THE REVOLUTIONARY SPIRIT CONTINUES

Harry Targ

A NEW SPIRIT OF REVOLUTION:  2015 Observations

David Harvey has written about a “co-revolutionary theory” of change. In this theory Harvey argues that anti-capitalist movements today must address “mental conceptions;” uses and abuses of nature; how to build real communities; workers relations to bosses; exploitation, oppression, and racism; and the relations between capital and the state. While a tall order, the co-revolutionary theory suggests the breadth of struggles that need to be embraced to bring about real revolution.

Harvey’s work mirrors many analysts who address the deepening crises of capitalism and the spread of human misery everywhere. It is increasingly clear to vast majorities of people, despite media mystification, that the primary engine of destruction is global finance capitalism and political institutions that have increasingly become its instrumentality. Harvey’s work parallels the insights of Naomi Klein, Joseph Stiglitz, Robert Reich, Noam Chomsky, and a broad array of economists, historians, trade unionists, peace and justice activists and thousands of bloggers and Facebook commentators.

Of course, these theorists could not have known the ways in which the connections between the co-revolutionary theory and practice would unfold. Most agreed that we are living through a global economic crisis in which wealth and power is increasingly concentrated in fewer and fewer hands (creating a global ruling class). Human misery, from joblessness, to hunger, to disease, to environmental devastation, to state violence, is spreading. And as events since Ferguson have pointed out, the links between class exploitation, structural racism, and patriarchy are inseparable.

But history has shown that such misery can survive for long periods of time with little active resistance. Even though activists in labor, in communities of color, in anti-colonial/anti-neo-colonial settings are always organizing, their campaigns usually create little traction. Not so since 2011. Tunisians rose up against their oppressive government. Larger mobilizations occurred in Egypt. Protests spread to Yemen, Algeria, Oman, Bahrain, and Libya.

Assuming that working people, youth, women, and various professional groups would remain quiescent in the United States, right-wing politicians saw the opportunity to radically transform American society by destroying public institutions and thereby shifting qualitatively more wealth from the majority to the minority. In North Carolina, Wisconsin, and later in Ohio, Indiana, and around the country a broad array of people began to publicly say “no, enough is enough.” Even those with criticisms of President Obama continued their mobilization to secure his reelection and the defeat of the right-wing. Youth, particularly African-Americans, Latinos, Asian-Americans, and Native Americans, have risen up angry all across the United States, increasingly deepening their understanding of and demands for fundamental institutional changes.

The resistance in the Middle East launched in 2011 was about jobs, redistribution of wealth, limiting foreign financial penetration, and democracy. In the United States the issues have been even more varied: the right of workers to collectively bargain, Right-To-Work laws, defending public education, free access to health care including the defense of reproductive rights, and greater, not less, provision of jobs, livable wages, and secure retirement benefits. Police accountability, mass incarceration, and an end of the “schools to prison pipeline” have been increasingly prioritized in mass movements.

Where do progressives go from here? I think “co-revolutionary theory” would answer “everywhere”. Marxists are right to see the lives of people as anchored in their ability to produce and reproduce themselves, their families, and their communities. The right to a job at a living wage remains central to all the ferment. But in the twenty-first century this basic motivator for consciousness and action is more comprehensively and intimately connected to rebuilding trade unions, opposition to racism and sexism, and support for education, health care, sustainable environments, and peace. All these motivations are part of the same struggle.

It is fascinating to observe that the reaction to the efforts of the economic ruling class and political elite to turn back the clock on reforms gained over the last 75 years have sparked resistance and mobilization from across an array of movements and campaigns. And activists are beginning to make the connections between the struggles.

It is too early to tell whether this round of ferment will lead to victories for the people, even reformist ones. But as Harvey suggests, “An anti-capitalist political movement can start anywhere…The trick is to keep the political movement moving from one moment to another in mutually reinforcing ways.”

RECONFIGURING A 21ST CENTURY LEFT IN THE UNITED STATES: More 2015 Observations

Mapping Left/Progressive Forces

-The traditional Left         

- Issue Groups                                      

- Electoral politics

Barack Obama’s historic victory in 2008 sent spirits soaring. The first African-American President had been elected. Also he had been an early opponent of the war in Iraq, indicated he supported worker rights to organize unions, and would take on the Wall Street bankers who were behind the dramatic economic crisis that was destroying the economy. Liberal pundits saw Obama’s election as a prelude to the institutionalization of a new New Deal that would reconstitute a reformist state for years to come. And, these pundits argued, the Obama electoral coalition would make the 2008 election a transformative one: liberal Democrats would dominate the federal government and several pivotal states in the East, Midwest, West, Southwest, and in a few Southern states. The eight-year foreign and domestic policy disasters of the Bush years, of necessity, would lead to a new and brighter future.

