LOOKING AT THE INTERNATIONAL SYSTEM IN 2020

Harry Targ

I want to make four points about the international system today:

First, we are witnessing a qualitative shift in the distribution of global power (economic, military, social, and cultural). The hegemon of the last 150 years, the United States, is experiencing a decline in relative power. Among the new rising powers are collectives from the Global South--BRICS, the Non-Aligned Movement, what remains of the Pink Tide--and most importantly China. Chinese economic development since 1979 has been enormous. 850 million people have risen from poverty. Chinese economic development, scientific advances, global investments and participation in the movements of transnational capital have been significant. As Alfred McCoy (In the Shadows of the American Century:  The Rise and Decline of US Global Power, Haymarket, 2017) has pointed out, the United States, a declining empire, is pursuing a desperate path to retain its hegemony through the only means it has at its disposal, new military advances: drones, the space force, new generations of aircraft, new rounds of nuclear weapons, and the development of a cyber-war capability. At the policy and ideological level this has meant a recurring proclamation by Trump spokespersons, and leaders of the Democratic Party, that we are at war with China. This new Cold War, given the current environmental and public health dangers and new military technologies, represents an even bigger threat to humanity than the first Cold War.

Second, since the declining empire sees itself in competition all across the globe and massive resistance to US hegemony is rising everywhere, most notably in the Western Hemisphere in recent years, the United States has upgraded its hybrid war strategies-adding to covert interventions by supplementing them with brutal economic sanctions. Countries like Venezuela, Cuba, and Iran are being systematically starved in the  hope that starvation will lead to internal revolutions. (The US has achieved some successes in places like Bolivia, Ecuador, and Brazil) but it has so far failed in Cuba and Venezuela and countries like Argentina are moving back to the center/left).  In addition to economic sanctions against declared enemies, the United States remains allied with regimes that brutalize their own people and make war on others. https://heartlandradical.blogspot.com/2020/01/hybrid-warswhat-is-new-and-what-is-not.html

Third, the US project to maintain global hegemony is linked to continued and escalating military expenditures. The official DOD projected budget is at about $740 billion dollars. There are military projects still in about 430 Congressional Districts, universities are increasingly currying DOD research dollars to overcome lost revenues, and numerous corporations still rely on military contracts. Whether we still call it the “military (university, congressional)industrial complex” or Andrew Bacevich’s “permanent war economy,” military spending has thoroughly permeated US society. While they are demonstrably wrong political elites believe that escalating military spending will serve both to build a capacity to resist imperial decline and to overcome the US stagnating economy. https://www.nationalpriorities.org/analysis/2020/militarized-budget-2020/

https://heartlandradical.blogspot.com/2009/01/permanent-war-economy.html

Fourth, according to the World Bank almost one half of the world’s population lives in poverty (under $2.50 per day).While race is a critical force in facilitating poverty by dividing masses of people, the class divide between the tiny minority capitalist class who rule the world in juxtaposition to the overwhelming majority of humankind remains a critical fact in understanding what happens within societies and between them. In other words, undergirding the nation-state system, rising and declining empires, and a vast incremental growth in militaries is a global class struggle. The immiseration of the global masses of humanity is propagated by institutions, social practices, and ideologies that perpetuate exploitation, racism, patriarchy, ethno-nationalism, and homophobia. In this moment, sectors of the world’s marginalized have been mobilized by appeals to the rightwing agendas promoted by ruling classes. In the end, the struggles for economic justice, environmental justice, the end to racism, patriarchy, and ethno-nationalism must be understood as significant byproducts of a worldwide capitalist system that is in disarray. https://heartlandradical.blogspot.com/2020/04/understanding-venezuela-global-north.html

In short, in the midst of pandemic, increasing hostilities between nations, enormous military expenditures, escalating racial tensions, the tasks of the peace movement remain daunting. But given the rising of people all around the world, however, hope is justified. Our tasks should include:

--Say no to Cold War. Resolve disputes through diplomacy not through threats of war.

--End brutal economic sanctions against all countries and people.

--Stop supporting regimes that brutalize their people and make war on others.

--Radically cut military spending.

--Articulate the connections between imperialism, capitalism, racism, patriarchy, ethno-nationalism, homophobia, and environmental destruction. Unite with others to challenge them all.

Conference on 21st Century Imperialism Revisits Theory and Practice

For a thorough discussion of 21^st century imperialism and global struggles against it, attend the following conference:

http://ouleft.org/wp-content/uploads/imperialism-conference.pdf  (Correction: The conference opens July 18, 2020, noon Eastern time)

If you missed that amazing webinar, you can find the recordings here:

http://ouleft.org/wp-content/uploads/21st-CenturyImperialism-session1.mp4  

http://ouleft.org/wp-content/uploads/21st-CenturyImperialism-session2.mp4

http://ouleft.org/wp-content/uploads/21st-CenturyImperialism-session3.mp4

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An earlier commentary:

THE REALITIES OF IMPERIALISM AND DEPENDENCY: STILL RELEVANT TODAY

Harry Targ

Imperialism

Students of imperialism appropriately refer to the polemical but theoretically relevant essay authored by Marx and Engels, The Communist Manifesto. In this essay, the authors argue that capitalism as a mode of production is driven to traverse the globe, for investment opportunities, for cheap labor, for natural resources, for land. One can argue that Marx and Engels were among the first to theorize about globalization.

