroom setting and the students are receptors of the wisdom. While this
model of education has its place, it is clearly inappropriate for socialist
study groups. It reinforces status differences and presumes the teacher is the
repository of all knowledge while the other participants have nothing special
to contribute to discussion and debate.
I would like to raise a series of questions that bear on defining socialism,
socialist pedagogy, and practical education.
1. Should all study groups be face-to-face or are there reasons and occasions
for study groups using new technologies? Could SEP organize a nation-wide
reading group using listservs for discussion of readings as an alternative?
2. What is the optimal size for local study groups? Is there a size that
exceeds effective interaction?
3. What kinds of materials should be used in study groups and if there are a
variety of resources and what is the most
appropriate mix to stimulate discussion? These might include books, articles,
videos, You Tube interviews, music, newspapers, blog essays, novels, poems etc.
Are there any guidelines that could be prepared to suggest amounts of reading,
level of complexity of reading, and optimal mixes of print and visuals?
4. How should study group interactions be initiated and carried out? Should
there be teachers and students? Should such roles be circulated? Should
everyone be responsible for starting a discussion? Or only those with special
experience and knowledge? How are materials for use chosen?
5. What are the goals of the study group? Should they be discussed at the
outset? Does the study group wish to acquire information and/or analytical and
methodological skills? Does the study group want to identify a political
project-a petition campaign, a rally, a letter-writing program for the group?
In addition, should the group seek to recruit more members? If so, how?
6. Having reflected on socialism, pedagogy, and practice what should the role
of organizational projects, such as the SEP in CCDS, be in fostering socialist
education nationally, regionally, and locally?
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 UNFOLDING OF THREE IDEOLOGIES TODAY
Harry Targ
Perhaps the most useful definition of “ideology” is one that refers to a body of interconnected ideas or a system of thought about how the world works. These ideas often explain the meaning of life, how and why society is organized the way it is, and how it ought to be organized. However, ideas do not come from the ether.
They come from class position and concrete interests, background, social status, and education by family, schools, peer groups, and popular culture. (Diary of a Heartland Radical, “The Three Ideologies in American Life,” September 20, 2015).
Ideologies are ways of explaining reality. They may not be
presented in a systematic or mathematical or rigorous way but the careful
listener can discern their underlying messages. And, of course, the messenger
has a point of view that usually comes from his or her economic or political
position. At base, ideologies are reflections of the interests of those
who articulate them and believe in them. All this is becoming more
important to understand and process during the 2016 election season.
One ideological pole is committed to what the world knows
as the “neoliberal” ideology. It promotes a twenty-first century capitalist
agenda. It supports financial speculation and privileges wealth and entrenched
political power. To maintain profits austerity policies in neoliberalism’s name
are imposed on working classes. War and preparation for war are necessitated by
the resistance to the globalization of these policies. The application of this
ideology domestically and internationally requires compliant support from most
workers, women, and minorities. And critical to it, the neoliberal ideology
presents itself as what it is not. It is not a perspective that represents the
interests of the 99 percent. And to justify its perpetuation its supporters say
what former British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher used to proclaim; “there
is no alternative.”
A second ideological pole has two variants. In the short
run either of these may be more a danger to humankind than neoliberalism. The
first variant is the “virtues of wealth” ideology. Wealth, however it is
secured, is its own justification. The wealthy are virtuous. The wealthy are
wise. And the wealthy therefore are ordained to rule. Since most workers, most
people of color, most women are poor, by definition they are unworthy of
respect as human beings. And masses of people the “virtues of wealth” ideology
suggests, can trust the brash rugged individualist super-wealthy individual to
rule because he does not represent traditional institutionalized economic or
political power. The wealthy few are like deities to be revered and obeyed. And
to be clear, this view is profoundly anti-human and justifies unlimited
violence at home and abroad based on what the virtuous leader decides is
necessary.
A second variant of this ideological pole, the “fundamentalist” ideology, rationalizes opposition to government in theological terms. The only way to rescue humanity, this ideology suggests, is to follow a particular god embedded in some kind of supernatural fundamentalism; a fundamentalism that regards opponents as monsters. While its current promoters portray the social order in terms of existent evil only to be saved by religious good, their political positions would continue to reward wealth and power at the expense of the vast majority and would lead to enormous violence against people everywhere, who are seen as infidels. Whether the leaders derive their legitimacy from their wealth or their special piety, it is their task to lead and the peoples to follow.
A third ideological pole, “building 21st century
socialism,” is based upon the proposition that all social institutions,
including government, should serve the people, all the people. It is based upon
the sanctity of human life and the belief that it is through society that every
individual can achieve her/his potential. Concretely this means real economic
justice, democracy, fairness in the law, and peace. The issues embedded in the
21st century socialist vision involve
education, health care, environmental sustainability, jobs, adequate income,
and the development of programs to attack racism, sexism, homophobia, and all
forms of discrimination. This third ideological pole asserts, as the World
Social Forum proclaimed a long time ago, that “another world is
possible.”
From the vantage point of the radically different character
of these ideologies, the 2026 election becomes very important. In the long run,
given the growing danger of violence to nature and people, building 21st century
socialism offers the only possibility for building a just and environmentally
sustainable world.
It is important to note that the continuation of or defeat
of any of these will not be determined by the election of any one person.
Victories and defeats are more about the power of political movements and the
magnitude of electoral victories or defeats in the service of these movements.
But there is no question that the momentum that emerges from the election
battles of 2026 matters.
For those on the Left, the only real option for the
survival of humankind is 21st century socialism. And the
achievement of it will require a long-term struggle for the
consciousness of the people.
Harry Targ
Indiana
politicians responded to the Supreme Court decision on birthright citizenship
in facebook posts :
Senator Banks: A nation
without borders is not a nation. The 14th amendment. was written to ensure
equal citizenship between Americans, not to provide loopholes for illegals
& birth tourists. Congress must act.