The years since 2008 did not work out the way the celebrants predicted. First, Wall Street dominance of the political system survived the public outcries to break up the banks, convict the criminal CEOs, and reestablish regulations of banking and finance. 

Second, despite demilitarization of Iraq and Afghanistan, the military/industrial complex and the advocates of humanitarian interventions around the world continued to influence the character of United States foreign policy. From the disastrous policies toward Libya, Syria, Yemen, and the use of drone warfare to avoid “boots on the ground,” to sending more troops into failed trouble-spots such as Afghanistan, the pursuit of U.S. empire prevailed.

Third, while unemployment rates dropped and the auto industry was saved, support for labor organizing continued to decline, real wages remained stagnant, and those workers who returned to employment were earning less in real wages than workers had made thirty or forty years ago.

And finally, almost literally wars on people of color, youth, and women escalated during the Obama years. Incarceration rates continued to rise. Police violence against the citizenry rose. Attacks on women’s health and reproductive services grew stronger. And new federal and state educational policies were adopted (charter schools, vouchers, egregious testing of young people) that weakened the quality of education particularly for poor, Black, and Latino children.  Vicious racism which has been a feature of United States history since the founding of the nation was rekindled by the Tea Party, rightwing media outlets, and major contingents of the Republican Party.  

Bringing the Left/Progressive Forces Together

As 2016 approaches, debates about the causes of the retaliation against the modest gains brought about by the 2008 electoral victory should shift to discussions about how to move ahead. It can be said that broad sectors of the American people—workers, people of color, youth, women—believe that creating a new society is critical and possible. But today people with a passion for fundamental social change have coalesced around a diverse array of strategies, ideas, visions, experiences, and practices. By identifying core components of those who are working for change, we can begin to see how unity out of diversity of thought and action can be achieved.

First, despite efforts of historians to deny it, there has been a vibrant Left tradition in the United States. Wobblies, Communists, Socialists, and Anarchists built the modern labor movement, struggled against racism, advocated for women’s rights, and opposed United States imperialism.  Today the traditional Left, manifested in political parties with historical pedigrees, still meet, advocate, organize, and agitate. In addition, newer generations of left activists have begun to dialogue about rebuilding the traditional Left, with 21st century characteristics. Older and younger Socialists and Communists are beginning to talk together about what was relevant from the past and what can be learned for the present and the future. Both seek to link radical theory to radical practice. The traditional Left prioritizes viewing and acting to transform basic economic and political institutions, even as it engages in a political system in which discourse emphasizes reform rather than revolution.

A second tradition, the mobilization of issue groups, is deeply embedded in American political history. Groups motivated by opposition to particular outrages--destruction of the environment, police killings of young black men, attacks on reproductive rights, efforts to reduce the rights of citizens to vote, the marginalization and deportation of immigrants—form to address immediate concrete peoples’ concerns. Most issue groups share the sense that there are deep structural causes of the problems they oppose but they believe that immediate action to address their specific problem takes first priority. The issue orientation is part of the narrative about American “democracy.” From James Madison, to Alexis de Tocqueville, to modern political science, citizens are told that things change when citizens organize around lobby groups. Issue groups implicitly, if not explicitly, embrace an interest group model of political life.

Sometimes issue group mobilizations seek to blend campaigns about interests with moral claims. Throughout American history many issue groups—such as those addressing war or racism—have organized on the basis of moral arguments.  Finally, it should be mentioned that some progressives are engaged in building alternative social institutions, such as cooperatives, to address issues of worker rights, community power, and economic justice. Here the activities seek to circumvent centers of power by working on new grassroots partnerships.

A third political tradition, also with deep roots in the American experience, prioritizes electoral politics. Sometimes progressives have sought to participate in one or both of the two major political parties. At various points in US history, vibrant third parties have formed, despite restrictive electoral laws, to articulate new policies, programs, and visions. Efforts to transform major parties or organizing alternative parties have been features of state and local political life as well. Central to electoral political approaches is the proposition that for most Americans, politics is seen as involving elections. Also, it is clear that the dramatic shift toward reaction in recent years is intimately connected to the election of rightwing politicians at the national, state, and local levels, often as a result of low voter turnout. Sectors of the political class, such as the Koch brothers, have used their enormous financial resources to transform political institutions and public policy. As Reverend William Barber and others have pointed out, contemporary politics is about the struggle between the super-rich and the many.

Having mapped a 21st century “US Left,” several tentative conclusions about political practice emerge.   

Millions of Americans identify with traditions of reform and/or revolution and that the roots of these have been deeply embedded in American history. Social and economic change has occurred because of the multiplicity of efforts from all of these traditions.

In addition, a significant portion of those who participate in issue groups and progressive electoral politics share the sentiment of the traditional Left that fundamental, systemic, and revolutionary change is needed if social and economic justice is to be achieved.