Lenin advanced the theory of imperialism in his famous essay Imperialism, the Highest Stage of Capitalism. In addition to the inspiration from Marx and Engels, he drew from the sophisticated writings of Rudolf Hilferding and John Hobson. For him, writing in the midst of the bloodshed of World War I and revolutionary ferment in Russia, there was a need to understand the connections between the expansionist needs of capitalism, competition among capitalist states, and imperialist war. With that motivation, Lenin postulated five key features of what he called imperialism, the highest stage of capitalism. This new stage of capitalist development in the twentieth century included:

1) The concentration of production and capital developed to such a high stage that it created monopolies, which play a decisive role in economic life.

2) The merging of bank capital with industrial capital, and the creation, on the basis of this, "finance capital," or a "financial oligarchy."

3) The export of capital, which has become extremely important, as distinguished from the export of commodities.

4) The formation of international capitalist monopolies, which share the world among themselves.

5) The territorial division of the whole world among the greatest capitalist powers is completed.

Lenin’s descriptions of these five features of twentieth century imperialism were prescient as to their long-term vision. Imperialism was not just a way in which powerful states acted in the world but a global stage of capitalism. The political, military, and economic dimensions of the world were inextricably connected in a profoundly new way, different from prior periods of human history.

In this stage national economies and the global economy were dominated by monopolies. That is, small numbers of banks and corporations controlled the majority of the wealth and productive capacity of the world. (The Brandt Commission in the early 1980s estimated, for example, that 200 corporations and banks controlled twenty-five percent of the world’s wealth). Monopolization included a shrinking number of economic actors that controlled larger and larger shares of each economic sector (steel, auto, fossil fuels, for example) and fewer and fewer actors controlling more of the totality of all these sectors.

Lenin added that twentieth century finance capital assumed a primary role in the global economy compared to prior centuries when banks were merely the bookkeepers of the capitalist system. Corporate capital and financial capital had become indistinguishable. This, in our own day, became known as "financialization.”

The development of finance capital, Lenin argued, led to the export of capital, the promotion of investments, the enticement of a debt system, and the expanding control of all financial transactions by the few hundred global banks. Capitalism was no longer just about expropriating labor and natural resources, processing these into products for sale on a world market but it now was about financial speculation, the flow of currencies as much as the flow of products of labor. It was in this stage of capitalism that the financial system was used as a lever to transform all of the world’s economies, particularly by increasing profits through imposing policies of austerity. Austerity included cutting government programs, deregulating economies so banks and corporations could act more freely, and, further, instituting public policies to maximize the privatization of virtually every public institution. These policies were referred to as “neoliberal.”

And lastly, Lenin observed, world politics was shaped by economic and political collusion of international monopolies to collaborate, routinize, and regulate economic competition. But, as he saw in 1916, that world of routinized global finance capital had broken down, states representing their own financial conglomerates engaged in massive violence, in World War, to maintain their share of territory and wealth. So that imperialism, the highest stage of capitalism, always had embedded within it, the seeds of ever-expanding war between states driven by their own monopolies.

Dependency

Theorists and revolutionaries from the Global South found Lenin’s theory of imperialism to be a compelling explanation of the historical development of capitalism as a world system and its connections to war, violence, colonialism, and neo-colonialism. However, they argued that Lenin’s narrative was incomplete in its description of imperialism’s impact on the countries and peoples of the Global South. Several revolutionary writers and activists from the Global South added a “bottom up” narrative about imperialism. Theorists such as Andre Gunter Frank, Samir Amin, Frantz Fanon, Walter Rodney, Fernando Cardoso, Theotonio Dos Santos, and Jose Carlos Mariategui added an understanding of “dependency” to the discussion of imperialism.

Dependency theorists suggested that the imperialist stage of capitalism was not enforced in the Global South only at the point of a gun. Dependency required the institutionalization of class structures in the Global South. Ruling classes in the Global South, local owners of factories, fields, and natural resources, and their armies, collaborated with the ruling classes of the global centers of power in the Global North. In fact, the imperial system required collaboration between ruling classes in the global centers with ruling classes in the periphery of the international system. And ultimately, imperialism, the highest stage of capitalism, was a political and economic system in which the ruling classes in the centers of power worked in collaboration with the ruling classes in the Global South to exploit and repress the vast majority of human beings in the world.

Dependency theory, therefore, added insights to the Leninist analysis. First, the imperial system required collaboration from the rich and powerful classes in the centers of global power, the Global North, developing and recruiting the rich and powerful classes in the countries of the Global South. It also meant that there was a need to understand that the imperial system required smooth flows of profits from the Global South to the Global North. Therefore, there was a mutuality of interests among ruling classes everywhere. The addition of dependency theory also argued that people in the periphery, workers and peasants in poor countries, had objective interests not only opposed to the imperial countries from the north but to the interests of their own national ruling classes. And, if this imperial system exploited workers in the centers of power and also in the peripheral areas of the world, then there ultimately was a commonality of interests in the poor, oppressed, and exploited all across the face of the globe.