Pass the SAVE America Act .Protect our
borders
And:
Todd
Rokita. Indiana Attorney General. The Constitution is not a
suicide pact. It does not require the U.S. to recognize birthright citizenship;
it has never required the U.S. to recognize birthright citizenship. SCOTUS got
this seriously wrong and its decision will have damaging consequences. That
makes our work combatting illegal immigration more important than ever.
However, the Tricontinental organization takes a very different view:
Taking a modified "world system perspective,'" we are led to view human migration as a global process that is intimately connected to the global political economy, particularly the mobility of capital and war (now hybrid). This requires us to understand that millions of people yearly flee violence and starvation. This migration, really as integral to global reality
as the nation-state system is intimately connected to the US and the global political economy. In sum, migration is a foreign policy issue and a political economy issue, Vijay Prashad updates the story as follows:
https://thetricontinental.org/newsletterissue/migration-underdevelopment/)
Why Migration
People migrate from one
place to another for a variety of reasons. A good part of that migration has to
do with international relations, national economies, and the increasingly
globalized economy. Literally millions of people have moved from one geographic
space to another in the twenty-first century, in most cases for reasons of
physical fear or economic need. Two prominent causes that “push” people to
leave their communities and homeland relate to “hybrid wars” and neoliberal
globalization.
Hybrid wars refer
to the long-term policies of imperial powers to systematically undermine
political regimes that pursue policies and goals that challenge their global
hegemony. Over long periods of time imperial powers have used force, covert
operations, supporting pliant local elites, and funneling money to disrupt
local political processes. If targeted countries still reject outside
interference the imperial power uses force to overthrow recalcitrant
governments. In the 1980s all these tactics were used by the United States to
crush revolutionary ferment in Central America. Of course, the US hybrid war
strategy has been a staple of United States policy in the region ever since
President Franklin Roosevelt declared the policy of “The Good Neighbor.”
Neoliberalism refers
to the variety of policies that rich capitalist countries and international
institutions such as the International Monetary Fund, the World Bank, and the
World Trade Organization have imposed on debt-ridden poor countries. These
policies require poor countries to cut back on public services, deregulate
their economies, reduce tariffs that protect their own industries and
agriculture, and in other ways insist that poor countries open their economies
to foreign investment and trade penetration. The impacts of neoliberalism have
been to impose austerity on largely marginalized populations. Their agriculture
and industries have been undermined by subsidized agribusinesses from the
Global North and global investors. Since the initiation of neoliberal policies
in the 1970s gaps between rich and poor nations and rich and poor people
within nations have grown all across the world, with a few exceptions such as
China.
In sum, peoples everywhere have experienced the creation of repressive regimes and economic policies that have shifted vast majorities from modest survival to deep poverty. (Susan Jonas once wrote that the Guatemalan people lived more secure lives before the arrival of Spanish colonizers in the fifteenth century than ever since). The globalization of the economy, increased violence and repression within countries (largely involving United States interference), increasing income and wealth inequality and poverty, and the rise of repressive regimes everywhere, has led to massive emigration. Some estimates indicate that 37 million people left their home countries (some 45 countries) between 2010 and 2015 for humanitarian reasons.
One of the ironies of world history is that capital in the
form of investments, trade, the purchase of natural resources, the
globalization of production, and military interventions have been common and
necessary features of capitalism since its emergence in the sixteenth century.
But, paradoxically, and except for the global slave trade and selected periods
of history, the movement of people has been illegal. (Sometimes branding
migrants as “illegal” has been a device to cheapen their labor). The idea of national
sovereignty has been used to justify categorizing some human migrants as
“illegal.” If capital is and has been legal, the movement of people should be
legal as well. It makes no sense, nor is it humane, to brand any human beings
as “illegal.”
The Concept of Open Borders
This sketchy analysis of the “root causes” of emigration suggest the need to oppose imperialism, both in the form of hybrid wars and promotion of neoliberal economic policies. This traditional task of peace and anti-imperialist campaigns is ongoing
and needs to continue. And the analyses of the deleterious effects of hybrid wars and neoliberalism should be linked to movements fighting against cruel and inhumane immigration policies in recipient countries, such as the United States. In addition, drawing on history, law, ethics, and a humane and socialist vision of the universality of humankind, progressives should expand on a conversation raised by some about the concept of “open borders.”
The idea of open borders
has not been sufficiently discussed as the immigration crisis in the United
States and Europe has unfolded. The core concept, with much room for discussion
of implementation, suggests that, as a recently endorsed Democratic Socialists
of America (DSA) statement calls for, there should be an “uninhibited
transnational free movement of people….and a pathway to citizenship for all
non-citizen residents.” The idea of open borders implies that no
human being by virtue of her/his presence in any geographic space can be
defined as “illegal” and that the principles of the Universal Declaration of
Human Rights apply to everyone, everywhere.
In a 2017 article Aisha
Dodwell, Global Justice Now, wrote in defense of open borders (Aisha Dodwell,
“7 Reasons Why We should Have Open Borders,” New Internationalist, November
29, 2017). Among her arguments are the following:
-Borders are tools to
separate the rich and powerful from the poor.
-Borders do not stop
efforts to emigrate but exacerbate violence against already victimized people.
-Immigrants are
erroneously blamed for declining employment and jobs when, in fact, it is the
demonization of immigrants that divides workers from each other.
-Open borders would
allow for emigres to return home when the brutal repressive and economic
conditions that led them to flee were reduced.
-Open borders would lead to greater employment, increased earnings, rising demand for goods and services, and through income repatriation, more money sent back to families in countries the emigres fled. In short, open borders would be a stimulus for economic growth in both the country of origin and the host country of emigres.Open borders would mean the equalization of the rights of people to emigrate; thus, avoiding the current policies that allow for immigration of certain populations (such as skilled workers) and not others.