And perhaps most fundamentally, given the growing power of political reaction, the traditional Left, issue groups, and those working in electoral politics need to find ways to work together and support each other if some kind of humane and environmentally sustainable society is to be created.    

TODAY: 2021

I am coming to the view that at this stage, with all the horrors described above magnified by four years of Donald Trump and the rise of white supremacist and neo-fascists,  folks need to figure out how we can support each other in the multiplicity of honorable struggles against racism, sexism, homophobia, worker exploitation, environmental despoilation and for healthcare for all, the right to form unions, cutting military spending and nuclear weapons, guaranteed income, the Green New Deal etc. There are hundreds, if not thousands, of movement organizations out there (a 2015 data-base estimated that there were 500 progressive organizations in the United States grouped in ten issue categories). Maybe a slogan like "building the progressive majority" or working with multi-issue movements such as the New Poor People's Campaign is the most effective route for most of us to follow today (whether inside left organizations, single issue groups, or not affiliated with any of these).

In the end, no matter how we do it, we need to be engaged in the struggles for humanity.

 

 

           

ON ANTI-ASIAN RACISM: THE HISTORICAL RECORD ABROAD AND AT HOME

Harry Targ

Why is the United States returning to a policy hostile to China, perhaps creating a “New Cold War”?  In addition, is there any relationship between US foreign policy and anti-Asian violence at home? There are several answers to these two questions. 

The United States Seeks to Maintain its Global Hegemony

As Alfred McCoy has described (In the Shadows of the American Century: The Rise and Decline of US Global Power, Haymarket Books, 2017), the United States, relatively speaking, is a declining power. As to economic growth, scientific and technological development, productivity, and trade, the US, compared to China particularly, is experiencing stagnation or decline.  China has engaged in massive global projects in transportation, trade, and scientific advances and by 2030 based on many measures will advance beyond the US.

According to McCoy, the United States has embarked on a path to overcome its declining relative economic hegemony by increasingly investing in military advances: a space force, a new generation of nuclear weapons, cyber security, biometrics, and maintaining or enhancing a global military presence particularly in the Pacific (what Obama spokespersons called “the Asian pivot”). In other words, rather than accommodating to a new multipolar world in the 21^st century, the United States is seeking to reestablish its global hegemony through military means.

Further, as Vijay Prashad has suggested, the United States is desperately seeking to overcome the ending of its monopoly on technological advances.  In computerization, transportation, and pharmaceuticals, the US is challenging the legitimacy of Chinese innovations, claiming that China’s advances are derived not from its domestic creativity but from “pirating” from United States companies. 

To illustrate this US concern, the prestigious and influential Council on Foreign Relations issued a report in 2019 entitled “Innovation and National Security: Keeping Our Edge.”  The report warned, “…the United States risks falling behind its competitors, principally China.”  China is investing significantly in new technologies, the Council asserts, which they predict will make China’s scientific advances superior to the US by 2030.  Also, to achieve this goal they are “exploiting” the openness of the US by violating intellectual property rights and spying.  Therefore, the Council on Foreign Relations concluded, since technological innovation is linked to economic and military advantage and since US leadership in technology and science is at risk, the nation must recommit to rebuilding its scientific prowess.

In addition, the United States is engaged in efforts at regime change around the world in Venezuela, Cuba, Iran and 36 other countries victimized by economic sanctions. China, to the contrary, is increasing its economic ties with these countries through investments, trade, and assistance. It also criticizes US policies in international organizations.  In broad terms Chinese policy stands with the majority of countries in the Global South while the United States seeks to control developments there.

Connections Between Foreign Policy, Domestic Politics, and Racism

American domestic politics have also affected the transformation of US/China policy.  For example, President Donald Trump’s popularity declined in part because of the spread of the Covid-19 pandemic in 2020, its impact on the US economy, and the rise of racial tensions in the country. And the classic anecdote he used was to construct an external enemy, an “other,” which it was hoped would  redirect the attention of the public from his declining popularity. Hence, the  President sought to deflect the cause of the spreading pandemic onto the Chinese (the “China Virus” or the “kung flu”).

In this context President Trump talked tough with the “enemy” of the United States, and, as his Secretary of State Pompeo suggested, it was about time that the US government gave up illusions about working with China. Only a Trump administration, he suggested, would be capable of doing this (even though President Obama had already launched the policy of the “Asian pivot,” a military, diplomatic and economic expansion of the US presence in Asia).

With the election of Joe Biden, the shift in the direction of escalating tensions with China have continued. Biden’s new Secretary of State, Antony Blinken recently declared that China represented a geopolitical threat to the entire international system and US hostilities were visibly evident at a significant meeting of key US and Chinese diplomats in Anchorage, Alaska.

