"THIS MADNESS MUST CEASE"

(an earlier version was posted on January 15, 2010)

Harry Targ

President Biden is considering deploying several thousand U.S. troops, as well as warships and aircraft, to NATO allies in the Baltics and Eastern Europe, an expansion of American military involvement amid mounting fears of a Russian incursion into Ukraine, according to administration officials. Helene Cooper and Eric Schmitt, New York Times, January 23, 2022.

At a critical juncture in the escalation of the Vietnam War, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. spoke at the Riverside Church on April 4, 1967 describing the fundamental connections between war overseas and poverty at home:

“Somehow this madness must cease. We must stop now. I speak for those whose land is being laid waste, whose homes are being destroyed, whose culture is being subverted. I speak for the poor of America who are paying the double price of smashed hopes at home and death and corruption in Vietnam. I speak as a citizen of the world, for the world as it stands aghast at the path we have taken.”

It is useful to reflect on the historic motivation for United States foreign policy, what Dr. King called "this madness," yesterday and today. And, in the spirit of Dr. King, it is incumbent upon us to continue to reflect also on its impacts on people abroad and at home. Such reflections should encompass venues such as Iraq, Afghanistan, Yemen, Syria, and Palestine where the contemporary impacts are the result of war and countries like Haiti where the structure of economic and political relations have been as devastating to the people as military occupation (though marines occupied Haiti from 1917 to 1934).

First, according to historian William Appleman Williams, the United States has pursued dominant influence in the world ever since the 1890s. After conquering the North American continent and all but exterminating its inhabitants, U.S. policy has been shaped by the pursuit of markets, investment opportunities, cheap labor, and vital natural resources. With the expansion of industrial capitalism, securing access to cheap oil became particularly important. Oil figured prominently in agreements with the ruling oligarchy in Saudi Arabia during World War II, the 1953 overthrow of Mohammed Mossadegh in Iran, the severing of relations with a radical Iraqi regime in 1958, and the wars against Iraq in 1991 and 2003.

Historian Loren Baritz has argued that U.S. policymakers have defined these economically driven global and interventionist policies in moral terms. For example, President Truman spoke of the threat of totalitarian communism to the free world in his famous Truman Doctrine speech of March 12, 1947. However, one week earlier, in a less familiar speech at Baylor University, he asserted that economics and foreign policy were inextricably connected and that the United States was committed to creating a global market economy in the post-war world. Thirty-five years later President Reagan repeatedly referred to the Soviet Communist system as an historical aberration and at the same time borrowed from our Puritan ancestors, declaring that the United States was a “city on a hill.” We were destined by God to transform the world. President Clinton also mixed economics and morality repeatedly reiterating his commitment to create “market democracies” around the world. Now the US wishes to protect “democracy” in Ukraine.

The impacts of this century-long search for what Williams called, “the Open Door,” the drive to economically penetrate the globe has meant pain, suffering, and waste for peoples everywhere including the United States. The U.S. sent marines to invade Central American and the Caribbean 25 times between 1900 and 1933. During the fifty years since World War 11 the U.S. threatened to use force or sent troops on at least 40 occasions, spent $3 trillion on the military, participated in wars between 1945 and 1995 in which 10 million people died, and lost at least 100,000 of its own soldiers killed in action with 10 times that number becoming casualties.

It was in this historical context that President Bush responded to the terrorist attack on 9/11 by launching a new global crusade, replacing communism with a “war on terrorism.” He justified “preemptory” attacks on any country or people we would define as a possible threat to U.S. national security. The Pentagon defined an “arc of instability” running from the northern parts of South America through North Africa, the Middle East, the Persian Gulf, and East Asia. They said the United States had to develop small, mobile military bases all across the globe (Chalmers Johnson estimated that some 700 bases existed in 60 countries in 2010) with new technologies that would make the U.S. fighting force more capable of quickly intervening in self-defined trouble spots. “Successful operations” in Afghanistan and Iraq would solidify the presence, power, and control of strategic resources and institutionalize this strategy of “the last remaining superpower.”