Relevance for the Twenty-First Century

Although the world of the twenty-first century is different from that of the twentieth century, commonalities exist. These include the expansion of finance capital, rising resistance to it everywhere, and conflicts in the Global North and the Global South between powerful ruling classes and masses of people seeking democracy and economic well-being. In the recent past, the resurgence of protest by workers, students, farmers and peasants, the popular classes, has been reflected in mass movements against neoliberal globalization and international financial institutions. These include Arab Spring, the Fight for Fifteen, and a number of campaigns that challenge racism, sexism, joblessness, the destruction of the environment, land grabs, and removal of indigenous peoples from their land.

In Latin America, movements emerged that have been labeled “the Pink Tide” or the “Bolivarian Revolution.” These are movements driven by struggles between the Global North and the Global South and class struggles within countries of the Global South. Workers and peasants from the Global South have been motivated to create, albeit within powerful historical constraints, alternative economic and political institutions in their own countries. The awakening of the masses of people in the Global South constitute one of the two main threats to Imperialism, the Highest Stage of Capitalism. The first threat is the movements that are struggling to break the link between their own ruling classes and those of the North. That includes working with leaders who are standing up against the imperial system (leaders such as in Venezuela, Bolivia, and, of course Cuba). The other threat to Imperialism, the Highest Stage of Capitalism, is, as Lenin observed in 1916, war between imperial powers.

In sum, as activists mobilize to oppose US war against the peoples of Latin America, the Middle East, Africa, and Asia, it is critical to be aware of the imperial system of finance capital, class systems in the Global North and Global South, and to realize that solidarity involves understanding the common material interests of popular classes in both the Global North and South. In 2019, solidarity includes opposing United States militarism in Latin America, economic blockades against peoples seeking their own liberation, and covert operations to support current and former ruling classes in their countries that collaborate with imperialism.

Concretely, this means supporting the Bolivarian Revolution in Venezuela and throughout the Western Hemisphere, protests in Haiti, and, of course, the Cuban Revolution.

NEW THINKING, POLITICAL ECONOMY, AND ECONOMIC POLICY

Harry Targ

The University Community as a Microcosm of the National Economy

In a recent article Shawn Hubler surveys the impacts of the Covid 19 pandemic on the political economy of campus towns (The New York Times June 28, 2020). During the spring shutdowns of college campuses millions of dollars were lost in revenues as students departed. Now with many universities and colleges contemplating reopening for the fall term, resistance has emerged from faculty, staff, and students because of the continuing threat of the spread of the virus. Some campuses have followed the lead of Purdue University in ordering equipment, trying to figure out on-campus teaching with social distancing, and preparing pledges students and faculty will be required to make to honor a health code.

Although the plans for the fall may sometimes sound bizarre, the impacts of not reopening universities would be drastic for what one might call “campus town political economies.” Whole university communities rely on dollars spent by thousands of students. Tuition makes up a larger share of university budgets today compared with twenty years ago as state funding for higher education has declined. Athletic programs attract alumni contributions and the sale of sports paraphernalia. To the host communities, losing revenue from student populations may be coupled with declining census figures because students will be elsewhere. With declining student residents, federal and state funding for community life could be reduced significantly. And, in addition, many universities are the largest employers in cities and counties so that a shutdown would constitute a massive rise in unemployment, in many instances larger than those coming from the plant closings of the 1980s.

Political Economy and the ideology of Balanced Budgets

Today the microeconomics of campus political economies and the macroeconomics of the nation in general face a horrific dilemma. On the one hand, recent data indicates that the pandemic may be spreading, not receding. And those states that either refused to honor the warnings of public health officials or had begun a phased reopening of their economies prematurely have seen dramatic spikes in the pandemic. Some states, such as Texas, Florida, and Arizona, with pandemic skeptics in leadership roles, are seeing enormous increases in viral infestations and many more dying from the disease. A high percentage of viral victims are young people, those presumably who have congregated in beaches and bars and who may be returning to college campuses. And, unfortunately, even other states which had honored the warnings, imposed rules to limit contact, and have only reopened their economies more carefully are also experiencing dangerous increases in pandemic victims.

On the other hand, while the victims of the pandemic increase, leaders from the Trump administration and some state governors and legislators challenge the efforts to limit social and economic interaction. Some are advocating a return to pre-viral economic and social interaction. The crassest spokespersons declare that victims of the disease are unfortunate but necessary resultants of the need to return to usual economic life. More frequently politicians, of both political parties, argue that the United States must return to normal economic activity because businesses and jobs depend upon it. As unfortunate as the pandemic is, they suggest, economic realities come first.

And for many of these politicians, the modest and ineffectual first Congressional bailout of business and workers cannot continue. Why? Because the federal government, and state governments with balanced budget rules, cannot afford to incur debt. In the face of the economic crisis brought on by the impacts of the virus on the economy, Republican Senators have argued that any future bailout would reward the financial mismanagement of blue states (such as the often-cited state of Illinois). But more generally, critics of   government spending in the face of the multiple crises of the economy and public health claim that spending during these crises will lead to debt that will damage the economy by creating inflation now and a deeply indebted national economy in the future.

Even Democrats worry about what Stephanie Kelton calls, “The Deficit Myth.” During the Democratic presidential race, most candidates proclaimed their opposition to deficit spending. They would endorse broadening medical coverage for example but castigate Medicare for All advocacy by asking: “How do we pay for it?” (Of course, this question never gets raised when Presidents launch wars).