And to underscore the connections between domestic and foreign policy Blinken said: "More than at any other time in my career – maybe in my lifetime – distinctions between domestic and foreign policy have simply fallen away…. Our domestic renewal and our strength in the world are completely entwined."

In addition, Blinken identified eight core elements of United States foreign policy which would include ending the global pandemic, addressing immigration issues, rebuilding alliances with other countries, renewing democracy,  and “confronting China.” (Deirde Shesgreen, “Blinken Lays Out Biden’s 8 Foreign Policy Prioriites, from Covid-19 to China,” USA Today, March 3, 2021). Some commentators have suggested that the media coverage of the interactions of  representatives of the two countries exaggerated the hostility of the meeting. Even if that is the case, it should be noted that the media is advancing the narrative of China as the external threat.

American Exceptionalism

America’s destiny required the US “…to set the world its example of right and honor….We cannot retreat from any soil where providence has unfurled our banner. It is ours to save that soil, for liberty, and civilization.…It is elemental….it is racial. God has not been preparing the English-speaking and teutonic peoples for a thousand years for nothing but vain and idle self-contemplation and self-admiration. No! He has made us the master organizers of the world to establish system where chaos reigns. He has given us the spirit of progress to overwhelm the forces of reaction throughout the earth.” Senator Albert Beveridge, Indiana, Congressional Record, 56 Congress, I Session, pp.704-712, 1898).

The ideological package of racism, white supremacy, and American Exceptionalism so prevalent in United States history resurfaced in dramatic ways in the Trump Administration. And violence against people of color and women have remained a centerpiece of domestic life. Violent acts against Asian Americans have risen, even before the Atlanta massacre.

Therefore it seems fair to conclude that white supremacy at home is inextricably connected with American Exceptionalism abroad. In 1910, President Theodore Roosevelt declared that the white race was critical to civilization.  But years later both Madeleine Albright, the Secretary of State in the Clinton Administration and  President Barack Obama spoke about the United States as the “indispensable nation,” a model of economics and politics for the world.

Trump’s Secretary of State, Mike Pompeo continued this tradition claiming that the United States stands for a “free 21^st century.” And President Biden’s Secretary of State Antony Blinken made it clear that the United States, as opposed to China, represents a model for institutions and values for the world. This sense of omniscience has been basic to the ideological justification of United States imperial rule.

It is clear that the ideology of white supremacy abroad is connected to the ideology of white supremacy at home. Looking at data on the United States role in the world and the North American continent, the United States was at war for 201 years from 1776 to 2011. Ten million indigenous people were exterminated as the “new” nation moved westward between the 17^th and the 20^th centuries. At least 10 million people were killed, mostly from developing countries between 1945 and 2010 in wars in which the United States had some role (overwhelmingly Asian peoples). In addition, world affairs was transformed by the  use of two atomic bombs;  one dropped on Hiroshima on August 6, 1945 instantly killing 80,000 people and the other on Nagasaki on August 9, 1945 killing another 70,000. And in years subsequent to the dropping of those bombs, millions of Koreans, Vietnamese, and Cambodians were killed by the US war machine.

A better future and the survival of the human race require us to realize, as Paul Robeson suggested, that what is precious about humanity is not our differences but our commonalities. Exceptionalist thinking separates us. Sharing what we have in common as human beings, both our troubles and our talents, is the only basis for creating a peaceful and just world.

2021 AFGHANISTAN STUDY GROUP RECOMMENDS POSTPONING WITHDRAWAL OF TROOPS FROM THAT COUNTRY: Endless Wars to Continue

"Several top Senate Democrats say the Taliban have not lived up to their commitments, and that a hasty U.S. withdrawal would be a mistake." Deirde Shesgreen, USA Today, March 17, 2021.

(Remember how Vietnam undermined the Great Society programs in the 1960s. The constructive stimulus program of 2021 may be undermined by United States foreign policy: troops and bases around the world, exorbitant military spending, a new Cold War against China and Russia, covert wars against Venezuela, Cuba, and Iran and more.)  HT

Harry Targ

March 3, 2021

The Afghanistan Study Group, an advisory panel established by Congress in December 2019 to prepare policy recommendations about a peace settlement in that country, issued its recommendations on February 2, 2021. These are designed to give guidance to President Biden as he makes critical decisions about the US role in Afghanistan, particularly concerning the 2,500 US troops still in country.