Historically, open
borders have always existed for corporations, banks, the super-rich, tourists
and other select populations who are beneficiaries of the global capitalist
system.
Earlier Roque Planes,
Latino Voices, (“16 Reasons Why Opening Our Borders Makes More Sense Than
Militarizing Them,” Huffpost, September 2, 2014) adds to the
list of reasons justifying open borders. Planes quotes an immigration expert
who has argued that, with glaring exceptions such as Asians, open borders
existed until the 1920s. “‘Legally’ meant something very different then than it
does now. At the time, the United States accepted practically everyone who showed
up with few restrictions other than the 1882 Chinese Exclusion Act and a brief
health examination. The foreign-born share of the population, 12.9 percent, is
lower today than it was during the entire period from 1860 to 1920, according
to data published by the Brookings institution.”
Planes posited arguments
pertaining to open borders:
-Today capital and goods
flow across borders but not always labor.
-Rich people have the
privilege of open borders.
-the US immigration
system is broken.
-Open borders within the
European Union, while increasingly volatile politically, did not lead to the
collapse of European economies.
-‘Illegal’ immigration
is a direct resultant of US policies. Planes sites overthrowing governments,
financing militaries in poor countries, promoting policies that destroy
domestic agriculture in poor countries, and, he could have added, the war on
drugs.
-Open borders increase
the possibility of immigrants returning to their homelands.
-Immigrants, in the main, are not the cause of stagnant wages in the United States. Using anti-immigrant and racist policies divert attention from the primary causes of economic exploitation.
-The broken immigration
system has provided huge profits for the prison/industrial complex and large
budgets for law enforcement agencies.
As to the last point,
Todd Miller, Empire of Borders: The Expansion if the U.S. Border Around
the World, Verso Books, 2019, argues that United States policy
is “pushing out the border,” such that allies tighten their own borders to
serve the needs of expanding imperial control. In addition, by pressuring other
countries to tighten their own border security, the U.S. is expanding its
border security apparatus, to include new special forces and expansion of State
Department and other agency activities.
A reviewer of Miller’s
book, (Cora Currier, “Pushing out the Border: How the U.S. is Waging a Global
War on Migration,” Portside, August 4, 2019) quotes Miller who
writes that U.S. Customs and Border Protection “has trained new patrol and
homeland security units for Kenyan, Tanzanian and Ugandan borders.” The
reviewer points out from Miller’s study that “…the U.S. Department of Homeland
Security can be found assisting border projects in the Philippines, the
Dominican Republic, India, Poland, Turkey, and Vietnam.” In addition, the
Border Patrol has offices in Mexico and Canada and a presence in Puerto Rico to
oversee the Caribbean. Quoting Miller: “Hundreds of millions in U.S. funds have
flowed to Central American borders to turn them into U.S.-style defensible
zones.” And soldiers from around the world are flown to the U.S. southwest to
gain experience in border control. Clearly, Miller is describing a growing
military/corporate/immigration complex. The ideological glue justifying this
massive enterprise are claims about national sovereignty and presumed racist
threats that people fleeing repression and starvation represent.
What To Do?
Along with the panoply
of proposals for immigration reform, campaigns to combat racism, and the
movements to provide sanctuary to desperate migrant peoples, progressives need
to look at the history/ theory/ and practice of anti-immigrant policies. A central
conclusion that needs to be raised is to call and work for open borders as
suggested by the DSA resolution on open borders.
In sum central elements of a truly radical and humane response to the immigration crisis in the United States and the world should include:
-Increased efforts to
challenge imperialism everywhere in both its
political/military dimensions and its intrusive neoliberal economic policies
-Rejection of the idea
that people can be deemed “illegal.”
-Mobilizing around the
concept of opening borders to people fleeing repression and economic
deprivation, similar to the U.S immigration policies of the early part of the
twentieth century.
-Using the Universal
Declaration of Human Rights as a guide to law and practice all across the
globe.
-Revitalizing programs
of humanitarian assistance on a global basis including revisiting the possible
value of instituting economic regulations of global capitalism that were once
proposed in the United Nations, referred to as “The New International
Economic Order.”
-Work to dismantle the
military/corporate/immigration complex.
While these larger demands will be difficult to achieve, working for them and articulating a vision of the world where human beings are not deemed illegal will add clarity to the reasons behind more modest demands for reform.
CONNECTING PEACE AND JUSTICE:U.S. FOREIGN POLICY AND THE STRUGGLE AGAINST HUMAN MISERY
Harry Targ
A necessary but edited
repost
(We must act on the
connections between war and militarism, Israeli genocide, support for war in
Iran and threats of war against Cuba, terrorism, military bases overseas,
sanctions against over 30 nations and ICE terrorism across the United States,
cuts in food assistance, opposition to affordable healthcare,
institutionalizing again racism and patriarchy, destroying democratic
institutions, and environmental devastation everywhere. Call it socialism, the
United Nations Declaration on Human Rights, humanism or whatever. US
foreign, domestic, and economic policies must change).
The need of a constantly expanding market for its products
chases the bourgeoisie over the entire surface of the globe. It must nestle
everywhere, settle everywhere, establish connections everywhere. Karl
Marx and Friedrich Engels, The Communist Manifesto, 1848.
And here let me emphasize the fact and it cannot be repeated too often that the working class who fight all the battles, the working class who make the supreme sacrifices, the working class who freely shed their blood and furnish the corpses, have never yet had a voice in either declaring war or making peace. It is the ruling class that invariably does both. They alone declare war and they alone make peace. Yours not to reason why; Yours but to do and die. Eugene V. Debs, June 16, 1918, Canton, Ohio.