And the population at large has been raised from the cradle to believe that debt has very precise limits. We, as individuals, can charge items we purchase but we need to be concerned about the accumulation of too much charge card debt. And, the theory suggests, the same principle applies to all governments.

One illustration of this view was expressed by Mitch Daniels, President of Purdue University, and former Indiana governor. He called the national debt, the “new Red Menace.” In a National Review article (Jay Nordlinger, December 5, 2019) Daniels dismissed the word, “entitlements,” suggesting that Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, and veterans' benefits are the “drivers of debt.” Debt, he suggested, led to the “failed regimes of history.” Daniels’ comments are representative of a perspective that is broadly accepted by Congress and both political parties. Even while the Congress has fashioned an emergency bailout during the health and economic crisis, the danger of burgeoning debt shapes the discourse and mindset of politicians.

It is Time to Examine Alternatives to The Deficit Myth

During the last several years, newer generations of economists have begun to question the proposition that the federal debt constitutes a fundamental threat to the survival of the US economy and polity. For example, Stephanie Kelton, a Professor of Economics at the University of Stonybrook, builds on the emerging tradition of “modern monetary theory” (MMT). (The Deficit Myth: Modern Monetary Theory and the Birth of the People’s Economy, Public Affairs, 2020).

Professor Kelton discusses four key elements of MMT. First, using the household budget as a metaphor for governmental budgeting is inappropriate. Family debt can be incurred but over time must be repaid. In the twenty-first century many households and individuals can charge goods and services they purchase but the expenditures have to be paid for in a relatively short order. Politicians of both parties then argue by analogy that government expenditures have to be repaid. Therefore, short-term deficits should be avoided or repaid in subsequent national budgets. Of course, these strictures are not adhered to even by the most fiscally conservative politicians. They give blank checks to the military, and they support pork barrel legislation advantageous to their favorite lobbyists and districts. And, of course, these same politicians who oppose deficit spending are the first to endorse massive tax cuts for the rich.

Second, Professor Kelton argues, however, that while some spending might be irresponsible, sovereign governments are not analogous to household or individual spenders. This raises the issue of sovereignty. Max Weber pointed out over one hundred years ago that states hold a monopoly on the legitimate use of violence. Modern Monetary Theorists argue that nation-states also have a monopoly on the issuing of money. States can print as much money as is needed by the economy. Contrary to individuals and families, who are not sovereign, governments do not have to repay themselves.

Third, therefore, sovereign governments can use their capacity to print money to support projects that promote the general health and welfare of the society. They do not have to accept the myth that the debt will somehow punish future generations, create chaos, and destroy the normal course of social and political interactions.

Fourth, the deficit hawks warn that the printing of money could have negative consequences, the most often discussed is uncontrollable inflation. That is, with the printing of more and more money, the price of goods and services could skyrocket. Professor Kelton and others have referred to historical examples of unbridled inflation that destabilized economies and societies, what President Daniels called “the failed regimes of history.” Although Kelton argues that inflationary spirals can occur, and have historically occurred, it has been because too much money chased too few goods and services. In other words, if citizens/consumers acquire more money while the production of goods and services stagnate, the price of those commodities can rise to dangerous levels. What this suggests to MMT is that the printing of money should be proportional to societal needs, the availability of goods and services, and the employment of workers.

In sum, MMT suggests that the printing of money can be calibrated to the fulfillment of short and long-term needs.  Money could and should be provided for health care for all, support for education (K through university), structural renovation, transitioning away from fossil fuels, the creation of jobs for all and universal basic income programs, and support for a Green New Deal. These programs were vitally needed before the pandemic and are even more essential since its onset. Of course, cutting military spending, pork-barrel legislation, and creating a progressive tax system helps. But the human needs articulated by progressives should be defended. And doing so requires a realistic assessment of the causes and consequences of national debt. History has shown that the idea of “the debt” has been an ideological tool used to challenge the creation of a just society. 

Returning to the campus town political economy example during the pandemic, funds should be made available to keep universities alive, provide for the continued jobs and incomes of campus workers, and for support for small businesses in campus towns. Providing for the economic necessities in local settings could be replicated in the national economy as well; both to maintain the economic life of the population and to enhance social and economic justice. And, of course, programs to enhance social and economic justice were needed even before the pandemic occurred.

Posted in Diary of a Heartland Radical, July 2, 2020 and The Rag Blog in July 8, 2020.

MOVING TO THE LEFT IN 2020 AND CHALLENGING TRUMPISM

Harry Targ

The essay below was originally posted on August 1, 2019. It was based on the accumulation of polling data, demographic information, and a postscript that reported on a poll about the qualitative decline in “trust in government” in recent years. While some of that distrust is manifested in a newly militant and dangerous right wing (in some cases armed), it also includes the potential progressive majority reflected in the polling data summarized below.

Of course, there have been substantial changes since this essay was written. First, the pandemic has transformed politics and how to do politics. The door-to-door interactions and huge rallies, such as those of Bernie Sanders, are no longer viable.

Second, masses of people, often young, Black and white, have risen up against racism, white supremacy, and police violence. Masses of people are on the move challenging our most basic institutions and policies and are calling for shifting police funding to social programs, establishing a Medicare fo All system, discussing the need for a universal basic income, and saying “no” to the reopening of traditional institutions during the pandemic including universities, tourist facilities, sporting events, and most other venues where masses of people congregate.