While paying homage to agreements reached between the Taliban and the United States, including a promised US withdrawal of troops by May 1, 2021, the Study Group recommended that President Biden not adhere to an “inflexible timeline” for withdrawing US troops. In other words, in the guise of supporting a peace process, the Study Group recommended that Biden not withdraw troops at this time “to give the peace process sufficient time to produce an acceptable result.” And the report indicated that “the purpose of the US troop presence should also be clear: not to pursue an endless war but to support a peace process that will allow American troops to return home under conditions that guarantee our national interests.” And, as Phyllis Bennis has suggested, even the idea of a “complete withdrawal” does not include bombings and drone strikes. https://www.usip.org/publications/2021/02/afghanistan-study-group-final-report-pathway-peace-afghanistan

An interesting sidebar to the current Afghanistan story is its relative invisibility in the US media. Given the history of thousands of US troops positioned overseas, the 2,500 troops seems more like a modest police action. However, a Congressional Research Service report issued on February 22, 2021 indicated that during the fourth quarter of 2020 there were some 43,809 defense contractors working in Iraq, Syria, and Afghanistan;  27,388 of whom were in Afghanistan. And from fiscal years 2011 to 2019 Defense Department contracts for services performed in Iraq, Syria, and Afghanistan cost about $187 billion.  “Contractors” are civilians working for the military.  And as the report suggests, over the last 30 years “DOD has relied on contractors to support a wide range of military operations.” https://crsreports.congress.gov/product/pdf/R/R44116

In short, while the presence of military personnel has seemed to lessen in the Middle East and East Asia in recent years, in fact their numbers remain large and unaccountable to the US public. And The Afghanistan Study Group, made up of legislative representatives, military officers, and defense intellectuals, recommends the continuation of their stationing in Afghanistan.

It is important to revisit the history of what may be called (as the Korean War has been called) “our forgotten war” or our more recent “endless war.” The latest phase of the US war on Afghanistan war began in October, 2001, allegedly in response to the 9/11 attacks on the US. But the US role as suggested in links below, has its roots in the initiation of CIA funding of rebels who were fighting against a pro-Soviet government in Kabul in the summer, 1979. In fact CIA support for rebels fighting against the government of Afghanistan in the 1980s included support for Osama Bin Laden.

Since 2001 over 100,000 Afghans have died, killed by multiple actors, and millions have been displaced. The cost in US dollars has reached $1.5 trillion and since 2001 775,000 US troops were deployed there. Kathy Kelly, co-coordinator of Voices for Creative Nonviolence, argues that peace can only come from the allocation of financial resources, not for war but for economic development. Billions of dollars, she maintains, were “spent to prolong the war, enabling vast profits for military contractors, various warlords, and mafiosa-style groups that often gained control of foreign funds.” https://www.commondreams.org/news/2021/02/03/secure-lasting-peace-afghanistan-task-force-proposes-prolonging-longest-us-war

Also long forgotten has been the Washington Post publication in December, 2019, of the “Afghanistan Papers,” a compellation of documents illustrating the years of government lies about the US presence in Afghanistan. It consists of 2,000 pages of interviews from some 400 military and diplomatic personnel involved in the Afghanistan policy. A retired general reported that the US government did not know how dysfunctional the operation was, including needless deaths of US troops and the Afghan people, runaway corruption, the inability to help build an effective and representative government and police force, or the inability to stem the opium trade. As indicated in the Washington Post story, the documents indicated the falsity of “a long chorus of public statements from US presidents, military commanders and diplomats who assured Americans year after year that they were making progress in Afghanistan and the war was worth fighting.” https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/2019/investigations/afghanistan-papers/afghanistan-war-confidential-documents/

The context for the war in Afghanistan and recommendations for its continuation were recently provided by a report issued by Brown University’s Cost of War Project. This report presents data to indicate that the United States has engaged in “counter-terrorism” operations in 85 countries since 2018 including training programs. US troops have carried out ground attacks or bombing campaigns in at least ten countries and engaged in training exercises in 41 countries. The report suggests that the violence against people around the world, the casualties suffered by US citizens, and the wastefulness of war have led more and more Americans to call for an end to “endless wars.”

https://www.commondreams.org/news/2021/02/25/counter-terrorism-two-decades-after-911-new-interactive-map-details-footprint-us-war

https://www.usatoday.com/in-depth/news/2021/02/25/post-9-11-us-military-efforts-touched-85-nations-last-3-years/6564981002/

In response to the recommendation of the Afghanistan Study Group to extend the deadline for withdrawal of US troops, Stephen Miles, Executive director of Win Without War, said, “The word for spending another minute trying to ‘win’ on the battlefield after last two decades isn’t “logic”-it’s absurdity.”

The US has a moral obligation to help the Afghan people (and those around the world who have suffered from US militarism) rebuild what was largely destroyed by the endless U.S.-led war. But the context for rebuilding begins with an immediate withdrawal of troops and defense contractors.