Clinton Administration policies toward Iraq differed in tactics but not in substance from his successor. Clinton sought to increase the U.S. presence in the Gulf by starving the Iraqi regime of Saddam Hussein. Economic sanctions led to a 60 percent decline in the GDP of the country and the economic embargo cost the lives of about one million Iraqis, mostly children under the age of five.

However, supporters of the lobby group, Project for the New American Century (PNAC), including Dick Cheney, Paul Wolfowitz, Donald Rumsfeld, Scooter Libby, and other Bush policymakers, demanded that Clinton do more. As soon as 9/11 happened, these neo-conservatives convinced President Bush to attack Iraq even though the latter had nothing to do with 9/11 and everyone knew that Iraq, after a decade of US and British bombing, economic sanctions, and rigorous inspections, had no weapons of mass destruction.

The war on Afghanistan began in October,2001 and the war in Iraq in March 2003. And the impacts have been devastating on these war-torn countries, even after US troops withdrew.

What can be done about this “madness?" Progressives should continue to demand that the United States deescalate and withdraw all U.S. troops from its global presence. U.S. military bases all across the globe must be shut down. This process should be done in conjunction with negotiations with relevant nations and peoples to transform international relations. And today we must say “no to war in Ukraine. No to war in the South China Sea. Abolish NATO.”

Americans must pressure their leaders to embrace foreign and domestic policies that promote peace and justice. At the time of his assassination Dr. King was organizing a Poor People’s Campaign, a mass movement to end war, racism, and economic misery. Today, in 2022, a New Poor People’s Campaign is organizing around these issues. Campaigns in cities such as New York have advocated “move the money” from military to social spending, These projects still need our attention.

Amidst Pandemic, Dramatic Increases in Economic Inequality, the Rise of Racism, and Climate Disaster, the Danger of War Increases

“The Clock has become a universally recognized indicator of the world’s vulnerability to catastrophe from nuclear weapons, climate change, and disruptive technologies in other domains.” This year marks the closest estimate of the possible midnight disaster in 75 years.

Harry Targ

As the narrative unfolds concerning a possible war in Eastern Europe over Ukraine, the material below is usually left out of corporate media stories. There is reason to suspect that the Biden Administration, losing popularity by the day for its failure to get sufficient support for its domestic agenda, has chosen to reignite a new cold or hot war with Russia and China. Domestic politics, plus the fears of foreign policy elites about the relative decline in US global hegemony, may be leading the world down the path of grotesquely increased military expenditures and war. And the institutions that thrive on war or the preparation for war remain  beyond the control of elected leaders.

NATO/Ukraine/New Cold War. In 2016 leaders of the 28 NATO countries met in summit in Poland to reaffirm their commitment to the military alliance that was established in 1949 for the sole purpose of protecting the European continent from any possible Soviet military intervention. With the collapse of the former Soviet Union, rather than dissolving, NATO took on the task of policing the world for neoliberal globalization and the states “victorious” in the Cold War. NATO was the official operational arm of military operations in the former Yugoslavia in the 1990s and the military force that would destroy the Gaddafi regime in Libya. 

After the collapse of the Soviet Bloc, NATO incorporated the states in Eastern Europe that had been affiliated with it. Now Poland, Hungary, and the Baltic States remain the frontline in the ongoing hostilities with Russia. They and western financiers from Ukraine, with substantial assistance from the United States, engineered the coup that ousted a corrupt but elected President in Ukraine. This set off an ongoing civil war between those in the population who wanted to continue ties to Russia and others who wanted Ukraine to join the European Union and NATO. The instability in Kiev was orchestrated by high US state department officials who advocated a New Cold War with Russia. Some US diplomats involved in the Ukraine story remain in the Biden diplomatic team.

 At the NATO summit of 2016 it was agreed to establish four battalion-sized “battle groups” in Poland and the Baltic states. To use the language of the Cold War, this small force could serve as a “trip wire” that could precipitate an “incident” and a major war with Russia. NATO agreed to bolster the Ukraine military. The alliance would commit to establishing a controversial missile defense system in Eastern Europe.  And NATO countries promised to spend two percent of their budgets on the military. The continued commitment of the United States was affirmed by President Obama. After the Trump period of reduced commitment to NATO, President Biden wishes to resuscitate the alliance.