And third, there has been a frontal assault on the electoral process. Along with gerrymandering and questionable voting machines there are efforts to restrict or eliminate mail balloting, reducing access to voting booths, erecting new voter identification procedures, and using legislation and court actions in multiple ways to target and reduce the rights of people to vote. As Nancy MacLean has pointed out in “Democracy in Chains,” powerful sectors of the capitalist class are erecting in state after state barriers to democracy because they know the people would vote for the progressive agenda described in the polling data below.

Trumpism, that is the president, his cast of advisors and friends, sectors of big capital who support him,  large numbers of white supremacists, Tea Party activists, and many angry and frustrated citizens, oppose the progressive majority. Trumpism stands in opposition to policies that promote public health, efforts to save the environment, economic justice, an end to white supremacy, and peace. Therefore, the immediate task is to defeat Donald Trump at the national level and those politicians that support him at state and local levels.

The questions remain: how do we organize the progressive majority to gain power during a pandemic? How do we participate in the struggles that are already going on in the streets fighting white supremacy. And how do we mobilize this enormous energy and passion to overcome the anti-democratic impediments that have become central features of the electoral process in 2020? The analyses are clear; the solution more difficult.

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Demographics: Who Are the Potential Inside/Outside Activists?

On April 11, 2019, the Pew Research Center posted a document called “6 Demographic Trends Shaping the U.S. and the World in 2019.” These trends could be the basis for thinking about a new politics for the 21^st century.

First, the Center pointed out that so-called Millenials (ages 23 to 38) will outnumber Baby Boomers (ages 55 to 73) in 2019. Millenials are more educated, diverse, slower to marry than prior generations at the same age. While the younger generation are earning more than those at comparable ages in earlier generations, they have less wealth. In part, this is because they are saddled with more student debt than their elders.

Second, the next cohort, Generation Z (ages 7 to 22) are expanding with the projection that nearly half the Zers will be racial or ethnic minorities. By 2020 13.3 percent of the population are projected to be Latinx, Blacks 12.5 percent, and whites declining from 76.4 percent in 2000 to 66.7 percent in 2020.

Third, there is an increase in the percentage of parents who are not married and the percent of children living with unmarried parents has doubled from 13 percent in 1968 to 32 percent in 2017. “Stay-at-home” parents constitute only 18 percent. Majorities of Americans see radical changes in families in the years ahead: less marriage and less children. Twentieth century sociologists used to regard the traditional nuclear family as the anchor of societal stability, the transfer of norms, the unit of consumption, and source of personal discipline.

Fourth, the immigrant percentage of the total population has increased modestly over the last one hundred years, the numbers of “unauthorized” immigrants in the U.S. has declined.

Finally, the Pew Research Center confirms that while incomes are rising, inequality has grown as well. What they call the middle class has declined. And about 56 percent of Americans recognize that being white is being advantageous (compared with Blacks and Latinx) in terms of economic advancement.

An Emerging Progressive Public

Peter Dreier reported on polling data in 2017 confirming that majorities of Americans are liberal or progressive on most issues relating to the economy, the distribution of wealth and income, money in politics, taxes, minimum wage and workers’ rights, health care, education, climate change, criminal justice, immigration, and gender issues. (see Peter Dreier, “Most Americans Are Liberal, Even If They Don’t Know It,” The American Prospect, November 10, 2017).

Data for Progress, a progressive data-analyzing organization issued a report commissioned by Justice Democrats in April, 2018 called “The Future of the Party: A Progressive Vision for a Populist Democratic Party.” http://www.futureoftheparty.com  Data for Progress seeks to employ sophisticated social science techniques to gather information that might be of use to activist groups. They reported that Democratic primary voters want a tax on millionaires, increased regulation of banks, a government guaranteed program of health care, and policies to reduce economic inequality. Polling data suggests a shift toward more opposition to racial discrimination and support for immigrant rights. 

Perhaps the most important findings for the future were that non-voters preferred Clinton over Trump by a nine-point margin in 2016 and tapping a broader population of citizens “nonvoters and marginal voters are more supportive of progressive policies” than not. The report concluded that based upon a variety of responses that Democratic Party candidates “…are not representing the progressivism of their constituents.” Using the Rahm Emanuel strategy of appealing to centrists in prior elections, the report concluded that, even if it was a good strategy in 2006 to achieve Congressional victory, it was inappropriate for 2018 and beyond. For the base of the Democratic Party and those who are a part of the base but are less likely to vote, pursuing a progressive policy agenda is the only recipe for victory over Trumpism. And by implication, pursuing the centrism trope may be a recipe for disaster on 2020.