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Links to older posts:

October, 2, 2009 The endless war against Afghanistan continues. Diary of a Heartland Radical: END THE WAR IN AFGHANISTAN NOW

MAY 6,  2012 The War on Afghanistan is Our Biggest Fantasy, https://heartlandradical.blogspot.com/2012/05/blog-post_06.html

 

 

WAIST DEEP IN THE BIG MUDDY, AGAIN! (and again, February, 2021)

Harry Targ (originally posted June 20, 2013 in The Rag Blog)

 In 2011 the grassroots revolts that spread all across the Middle East caught the traditional imperial powers in the region--the United States, Great Britain, and France-- by surprise. Even more so, the Middle East theocracies and dictatorships--Saudi Arabia, Tunisia, Egypt, Bahrain, Jordan, Kuwait, Qatar and others--were threatened by those young people, workers, unemployed, and women, who took to the streets motivated by the vision of another world.  The United States watched the street protests hoping against hope that the authoritarian regimes in Tunisia and Egypt would weather the storm.  The Obama administration did not move publicly to aid these regimes to crush the protest but withheld its endorsement of the grassroots democracy movement.  The idea of popular revolt spread to places all across the globe including Madison, Wisconsin; Santiago, Chile; Athens, Greece; Madrid, Spain; and Quebec, Canada. The Occupy Movements in the United States expanded. 

Globally, movements for a 21^st century democratization seemed to be replicating 1968. 

In this historic context, the imperial powers needed to transform the Middle East narrative from demands for jobs, worker rights, women’s rights, and democratization to the more traditional religious and ethnic conflict model of Middle East politics. The United States organized a United Nations/NATO coalition to intervene to encourage rebellion in Libya coupled with a game-changing air war against the Libyan military. The result was the overthrow of the government of Muammar Gaddafi and its replacement by a quarrelsome ungovernable regime rife with ethnic strife. The UN/NATO war on Libya was billed as the next phase of Arab Spring, while actually it imposed religious and ethnic conflict on a relatively stable but authoritarian regime.

The anger over the US encouragement and military intervention in the Libyan civil war was reflected in the killings by Libyan terrorists of CIA operatives in Benghazi, Libya in September, 2012. What intervention in Libya did was to destabilize that society and eliminate its former dictator who was opposed to the growing US military expansion in North Africa. Most important, it took off the front pages and the hearts and minds of youth, the poor, women, and trade unionists the hope of mass movements to bring about democratic change in the region. (Subsequently it opened the door for a growing US military presence via AFRICOM).

US covert and military intervention has shifted now from Libya to Syria.  Mobilization against the Bashar al-Assad dictatorship in Syria was applauded by the United States. As the protest escalated into civil war in that country with contestants including secular and religious groups fighting against Assad’s army, the United States, Sunni countries of the Arab League, and NATO countries escalated their support to the rebels. Another Libya-style UN/NATO military operation was thwarted by strong opposition from Russia and China and the threat of growing military support for the Syrian regime by Iran.

 Part of the ongoing story of Syria is the following:

1.The United States launched its diplomatic involvement in the Syrian civil war by insisting that Bashar al-Assad must step down. This precluded any possibility of a diplomatic settlement of the civil war and the eventual dismantling of the Assad regime. Most important, the United States non-negotiable demand made diplomatic collaboration between the United States and Russia all but impossible.

 2.Support for various rebel factions, diplomatic and presumably covert, has encouraged the escalation of opposition violence which was matched by state violence.

 3.Rebel factions, ironically, have included groups with profiles that resemble the terrorists who were responsible for the 9/11 murders in the United States and terrorist attacks on various targets in the Middle East and Afghanistan.

 4.Violence and political instability have begun to spread to Lebanon, Turkey, and Jordan, and have drawn Israel and Iran closer into regional war.

 5.As the Syrian civil war has escalated it has become a “proxy” war between the United States and Russia and Sunni and Shia Muslims.

 6.In the United States, the civil war in Syria has rekindled the war factions. These include the “neoconservatives” who were responsible for the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. Using 9/11 and lies about weapons of mass destruction the neoconservatives influenced the Bush administration to pursue their agenda to use United States power to transform the globe in its interests.

The neoconservatives, advocates of United States military intervention in Syria, are now joined by the “humanitarian interventionists” who in the Clinton Administration supported bombing campaigns in Iraq, Serbia, and Bosnia and live by the ideology that the United States must use its military power to promote human rights around the world.

It is important to note that recent polling data suggests that only a small percentage of the American people, about 20 percent, give any support to United States involvement in Syria. Most Americans are suffering from declining jobs, income, and social safety nets, and reject the war economy and militarism that has characterized the U.S. role in the world since 1945. 

 7.The escalation of the civil war, the growing military role of the United States, Russia, Iran, Turkey, NATO, Hezbollah from Lebanon, and Israel has led to nearly 100,000 Syrian deaths and more than a million refugees. As in most international wars, innocent people suffer and die as military decisions are made in government capitals.