Somehow this madness must cease. We must stop now. I speak
as a child of God and brother to the suffering poor of Vietnam. 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, April 4, 1967, Riverside
Church, New York.
The Capitalist System is a War System
Marx and Engels declared in their famous 1848 manifesto
that capitalism was a world system. Due to cutthroat competition
every corporation, every bank, every small business would need to expand, or it
would be defeated in the marketplace by more successful competitors. Therefore,
competition would lead to consolidation, a shift from many economic actors to
declining numbers of them. This process of capital accumulation extended to the
entire globe.
Lenin argued that by the dawn of the twentieth century,
competition had led to monopolies within countries. States driven by monopolies
expanded all across the globe. Competing states often engaged in war. Their
expansion also generated resistance, rebellion and revolution around the world.
In sum, the capitalist system by its very nature was a war system.
In addition, capitalist economies, particularly imperial
powers such as the United States, required natural resources, cheap or slave
labor, land, customers for products, and opportunities to invest accumulated
profits in overseas corporations, and banks. In the post-World War II period,
capitalist expansion even required the establishment of a global debt system
that would increase the possibility of penetrating the economies of countries
that incurred debts.
The realities that Marx identified in the nineteenth century are relevant today in two ways. First, given technological advances, what economists call neoliberal globalization is the logical extension of his insight that capitalism needs to “establish connections everywhere.”
Second, given episodes of resistance to capitalist
expansion, conflict and violence in the global system are likely to occur from
time to time among capitalist states (each seeking to enhance their own
monopolies), between capitalist states and emerging socialist states that
reject the very premises of capitalist economics, and between capitalist states
and marginalized people who rebel against capitalist/imperialist intrusion.
In the twentieth century hundreds of wars and covert
interventions resulted in deaths exceeding 100 million people. Between 1945 and
1995 the United States alone was involved in wars, civil conflicts, and covert
operations that cost more than 10 million deaths. Most of this violence was
justified as a response to a demonic Soviet Union and “international communism”
threatening “the free world.” The defense of the “free world” usually was
fought out in the Global South. In fact, in the twentieth century the vast
majority of victims of the capitalist war system were people of color,
primarily non-combatants. And adding to the direct human cost have been the
devastation of the land, the extraction of basic resources, and the destruction
of the environment.
Impacts of the
Capitalist War System in Imperial States
Foreign policy has always been inextricably connected to
the struggles for social and economic justice; including worker and human
rights. And, as a consequence, foreign policy has always been used as a tool to
distract, divide, and cloud the consciousness of working people everywhere.
Eugene V. Debs, leader of the Socialist Party and four-time candidate for president of
the United States, was jailed for his speech in Canton, Ohio decrying United
States participation in World War I because of its profoundly negative
consequences for the working class at home.
Debs pointed out that American “democracy” allowed no real
opportunity for workers, the people who fought its wars, to determine whether
to go to war or not. Workers were not allowed to hear and read all about the
consequences of military participation. Before and during World War I, the
United States government created a propaganda arm, The Committee on Public
Information, to disseminate information to the citizenry promoting the United
States entry into the war in Europe. Opponents of the war, such as Debs, were
silenced. It was during the war that the Bolsheviks seized power in Russia and
began to establish an alternative to the capitalist war system. President
Wilson and his Secretary of State Robert Lansing warned of the danger of this
threat to “democracy” and “freedom.”
As Debs implied, the capitalist war system needed
impressionable military recruits to fight the wars in the name of a higher good
while banks and corporations expanded their presence on a worldwide basis. But
the capitalist war system which recruited foot soldiers also required the
accumulation of money capital to pay for the wars and the capacity to develop
“connections everywhere.” And after the second world war, during the Cold War,
trillions of dollars have been wasted on the establishment of a worldwide
network of military bases and outposts; troop deployments; space, drone,
aircraft, and nuclear technologies; and a security apparatus that has its
electronic and personnel tentacles in virtually every other country.
In addition, the development of a military capability to
maintain and expand the capitalist system became a profitable business in its
own right. What President Eisenhower called “the military-industrial complex”
is a dense network of profitable connections between huge corporations, banks,
universities, think tanks, and manufacturing facilities in virtually every
city, town, state, and most importantly, Congressional District. The United
States after World War II created what Andrew Bacevich, international
historian, called a “permanent war economy.”
Economic Consequences of the Capitalist/War System
Dr. Martin Luther King, in his famous speech at Riverside
Church in New York City, spoke of the devastating consequences of the Vietnam
War on the Vietnamese people and the poor and oppressed at home. To him, the
carnage of war not only destroyed the targets of war (their economies, their
land, their cultures) but the costs also misallocated the resources of the
nation-states which initiated wars.
Every health and welfare provision of the government,
local, state, and federal, was limited by resources allocated for the war
system. Health care, education, transportation, jobs, wages, campaigns to
address enduring problems of racism, sexism, homophobia, environmental
revitalization, and non-war related scientific and technological research were
reduced almost in direct proportion to rising military expenditures. Over half
the US federal budget goes to military spending past and current. And
the irony is that the money that is extracted from the vast majority of the
population of the United States goes to military budgets that enhance the
profits of the less than one percent of the population who profit from the war
system as it exists.
“I speak for the poor of America who are paying the double
price of smashed hopes at home, and death and corruption in Vietnam.” Since
1967 when he made that speech, Dr. King would surely have added a long list of
other wars to the Vietnam case: wars in Central America and South America, the
Middle East, Asia, and Africa. and the more than 1,000 bases and outposts where
US troops or hired contractors are fighting wars on behalf of capitalist
expansion. Meanwhile the gaps between rich and poor people on a worldwide basis
have increased dramatically with some twenty percent of the world’s population
living below World Bank defined poverty lines.