Finally, a Yale Program on Climate Change Communication reported that the idea of a Green New Deal has bipartisan support among the public. A sample survey indicated that 81 percent of registered voters either “strongly support” or “somewhat support “Green New Deal policy proposals. Researchers asked respondents to indicate their support or opposition to various policy components of the Green New Deal, including shifting from fossil fuels to green energy and a jobs agenda to train and reemploy workers. Most respondents had not heard of the GND and consequently had not heard that this was a key component of left/progressive Democratic politicians. In other words, disconnected from the toxicity and partisanship most registered voters, on their merits, saw the policies as worthy of support. And 82 percent of respondents indicated that they had heard “nothing at all” about the Green New Deal. https://climatecommunication.yale.edu/publications/the-green-new-deal-has-strong-bipartisan-support/

Anti-Trumpism: Black Lives Matter, the Women’s Movement, and the Emergence of Democratic Socialism

Since its inauguration, The Trump administration has been embroiled in a series of crises, with new ones emerging on almost a daily basis. The president is bombastic, ill-informed, and narcissistic. In response to his critics he engages in dangerous and unconventional efforts to transform the dominant narrative about his incompetence. He authorized ruthless bombings in Syria and Afghanistan and threatened war against enemies such as North Korea, Iran, and Venezuela. In a 2017 diplomatic trip to the Middle East and Europe, he reached a deal to sell $110 billion in weaponry to a Saudi Arabian regime which supports terrorism throughout the Middle East and a devastating bombing campaign against Yemen. And at home he appointed cabinet members and advisors with long histories of white supremacy and anti-Semitism (almost in defiance of accepted minimal qualifications for public office). In 2019 his remaining foreign policy advisors, Mike Pompeo, Secretary of State and John Bolton, National Security Advisor, represent the most extreme elements of the neoconservative war faction of the two main political parties.

Trump’s core constituency all along has been sectors of finance capital, insurance, real estate, the military/industrial complex, and drug companies whose profits have come from domestic investments or sales and speculation overseas. It also includes portions of small and medium sized businesses whose viabilities have been threatened, not by big government, but by the further monopolization of the economy.

In addition, some workers displaced by the underside of neoliberalism, including capital flight, automation, and trade, have supported Trump because they saw no positive economic future in a Clinton presidency. Finally, the Trump constituency includes a sizeable percentage of voters who are ideological legatees of white supremacy.

Therefore, the Trump coalition consists of fractions of capital who will gain from a more muscular and economically nationalist policy agenda, marginalized portions of the so-called “middle class,” sectors of the working class, and portions of all of these whose political learning has centered on the history and consciousness of white supremacy (“make America great again”).

Trump’s major adversaries come from a core sector of the ruling class that has dominated the policy process at least since the 1980s, the neoliberal globalists. In response to the squeeze on profits of the 1970s, the capitalist elites began to promote a dramatic shift in the character of the economy in the direction of “neoliberalism.” Drawing upon an economic ideology with a long history from Adam Smith, to Milton Friedman, to mainstream neoclassical economists of the late twentieth century, every administration from Carter to Trump has engaged in deregulation of economic life, reducing government programs that help the poor and working classes, reducing the rights of unions, and privatizing virtually all public institutions. They “went global,” that is developing a network of economic ties via trade agreements, the globalization of production, and integrating corporate boards. Capitalist elites from every continent began to develop common approaches to national policy via such informal organizations as the Trilateral Commission, meetings of the G7 countries, and the annual World Economic forum.

Debt poor countries were the first to be forced to embrace neoliberal policies, followed by the former Socialist Bloc countries, then the Western European social democracies, and finally the United States. A significant portion of this qualitative change in the way capitalism works has involved increased financial speculation (as a proportion of the total gross domestic product), dramatic increases in global inequality in wealth and income, and increasing economic marginalization of workers, particularly women, people of color and immigrants.

Candidate Donald Trump orchestrated a campaign against the neoliberal globalists who dominated the political process in the United States since the 1980s. While he epitomized finance capital, albeit domestic as well as foreign, and represents the less than one percent who rule the world, he presented himself as a spokesperson of the economically marginalized. He attacked the capitalist class of which he is a member. In addition, he blamed the marginalization of the vast majority on some of their own; people of color, women, and immigrants.

Resistance Grows

Since the November 2016 election masses of people have been mobilizing in a variety of ways against the threatened agenda of the newly elected president. The women’s marches and rallies of January 21, 2017 and International Women’s Day on March 8 were historic in size and global reach. There have been huge mobilizations to reduce the use of fossil fuels and prevent climate disaster, to support immigrant rights, and to provide basic health care. Many of these manifestations of outrage and fear have occurred as planned events but also there have been numerous spontaneous acts at Congressional town hall meetings and even in airports challenging Trump directives to refuse people entry into the United States.

A multiplicity of groups have formed or increased in size since January, 2017: former Bernie Sanders supporters; anti-racists campaigns; those calling for sanctuary cities and defending the human rights of immigrants; progressive Democratic organizations; and women’s mobilizations. Traditional left organizations, such as the Democratic Socialists of America, benefiting from the Sanders campaign, tripled in size. And organizations such as The American Civil Liberties Union and Planned Parenthood have reported large increases in financial contributions. The mobilization of millions of people has bolstered the spirits of progressives everywhere. They feel that at this point in history a new progressivism is about to be born. But the story is made complicated by the nature of the opposition to Trumpism.

Oppositions to Trumpism: Neoliberal and Progressive

Paradoxically, while this is a teachable moment as well as a movement building moment, progressive forces are struggling to be organized. In and around the Democratic Party there is a conflict over the vision and the politics it ought to embrace at this time and in the coming period. The Sanders supporters, inside and outside the Democratic Party, have marshalled much support for a progressive agenda: single-payer health care, a green jobs agenda, protecting the environment, tax reform, building not destroying immigrant rights, defending women’s rights, and cutting military spending. With the brutal policies advocated and already instituted by the new Trump administration, progressive democrats and their allies on the left are struggling mightily to articulate a program and create some organizational unity to challenge Trumpism.