 The case is clear that increasing the United States military involvement in Syria has negative consequences for the Middle East, international relations, the inspiration of Arab Spring, American politics, and the people of Syria. The hope for a more just and peaceful future requires support for the resumption of the spirit and vision of the original Arab Spring that began in Tunisia and Egypt and spread all across the globe. Otherwise the United States will once again be “waist deep in the big muddy” as in Vietnam, Iraq, and Afghanistan.

Pete Seeger - Waist Deep in the Big Muddy - YouTube

www.youtube.com › watch

 

READING THE MORNING PAPER IN KURT VONNEGUT’S HOOSIER STATE

Harry Targ

I know I write too much. I promised that I would try to restrain myself for a day or so from writing and posting my words of wisdom. But after reading my local morning newspaper I had to do something!

For starters, the local newspaper was bought out by the Gannett corporation a few years ago. Its reporting staff was cut. The paper is mostly filler: articles from other Gannett newspapers have no relationship to the needs of or information about the Greater Lafayette area. To fill up space, the obituaries, usually posted in the “Life” section are printed in a type face about four times the size of a few years ago. And there are full-page advertisements for remodeled bathtub showers, window replacements, furnaces, or hearing aids.

News stories, often on the front page, announce the opening of new delicatessens, restaurants, and mini-markets.  Also, the community gets information about the latest petty crime occurring in the community. Usually such stories are coupled with alleged criminals who are people of color. (Sometimes, we are told, they are criminals who came to the Greater Lafayette area from Chicago, 120 miles away. Chicago, we are led to believe, is the epicenter of crime and violence in the Midwest).

Aside from some informative coverage on the pandemic in Indiana and ways to register for vaccinations, the biggest industry, Purdue University, is the source of several, often laudatory stories. An excellent reporter, who provided information about subjects such as the university’s failed bid to run a nuclear laboratory or the creation of online university using the Purdue brand name, recently retired. Occasionally the paper prints stories about the university relying on information from the university news service. Examples include stories about the university’s “innovations,” university rankings for one thing or another, or world-class advances in some research project.

But what I read this morning was the last straw!  The Purdue story on page one was headlined: “Purdue University Hosting Paul Ryan, Heidi Heitkamp for Virtual Discussion.” These two speakers, retired members of the House of Representatives and Senate, “national political figures,” will be speaking on “American Democracy: Where Do We Go From Here.” This is part of the Purdue president’s continuing lecture series which over the years has included George Will, Condoleezza Rice, George Shultz, Arne Duncan, Bob Kerrey, and for those who wish to scorn Appalachian folks, J.D. Vance. Purdue President Mitch Daniels who is a former governor of Indiana assured citizens of the state in 2013 that as university president he would not be political.

In addition, the story reports on the co-sponsor of the talk, The Purdue University Political Discourse Club, an organization formed to support “civil political discussions.” The goal of the lecture series has been to expose students and the broader community to “inspiring ideas, courageous leadership and models of civic engagement and civil discourse.” President Daniels, applauded the students from The Political Discourse Club for their role “in fostering this type of civil discourse on our campus and a healthier political process overall.”

But the story on page two with the headline “Battle Ground Man Charged With Attempted Child Seduction,” pushed me over the edge (and that is why I am writing). This is the lead to the story, minus the man named: “____ watched porn late Sept. 13, and when his penis became erect, he put a rubber band around it, according to a probable cause affidavit filed with charges.”

The story went on to tell that the rubber band became stuck on the man’s penis and he rushed to a teenage girl who was in the house to ask her to “remove the rubber band.” She refused. Fortunately, the story says, he was able to remove the rubber band himself but an affidavit was filed with the charge of “attempted child seduction.”  Since the man named in the story had three felony convictions he was charged as an “habitual offender.” The story did say that none of these prior convictions were sex-related crimes. And to summarize, the story ended: “As of Tuesday morning, ___ has not been arrested on the new charges, according to jail officers.”

Many well-meaning people are grappling with questions and seek solutions to problems including : “Why did the insurrection of January 6 occur?” “Why are we living in a world of crises including environmental disaster, pandemic, poverty, rampant violence, and racism?"  Perhaps part of our inability to understand the problems we face and to reflect on solutions to them relate to the inadequacies of  our educational institutions and the media.

As the great Hoosier novelist Kurt Vonnegut once wrote: “So It Goes.”

 

 

 

 

 

HOW DOES THE RULING CLASS RULE? The Superstructure is even more powerful today!

Originally posted on February23, 2010

Harry Targ

The Substructure

In an effort to teach and reflect more systematically about class rule in the United States, I have used an interesting book by Robert Perrucci and Earl Wysong, The New Class Society. It describes the transformation of the class system over the last thirty years from one in which there was a small ruling class, a significantly-sized “middle class,” and a lesser population of the poor and working classes.