The Meaning of the Capitalist/War
System for Today’s Progressive Movements: Bringing the Peace Movement Back In
Paradoxically, the left and progressive forces in the
United States are intuitively aware of the points long ago proclaimed by Marx,
Debs, and King. Libraries are full of analyses and data that corroborate the
basic arguments made above. But the recent resurgence of a new socialist left
and an energized progressive majority, have not developed analyses and programs
that make the necessary connections between capitalism and human misery at home
and the war system abroad.
First, many grassroots activists, seeing the need to target their energies to local and state politics, and single issues nationally, have taken the view that adding foreign policy to the agenda, complicates movement building. In fact, the exciting campaigns of Bernie Sanders also dealt only marginally with foreign policy. And Sanders mostly spoke of foreign policy when his opponents raised questions about his visits to Nicaragua and Cuba in the 1980s. In retrospect, it seems obvious that progressives should link the possibility of a financially sustainable health care system or free tuition for college to reductions in military spending.
Second, progressives have tactically avoided pressing
necessary conversations about the past and present, and how a progressive
United States government could participate in the future international system.
For example:
There needs to be a serious discussion of twentieth century
socialism: both governments and movements. Sectors of the left in the United
States have been unwilling to have a textured analysis of the strengths as well
as the weaknesses of socialist regimes, what some refer to as “really existing
socialism,” and how distortions of those systems were connected to US
imperialism.
There needs to be a serious conversation about twenty-first
century developments in Cuba, Vietnam, China, the state of Kerala in India, and
what remains of the Bolivarian Revolution in Latin America. As long as such
conversations are avoided, the progressive base will be diverted by the
twentieth century trope about the “evils of communism.”
There needs to be detailed analyses of military spending.
Much of that work is being done by the War Resisters League, The Cost of War
Project, and others, but little of it finds its way into grassroots campaigns
for progressive politicians or campaigns in support of single-payer health insurance.
Finally, there is a need to address important questions not
often discussed. Two stand out: first the doctrine of the inevitability of war
which cripples everyone’s political consciousness; and second, the celebration
of grotesque violence in popular culture. These are not abstract issues that
belong only in the classroom or the church sermon. They need to be highlighted.
And the writings and speeches of Marx, Debs, and King would support the view
that assumptions about the inevitability of war and the glories of violence are
intimately connected to the capitalist/war system.
In short, the emerging socialist movements, the burgeoning progressive campaigns, and the peace movement must reconnect in fundamental ways: theoretically and practically. War, the preparation for war, and human misery everywhere are inextricably connected.
Veterans for Peace
Harry
Targ
I wrote in 1992 about
the Cuban Revolution (Cuba and the USA: A New World Order? International
Publishers, 6):
“….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”.
(From an Internal
Memorandum Circulated in the Eisenhower Administration Recommending Policies to
Undermine the Popularity of the Cuban Revolution)
“… every possible means
should be undertaken promptly to weaken the economic life of Cuba. If such a
policy is adopted, it should be the result of a positive decision which would
call forth a line of action which, while as adroit and inconspicuous as possible,
makes the greatest inroads in denying money
and supplies to
Cuba, to decrease monetary and real wages, to bring about hunger, desperation
and overthrow of government. ”. https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/frus1958-60v06/d499
On The Cuban/US
Experience: Revolution and Counter Revolution
And yet Americans are
more ignorant of the nature of the Cuban Revolution and U.S.-Cuban relations
than are the people of almost any other country in the world. Except for those
few Americans with access to a handful of liberal and radical publications the
people of this country have been subjected to an unrelieved campaign of
distortion, or outright slander of Fidel Castro and the revolution he leads.
The determined hostility of American leaders to the Cuban Revolution, the
implementation of a system of economic harassment, and the threat of military
intervention, not only endanger the Cuban Revolution, but increase the tempo of
the cold war at home and abroad (Editors, “The Cuban
Revolution: The New Crisis in Cold War Ideology,” Studies on the Left, Volume
1, Number, 1960, 1).
This statement was
published in the summer of 1960! sixty-five years later the same assessment of
United States/Cuban relations still holds.
The story of the Cuban
revolution needs to be retold as we move ahead to stop a war on Cuba, end the
economic blockade, and establish a new United States/Cuban relationship.
Havana street scene in 2010. Inset below: school kids in
Havana, 2010. Photos by Desmond Boylan / Reuters
The Revolutionary Vision
The idea of “revolution”
refers to a fundamental transformation of economic and political structures and
peoples’ consciousness of their place in society and the values that should
determine human behavior. Also, revolution is not a fixed “thing” but
a process. That means that changes in structures, patterns of behavior, and
consciousness are changing over time and in the case of revolution are moving
toward, rather than away from, more complete human fulfillment.
What has been most
fascinating to observe about the Cuban Revolution has been its constantly
changing character. Cubans have debated and made decisions about gradual versus
fundamental changes, the need to experiment with different ways
to allocate scarce national resources and, most critical, how to respond
to external economic, political, and military assaults. Cuban
society has been an experimental laboratory, changing public policies as
contexts demand. If one set of policies became problematic, the Cubans moved in
different directions. Usually change came after heated debate at all levels of
society.
For example, after the
26th of July Movement seized power, the revolutionary regime launched
programs to reduce rents for urban dwellers, established a nationwide literacy
campaign, and after a cool U.S. response to the new government, put in place a
large agrarian reform program. As United States hostility escalated Cuba
established diplomatic and economic relations with the former Soviet Union.
From that point US/Cuban hostilities became permanent.
Cuban History
The story of the Cuban
revolution needs to be retold as we move ahead to establish a new United
States/Cuban relationship.
Cuba was a colony of the
Spanish for 400 years, an economic vassal of the British and the United States
for more than 100 years, and a slave state from the fifteenth century to the
end of the nineteenth century.