However, on almost a daily basis stories have appeared in the mainstream media about Trump’s incompetence and irrational and ill-informed statements. Most importantly, allegations of the connection between the Trump presidential campaign and Russian spying, have dominated the news. As a result, the neoliberal globalist Democrats, activists in the presidential campaign of Hillary Clinton and leaders of the Democratic Party, have consciously embraced the Trump/Russia connection as the real reason why their candidate lost the election. By implication, they deny that there was anything perceived negatively about mainstream Democratic Party policies on trade, health care, mass incarceration, bank regulation, jobs and wages, and other neoliberal approaches to policy in the years when Democrats were in the White House. Clearly, Hillary Clinton was identified with this neoliberal agenda. But understanding the election outcome through the lens of Russiagate is a recipe for disaster.

The dilemma for progressives is that opposition to Trumpism and all it stands for has been and must be a key component of reigniting a progressive majority. But if it does not address the fundamental failures of the neoliberal agenda, including challenging neoliberal globalization, the current stage of capitalism, Trump’s grassroots support will continue. Working people who ordinarily would vote for more liberal candidates for public office need to believe that future candidates are prepared to address the issues, often economic, that concern them.

Therefore, the fundamental project for progressives today includes mobilizing against Trumpism while articulating an alternative political and economic analysis of the current state of capitalist development. In concrete terms, this approach means challenging the legitimacy of the Trump administration and its allies in Congress while articulating the perspective that mainstream Democrats, the neoliberal globalists, are part of the problem, not the solution.

This alternative analysis requires a bold challenge inside the electoral arena and in the streets that calls for radical reforms: single-payer health care; cutting the military-budget; creating government programs to put people to work on living wage jobs in infrastructure, social services, and public education; addressing climate change: and fiscal and regulatory policies that reduce the grotesque inequality of wealth and income which has increased since the 1980s.

The tasks are challenging but another world is possible.

A Postscript:

So far the data indicates that there is a base of solid support for a whole range of progressive policies and an additional subset of the population who might be inclined to support a progressive agenda. However, the Pew Research Center recently reported that “trust in government” is at an all-time low (17 percent) https://www.people-press.org/2019/04/11/public-trust-in-government-1958-2019/ One can assume that those with distrust in government are less likely to vote. Therefore, since the potential base for building a progressive majority is great, there is a need to articulate and campaign around an agenda that can appeal to the disenchanted. Therefore political mobilization should first concentrate on mobilizing its activist progressive base and then mobilize  the “uncommitted” who as some of the data suggests would embrace progressivism. The final, and perhaps least plausible, population to engage would be those who oppose a progressive agenda.

Reflecting upon the globalization and perniciousness of neoliberal globalization, its transformation of the political economy of the United States and the global political economy, the increased marginalization of all who work, rising global inequality in wealth and income, the particular impacts of this system on people of color, women, and other socially marginalized groups, the progressive project of the near-term future is clear both for inside and outside political strategies. Boldly, convincingly, and with passion and respect, articulate a progressive agenda.

 

 

COMMERCIAL UNIVERSITY SELLS OFF FOOD SERVICES, CREATES A NEW DEPARTMENT OF SOCIAL STUDIES

Sidney Glick 

(Glick, a widely published journalist, has agreed to join the staff at Heartland Radical. His feature essays will appear from time to time).

(Disassociated Press, Commercial Town) The President of the Board of Trustees of Commercial University, in a press conference opened to twelve journalists, announced today the purchase of the university’s campus-wide food service by oil giant Oxxon. He also unveiled a plan by Oxxon to establish a new Department of Social Studies, known as the Carbon Emissions Department of Social Studies. 

“Commercial University, a leader in the development of the electronic toothpick, is committed to privatizing all its facilities,” Board of Trustees President Elliot Rosewater said today. He indicated that there were still pockets of university facilities that were not yet privatized, and thus not profitable. He mentioned the washrooms, stairs, elevators, classrooms, and chalk boards as examples. 

“We believe that only the profit motive can ensure the intellectual growth of our student population and stimulate the kind of research that has been a key to our work.”

The Third Vice-President for Human and Natural Resources Raymond Strangelove said that “American universities are falling behind universities around the world because we have set as our goal providing well-rounded educations for our students and inspiring our faculty to pursue research to improve the human condition.” This, the Third Vice-President said, must stop. “Only calculations of personal gain will ever stimulate the kind of development of civilization we all seek.”

“We at Commercial University are well-placed to promote the full development of markets in every nook and cranny of our campus.” If our society were not driven by profit, he said, “we would have to invent a substitute.”  The promotion of self-actualization and altruism, he claimed, is no way to run a society.

Rosewater indicated that workers in the traditional sectors of the university that have not yet been privatized should not worry. Commercial University will take care of them.

In addition, Director of Curriculum Jason Rockefeller reported that the new Carbon Emissions Department of Social Studies will be headed by Carl Tucker, a noted expert on oil, gas, and society. Sub-fields in the new department will include those relating oil and gas to international relations, US politics,  and comparative carbon studies.  