According to these sociologists the diamond-shaped distribution of wealth, income, and power that existed during the “golden years” of U.S. capitalist hegemony after World War II began to change in the 1970s. Today, in the “new class society” the top one percent of income, wealth, and power holders, in conjunction with the remainder of the top twenty percent of managers, professionals and support staff of the super class, dominate at the expense of the bottom eighty percent of the population.

Using older language, ownership and control of the means of production and the relationships that exist between the owners and those who work constitute the “substructure” of the capitalist system. But what remains a puzzle is “how does the ruling class rule?”

The Superstructure

Perrucci and Wysong suggest some answers that can serve as a basis for others to analyze and refine. They suggest four critical institutions, what I might call the “superstructure,” which ensure the maintenance of class rule. These are the political system, the education industry, the information industry, and the culture industry. Each in its own way is designed to shape the consciousness the new working class, the bottom eighty percent, has of itself and its place in the world of economics, politics, and society.

The political system constitutes the public arena where choices get made about public policy. It remains relevant to all actors in the society, from those who are at the top of the class system to the vast majority of the population constituting the new working class. However, since wealth most often can be translated into power, political institutions in usual times are used to serve the interests of the ruling class. Wealth is used to maintain power through financing elections, lobbying decision-makers, and funding so-called “think tanks” to give “expert” advice to the rulers.

Sometimes combined efforts of trade associations and corporations martial national campaigns to pressure government to shift the direction of public policy away from the popular classes to the rulers.

In an enlightening book by Elizabeth Fones-Wolff, Selling Free Enterprise, the author describes a continuing struggle in the 1940s and 1950s by the National Association of Manufacturers, the Chamber of Commerce, and like-minded groups to convince the American people that individualism, private enterprise, and union-busting were more in their interests than expanding government programs, communities assuming more responsibility for social well-being, and building workers associations as sources of strength and protection from corporate elites.

In sum, political institutions are portrayed as the venue by which “the people decide,” when in fact usually their interests are not adequately represented.

The education industry, that is K through 12, college and university, and professional school education provides the tools for credentialing some young people and not others. Usually the highest educational achievement is earned by those who come from privileged class families. Systems of “tracking,” which are supposed to shape education to the talents and needs of individual students are used to promote and encourage those who come from the wealthy and to channel in other directions the children of the working class. “Streaming” policies are designed to encourage the creativity and interests of the children of wealth. In sum, the education system, which does enlighten, inform and train, also serves as a gatekeeper to reward and encourage those from the privileged classes and sustain and reproduce the new working class.

Perhaps the most vital function the education system serves is to “socialize” the young to their proper political roles in adulthood. Curricula promote the idea among children of the wealthy that they are creative, they can and should serve the public, and that their obligation is to be engaged citizens. Children of the new working class are taught to be obedient, respect authority and expertise, and participate in politics only as a voter.

The information industry provides our lens on the world. As communications theorists have long suggested, most of people’s information and experience of the world is indirect and mediated by electronic and print media.

The information we consume is packaged in “media frames.” Since most of the information we receive comes from fewer than ten mega-media corporations, they are shaping the understanding of the world of the new working class. Why making war is necessary, how the United States must continue to support Wall Street during this economic crisis, and the diabolical reasons why some countries, such as Cuba or Venezuela, criticize the United States are examples of most people’s experience of these issues. Media framing includes what stories are left out as well as how the ones communicated are covered.

Finally, the culture industry provides entertainment or activity for the non-working hours of most people. Television, movies, music, sporting activities are presented to people by the same handful of mega-corporations that dominate the information industry. Increasingly the products of these two industries merge so that “news” and “entertainment” become one. This is true for sex, violence, and mayhem reported as news and the fake news as reported by the comedians.

Perhaps most important to the culture industry is its portrait of presumed human experience. This experience highlights the super-natural, the futuristic, or the “reality” of swallowing insects and brutally competing with others for prize money or attractive sexual objects. When the culture industry addresses contemporary experience, for example in situation comedies and crime shows, there are no workers present, African-Americans are hoodlums or victims, women are helpless, and authority figures such as the police are the friends of the people rather than employees of the state. Perrucci and Wysong refer to the primary role of the culture industry as “pacification.”

The points raised in this essay do not break any new theoretical ground. But, in my view, clearly identifying critical elements of the “substructure” and the “superstructure,” can provide a roadmap for progressives to plan their future political agendas. Of course, a fundamental change in the mode of production, capitalism, is basic. But in the interim, organizing around the political system, and the education, information, and culture industries makes sense.

  VISUALIZING THE “BASE” AND THE “SUPERSTRUCTURE”