The domination of the
island by foreigners, juxtaposed with a culture enriched by African roots (the
indigenous people were largely obliterated by the Spanish), led to repeated
efforts to resist colonialism before 1898 and neo-colonialism after that. Slaves,
Afro/Cubans, and Spanish born landowners seeking freedom from the Spanish crown
often rose up to overthrow the yoke of imperialism.
Cuban Revolutionaries, inspired by visionary poet Jose Marti, were on the verge of defeating Spanish colonialism in the 1890s. The United States sent armies to the island to defeat the Spanish and establish a puppet government to insure its economic and political control. To secure support for the war at home the American media and popular music were filled with images of Cuba as the “damsel in distress” and bungling Afro/Cuban revolutionaries. The dominant ideology of the United States, manifest destiny and white Christian duty, drove the argument for war on Spain.
After the 1898 war, the
United States military, with the support of small numbers of compliant Cubans,
created a government that would open the door completely for United States
investments, commercial penetration, an externally-controlled tourist sector,
and North American gangsters. The U.S. neo-colonial regime on the island
stimulated pockets of economic development in a sea of human misery. Responding
to grotesque economic suffering in the 1950s a band of revolutionaries (led by
Fidel Castro, Che Guevara, Camilo Cienfuegos, Celia Sanchez, and Haydee
Santamaria) defeated the U.S. backed military regime of Fulgencio Batista.
Vilma Espin, Cuban
Revolutionary
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).
Almost immediately the
revolutionaries who had seized power in January, 1959 began to implement the
program envisioned by the Castro speech. Over the next sixty years, with heated
debates inside Cuba, experiments--some successful, some failed--were carried
out. Despite international pressures and the changing global political economy,
much of the program has been institutionalized to the benefit of most Cubans.
Education and health
care became free to all Cubans. Basic, but modest, nutritional needs have been
met. Cubans have participated in significant political discussion about public
policy. And Cuban society has been a laboratory for experimentation.
In the 1960s
Cubans discussed whether there was a need for monetary incentives to motivate
work or whether revolutionary enthusiasm was sufficient to maintain production.
Debates occurred over the years also about whether a state-directed economy, a
mixed one, or some combination would best promote development; how to engage in
international solidarity; and whether there was a need to affiliate with super
powers such as the former Soviet Union. Central to the Cuban model is the
proposition that when policies work they get institutionalized; when they fail
they get changed.
The United States
reaction to the Cuban Revolution has been as the Studies on the
Left article warned in 1960. U.S. policy has included military
invasions, sabotage, assassination attempts on the life of Fidel Castro, an
economic blockade, subversion including beaming propaganda radio and television
broadcasts to the island, efforts to isolate Cuba from the international
system, restrictions on United States travelers to the island, listing Cuba as
a state sponsor of terrorism, and in the long-run most importantly portraying
in government statements and the mass media the image of Cuba as a totalitarian
state that oppresses its people.
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.
The United States and Cuba began negotiating the announced normalization of relations and several steps have been 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, was not 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 yet to be
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 continued to use 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 had 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.”
Where Does the
Foreign Policy of Donald Trump Fit?
Taking “the long view” of United States foreign policy, it is clear that from NSC-68; to the response to the Soviet challenges in space such as during the Sputnik era; to global wars in Korea, Vietnam, Afghanistan, and Iraq; to covert interventions in the Middle East, Latin America, Asia, and Africa, the United States has consistently pursued global hegemony, a program of which Cuban policy is a part. It is also clear that the pursuit of empire has of necessity involved the creation of a permanent war economy, an economy that overcomes economic stagnation by the infusion of enormous military expenditures.
It is also clear that justification for empire and military spending has necessitated the construction of an enemy, first the Soviet Union and international communism; then terrorism; and now China. And Cuba has always served as such an enemy in “our back yard.” The obverse of a demonic enemy requires a conception of self to justify the imperial project. That self historically has been various iterations of American exceptionalism, the indispensable nation, US humanitarianism, and implicitly or explicitly the superiority of the white race and western civilization.
In this light, while
specific policies vary, the trajectory of US foreign policy in the twenty-first
century is a continuation of the policies and programs that were
institutionalized in the twentieth century. Three seem primary. First,
military spending, particularly in new technologies, continues unabated. And as
the Council on Foreign Relations warned there is a the danger of the United
States “falling behind,” the same metaphor that was used by the writers of the
NSC-68 document, or the Gaither and Rockefeller Reports composed in the late
1950s to challenge President Eisenhower’s worry about a military/industrial
complex, the response to Sputnik, Secretary of Defense McNamara’s
transformation of the Pentagon to scientific management in the 1960s, or
President Reagan’s huge increase of armaments in the 1980s to overcome the
“window of vulnerability.”
Second, the United
States continues to engage in policies recently referred to as “hybrid wars.”
The concept of hybrid wars suggests that while traditional warfare between
nations has declined, warfare within countries has increased. Internal wars, the
hybrid wars theorists suggest, are encouraged and supported by covert
interventions, employing private armies, spies, and other operatives financed
by outside nations like the United States.
Also the hybrid wars
concept refers to the use of economic warfare, embargoes and blockades, to
bring down adversarial states and movements. The blockades of Cuba, Venezuela,
and Iran are examples. Therefore, the hybrid war concept suggests the carrying
out of wars by other, less visible, means.
Third, much of the
discourse on the US role in the world replicates the bipolar, superpower
narrative of the Cold War and, in addition, the dangerous rise of the Global
South. In both cases the enemy is China. As Alfred McCoy has pointed out (In
the Shadows of the American Empire, 2017), the United States in the twenty
first century sees its economic hegemony being undermined by Chinese economic
development and global reach. To challenge this, McCoy argues, the United
States has taken on a project to recreate its military hegemony: AI, a space
force, biometrics, new high-tech aircraft etc. If the US cannot maintain its
hegemony economically, it will have to do so militarily.