Chairman Tucker pointed out that all courses in the new department will be fair and balanced. “In this regard there is a desperate need for experts who celebrate the contributions carbon emissions to be heard.” He said that most comparable departments in universities around the country are too one-sided. “In the spirit of academic freedom all sides to questions of public policy must be given equal voice.”

Director of Curriculum Rockefeller proudly announced that the new department will receive $3 billion in startup money for teaching and research from the Oxxon Corporation. He stressed, however, that the money will not in any way influence the content of the curriculum.

Tucker said he hoped to work with colleagues from other departments, particularly in the STEM fields, to develop interdisciplinary work focused on oil, gas, and society.

After the press conference the 32 Commercial University Vice-Presidents assembled in a ZOOM meeting chanting: “Markets Up.”

ESSAYS ON RACISM AND VIOLENCE

ESSAYS ON RACISM AND VIOLENCE

by Harry R. Targ

ESSAYS ON RACISM AND VIOLENCE 6

Tuesday, August 9, 2016

"AMERICA NEVER WAS AMERICA TO ME": From the Black Panther Party to Black Lives Matter

Harry Targ

O, yes,

I say it plain,
America never was America to me,
And yet I swear this oath–
America will be!

(From Langston Hughes, “Let America Be America Again,” 1938)

Fifty years ago, in 1966, Huey Newton and Bobby Seale, founded the Black Panther Party for Self Defense. The Party inspired African American and white leftists who were beginning to see capitalist exploitation and racism as central to the American experience. The BPP saw the need for Black people to organize to defend their communities; to develop a theory that would help Black people understand their subordinate condition; to construct institutions, particularly health care, education, and food distribution, to serve the people; and to act in solidarity with liberation struggles on a worldwide basis. To articulate its goals the BPP wrote a 10-point program that would serve as a guide to programs and action for party members (collectiveliberation.org).

The BPP program included demands for community control, access to “land, bread, housing, education, clothing, justice and peace,” and an end to police violence and mass incarceration of Black people. In each issue of The Black Panther newspaper, all 537 of them, the platform was printed. The dramatic escalation of state violence against the BPP and the Black community in general by the FBI and local law enforcement agencies testified to the fact that the Panther program resonated in urban communities around the country, particularly among the young. 

The Party encouraged grassroots activism and community control basing its appeal on the idea that it would serve the needs of the people. Establishing free breakfast programs for children, health clinics, and education, had enormous appeal. And with growing violence against the community by the police the BPP advocated collective self-defense.

Fifty years later a new movement, Black Lives Matter, has emerged to address the unfulfilled dreams articulated in the BPP vision. The immediate impetus for BLM, as with the BPP, was defense against state violence. Mass incarceration, criminalization, indiscriminant police killings, creating police occupation armies with high technology weapons, and growing economic devastation of whole communities in 2016 very much parallels the racism that motivated Newton and Seale to pick up the pen and the gun in 1966. Economic inequality; massive poverty; lack of access to quality education, healthcare, housing, transportation; and political marginalization plague African Americans today almost as much as was the case fifty years ago.

Black Lives Matter issued a detailed platform on August 1, 2016 resulting from the deliberations of at least 50 organizations whose membership includes thousands of Black people around the country. It comes at a time when the visible incidences of police violence have been experienced everywhere and young women and men have been hitting the streets expressing their outrage. The capsule summary of “A Vision for Black Lives: Policy Demands for Black Power, Freedom, and Justice” includes six core demands (The Movement for Black Lives, Portside, August 4, 2016; the BLM website is policy.m4bl.org): 

            

             End the war on Black people

            Reparations

            Invest-Divest

            Economic Justice

            Community Control

            Political Power

Since so many of the problems that animated the rise of the Black Panther Party unfortunately still exist, the core demands of Black Lives Matter remain all too familiar. But, in addition to the remaining core problems of racism, white supremacy, capitalist exploitation, and police violence the more recent statement wisely expands its vision and agenda. For example, the introduction to the document declares that “We believe in elevating the experiences and leadership of the most marginalized Black people, including but not limited to those who are women, queer, trans, femmes, gender nonconforming, Muslim, formerly and currently incarcerated, cash poor and working class, differently-abled, undocumented, and immigrant. We are intentional about amplifying the particular experience of state and gendered violence that Black queer, trans, gender nonconforming women and intersex people face.”

The statement acknowledges its domestic focus but declares that “Patriarchy, exploitative capitalism, militarism, and white supremacy know no borders. We stand in solidarity with our international family against the ravages of global capitalism and anti-Black racism, human-made climate change, war, and exploitation.”

Perhaps the greatest contribution that the BLM platform makes is in its detailed 40 demands for change, each of which comes with an explanation and policy proposals. Whereas the BPP platform concentrates on a critique and demands for revolutionary changes, the BLM platform adds doable intermediate changes in public policy. “We recognize that not all of our collective needs and visions can be translated into policy, but we understand that policy change is one of many tactics necessary to move us toward the world we envision….We are dreamers and doers.” 

And the BLM movement recognizes that it is linked to the long history of struggle for liberation. “This agenda continues the legacy of our ancestors who pushed for reparations, Black self-determination, and community control, and also propels new iterations of movements such as efforts for reproductive justice, holistic healing and reconciliation…” (A Vision for Black Lives: Policy Demands for Black Power, Freedom and Justice, policy.m4bl.org).