In addition to the Chinese threat, countries of the Global South, to some degree inspired by Cuba, have been meeting to establish greater economic cooperation to overcome their common experiences of centuries of European and United States dominance. Tiny Cuba has been an exemplar of Global South resistance. And China has stepped forward as a “great power”. allying with this new movement in the vision of creating a multipolar world.
Recognizing these
continuities in United States foreign policy, commentators appropriately
recognize the idiosyncrasies of foreign policy in the Trump era, particularly
during his first term. He reached out to North Korea and Russia. He has
rhetorically claimed that the United States must withdraw military forces from
trouble spots around the world, including the Middle East. He declared that
the United States could not be “the policeman of the world,” a declaration
made by former President Nixon as he escalated bombing of Vietnam and initiated
plans to overthrow the Allende regime in Chile.
However, while Trump
moved in one direction he almost immediately undermined the policies he has
ordered. His announced withdrawal from Syria, while in the abstract a sign of a
more realistic assessment of US military presence in the Middle East was coupled
with a direct or implied invitation to the Turkish military to invade Northeast
Syria to defeat the Kurds. Also, at the same time he was withdrawing troops
from Syria, the Defense Department announced the United States was sending
support troops to Saudi Arabia. He withdrew from the accord with Iran on
nuclear weapons and the Paris Climate Change agreement.
Time after time, one
foreign policy decision has contradicted by another. Sometimes policies seem to
be made with little historical awareness and without sufficient consultation
with professional diplomats. (One is reminded of the old Nixon idea, the so-called
“madman theory.” Nixon allegedly wanted to appear mad so that adversaries would
be deterred from acting in ways contrary to US interests out of fear of random
responses).
During his first term the contradictory character of Trump foreign policy left the peace movement befuddled. How does it respond to Trump’s occasional acts that go against the traditional imperial grain at the same time that he acts impetuously increasing the dangers of war? How does the peace movement participate in the construction of a progressive majority that justifiably seeks to overturn the Trump era and all that it stands for: climate disaster, growing economic inequality, racism, sexism, homophobia, and hybrid war?
While much of the
foreign policy of his first term in office was confused, since he assumed
office in 2025, he asserted an unequivocal tilt toward militarism. In the fall
of 2025, he began an assassination campaign against those in small boats
sailing in the Caribbean, alleging that those on the boats were carrying drugs.
He escalated threats against Venezuela and in early January 2026 kidnapped
the President and First Lady of Venezuela. This was followed in February
by a brutal bombing campaign against targets in Iran (in conjunction with
Israeli militarism). During all this time the United States supported Israel’s
genocidal war on the Gazan people. And from time to time during this
militarization of his foreign policy he has implied or stated directly that
Cuba would be next. Direct killing now is being coupled with hybrid
war.
Perhaps the task for the
peace movement is to include in the project of building a progressive majority
ideas about challenging the US as an imperial power, proclaiming that a
progressive agenda requires the dismantling of the permanent war economy. These
are truly troubled times, with to a substantial degree the survival of humanity
and nature at stake. The war system is a significant part of what the struggle
is about.
As Global Health
Partners has written about US/Cuban policy today:
“Washington’s
ever-tightening embargo has thrown Cuba into the worst economic and healthcare
crisis in its history. The U.S. is using its spurious inclusion of Cuba on the
list of “State Sponsors of Terrorism” to wield increasingly punitive measures
that limit the supply of food, fuel and basic medical supplies. To bolster this
inhumane policy, right-wing members of Congress are slipping new, outrageous
sanctions into broad budget legislation aimed at keeping the U.S. government
running.
No War on Cuba! End the
Blockade!
The dramatic gestures by
Presidents Obama and Raul Castro set the stage for the normalization of
diplomatic relations, but with the reversals in policy by Trump (Biden did not
reverse Trump’s Cuba policies either) more work needs to be done.
First, activists must continue to pressure their legislators to repeal the Helms-Burton Act and oppose any efforts by their peers to re-impose legislation that will stop the process of change. Lobbying should be complemented by rallies and marches. Support should be given to those organizations which have been on the front lines of Cuba Solidarity for years such as Pastors for Peace. In addition, people to people exchanges, community to community outreach, and high school and university study abroad programs should be encouraged. (There were many US/Cuban educational exchange programs in the first decade of this century)
Second, those in
solidarity with the Cuban Revolution should support the economic reforms
initiated by the Cuban people before the resumption of the brutal US policies
by Trump. The clearest manifestation of these principles is reflected in the
development of workplace cooperatives in both cities and the countryside and
before the draconian US policies access to adequate diet, health care, and
education, Educating the American public should include information
that Cuba, before escalated US aggression, had been
embarking on new economic arrangements that began to fulfilled human needs, in
the spirit of the “History Will Absolve Me” speech. AND, it could be argued
that Fidel Castro’s vision for Cuba might also be relevant for the United States.
In sum, the solidarity
movement should continue the process of public education about Cuba, explaining
the realities of Cuban history, celebrating Cuban accomplishments in health
care and education, and recognizing the richness and diversity of Cuban culture.
Ironically, despite the long and often painful relationship the Cuban people
have had with the United States, the diversity of the two nation’s cultures are
inextricably connected. That shared experience should be celebrated. NO WAR ON
CUBA! END THE BLOCKADE!
Harry Targ
But
How Others See the United States: The Powerful Voice of the President of
Colombia Gustavo Petro: His First Speech Before the United Nations in 2022
(Gustavo
Petro has been speaking truth to power and consequently has joined Venezuela,
China, Canada and many other nations as well as citizens and residents in the
United States as targets of verbal abuse, threats, and acts of murder and war.
We should stand with citizens of the world and those living in the United
States in opposing the brutal and immoral actions of the United States
government. As Che Guevara once said: "Above all, always be capable of
feeling deeply any injustice committed against anyone, anywhere in the
world.")
Recently elected president of Colombia Gustavo Petro made a powerful presentation at the opening of the United Nations General Assembly on the plunder of the Global South by the Global North, a portrait markedly different from the view of the “liberal international order” repeated over and over again by the corporate media and foreign policy spokespersons of the United States. Petro’s major points concluded the following:
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“THE WORLD IS DIVERSE IN
ITS LANDS, LIVING THINGS, AND PEOPLE”
“I come from one of the
three most beautiful countries on Earth.
There is an explosion of
life there. Thousands of multicolored species in the seas, in the skies, in the
lands…I come from the land of yellow butterflies and magic. There in the
mountains and valleys of all greens, not only do the abundant waters flow down,
but also the torrents of blood. I come from a land of bloody beauty.”
“BUT THE WORLD ALSO IS A
VIOLENT PLACE”
“The jungle that tries to
save us, is at the same time, destroyed. To destroy the coca plant, they spray
poisons, glyphosate in mass that runs through the waters, they arrest its
growers and imprison them. For destroying or possessing the coca leaf, one million
Latin Americans are killed and two million Afro-Americans are imprisoned in
North America. Destroy the plant that kills, they shout from the North, but the
plant is but one more of the millions that perish when they unleash the fire on
the jungle. Destroying the jungle, the Amazon, has become the slogan followed
by States and businessmen. The cry of scientists baptizing the rainforest as
one of the great climatic pillars is unimportant.”
“For the world’s power
relations, the jungle and its inhabitants are to blame for the plague that
plagues them. The power relations are plagued by the addiction to money, to
perpetuate themselves, to oil, to cocaine and to the hardest drugs to be able
to anesthetize themselves more. Nothing is more hypocritical than the discourse
to save the rainforest. The jungle is burning, gentlemen, while you make war
and play with it. The rainforest, the climatic pillar of the world, disappears
with all its life.”
“AND THE VICTIMS? LAND AND
PEOPLE”
“Coca and the peasants who
grow it, because they have nothing else to grow, are demonized. You are only
interested in my country to spray poisons on our jungles, to take our men to
jail and put our women in exclusion. You are not interested in the education of
the child, but in killing its jungle and extracting coal and oil from its
entrails. The sponge that absorbs the poison is useless, they prefer to throw
more poisons into the atmosphere.”
“These are the things of
world power, things of injustice, things of irrationality, because world power
has become irrational. They see in the exuberance of the jungle, in its
vitality, the lustful, the sinful; the guilty origin of the sadness of their societies,
imbued with the unlimited compulsion to have and to consume. How to hide the
loneliness of the heart, its dryness in the midst of societies without
affection, competitive to the point of imprisoning the soul in solitude, if not
by blaming the plant, the man who cultivates it, the libertarian secrets of the
jungle.
According to the
irrational power of the world, it is not the fault of the market that cuts back
on existence, it is the fault of the jungle and those who inhabit it. The bank
accounts have become unlimited, the money saved by the most powerful of the earth
will not even be able to be spent in the time of the centuries.”
“THE CULPRIT? MONEY AND
UNBRIDLED CONSUMPTION”
“The culprit is their
society educated in endless consumption, in the stupid confusion between
consumption and happiness that allows the pockets of power to fill with money.
The culprit of drug addiction is not the jungle, it is the irrationality of
your world power. Try to give some reason to your power. Turn on the lights of
the century again. The war on drugs has lasted 40 years, if we do not correct
the course and it continues for another 40 years, the United States will see
2,800,000 young people die of overdose from fentanyl, which is not produced in
our Latin America. It will see millions of Afro-Americans imprisoned in its
private jails.
The Afro-prisoner will
become a business of prison companies, a million more Latin Americans will die
murdered, our waters and our green fields will be filled with blood, the dream
of democracy will die in my America as well as in Anglo-Saxon America.”.
“THE EXCUSE FOR DESPOILING
NATURE AND MAKING PERSONS EXPENDABLE”
“They invaded in the name
of oil and gas. They discovered in the 21st century the worst of their
addictions: addiction to money and oil. Wars have served them as an excuse not
to act against the climate crisis. Wars have shown them how dependent they are
on what will kill the human species.
“LATIN AMERICA (AND THE WORLD) MUST UNITE AGAINST THIS
SYSTEM OF GLOBAL ECONOMIC AND MILITARY POWER”
“If you do not have the
capacity to finance the fund for the revitalization of the forests, if it
weighs more to allocate money to weapons than to life, then reduce the
foreign debt to free our own budgetary spaces and with them, carry out the task
of saving humanity and life on the planet. We can do it if you don’t want to.
Just exchange debt for life, for nature. I propose, and I call upon Latin
America to do so, to dialogue in order to end the war. Do not pressure us to
align ourselves in the fields of war.
It is time for PEACE.
Let the Slavic peoples
talk to each other, let the peoples of the world talk to each other. War is
only a trap that brings the end of time closer in the great orgy of
irrationality.
What Does All This Mean
for Peace and Justice Activists
Peace and justice activists today must hear the voices of the world, including President Petro, We must oppose efforts of the traditional "great powers," particularly the United States, who seek to maintain their global hegemony in a rapidly changing world. We must oppose militarism around the world-bases, arms transfers, hybrid wars, covert operations, and cognitive wars. We must listen to our sisters and brothers from the Global South who seek a better world for themselves and others. We must endorse the principles enshrined in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights-civil, political, social, and economic. And specifically, we must oppose attacks on Venezuela and Colombia, sanctions against Cuba and over 30 other countries, and Israel's war on the Palestinian people. These are difficult tasks but as the massive mobilizations of recent times suggest, the people are ready.