The Asian Pivot. In 2011, US spokespersons announced that the country would shift resources and attention to Asia, where US economic and security interests are deemed vital, from the Middle East. Although US/Chinese dialogue continues the United States has criticized China’s repositioning of what it regards as its possessions in the South China Sea. The United States has restated or implied its continued commitments to Taiwan, expanded military relations with Vietnam, reestablished military bases in the Philippines, and has generally avoided criticizing efforts by ruling Japanese politicians to revise their constitution to allow for a full-scale remilitarization. The United States has threatened North Korea over their military maneuvers and has bolstered the South Korean military. While Trump did reach out to North Korea, tension reduction on the peninsula was short-lived.

On the economic front the United States was instrumental in building support for the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) to challenge Chinese economic hegemony in the region. While Trump rescinded the TPP approach, he launched a trade war against China and engaged in attacks on Chinese corporations operating in the West.

Both Trump and Biden spokespersons have made it clear that a New Cold War against China is ramping up. Corporations engaged in military production and research universities have used the China threat as a justification for increased military spending, research and development, cyber-security and a whole panoply of tools to fight “twenty-first century wars”.

Conclusion. Voices from the various movements for social and economic justice, preserving democratic institutions, peace, and climate change remain vital. All these movements must stand together to reverse the ticking clock that is moving inexorably toward midnight.

 

WE SHALL NOT FORGET:THE STRUGGLE FOR LIBERATION CONTINUES

Harry Targ

O black man, beast of burden through the centuries Your ashes scattered to the winds of heaven, … Barbaric centuries of rape and carnage … You will make the Congo a nation, happy and free, In the very heart of vast Black Africa (from “Weep, Beloved Black Brother,” Patrice Lumumba)

  . . . “We are not alone, Africa, Asia, and free and liberated people from every corner of the world will always be found at the side of the Congolese….To my children whom I leave and whom perhaps I will see no more, I wish that they be told that the future of the Congo is beautiful and that it expects for each Congolese to accomplish the sacred task of reconstruction of our independence and our sovereignty; for without dignity there is no liberty, without justice there is no dignity, and without independence there are no free men (Lumumba’s last letter to his wife, December, 1960)

. . . . Lumumba is the greatest Black man who ever walked the African continent. He didn’t fear anybody (Malcolm X, June 28, 1964) 

 The basic cause of most of the trouble in the Congo right now is the intervention of outsiders--the fighting that is going on over the mineral wealth of the Congo and over the strategic position that the Congo represents on the African continent. (Malcolm X, November, 28, 1964). . . . 

 The adventures that Africa afforded were tawdry enough, but it became the setting for a sudden epiphany…of the pressing necessity for expounding my America for the 20th century.…It was given to me, equally disconsolate on the edge of a jungle of central Africa, to have thrust upon me the mission of expounding what I took to be the innermost propulsion of the United States… (from Harvard intellectual historian Perry Miller’s remembrance of working on a barge in the Belgian Congo, recorded in his Errand Into the Wilderness, 1956). 

 On January 17, 1961 Patrice Lumumba, the kidnapped leader of the newly independent government of what now is called Democratic Republic of the Congo (DR Congo) was assassinated by a group of army officers encouraged by many imperialist powers including the United States. DR Congo, endowed with enormous riches and a large population, had been under the yoke of Belgian colonialism since the powers of Europe divided up the African continent at the 1884 Berlin Conference. King Leopold II, occupied the land and enslaved the inhabitants of it to work huge rubber plantations. Those who resisted enslavement were brutally murdered, their body parts put on public display to serve as a warning to those who had similar thoughts. 

But, as Lumumba’s words suggest, masses of people rose up to extricate colonial rulers not only in the Congo but throughout Africa: including Kenya, Ghana, South Africa, and later in Portuguese colonies (Guinea Bissau, Angola, and Mozambique). Following the uprisings in India in the 1940s, the spirit of independence gripped virtually the entire Global South. 

 Lumumba, inspired by the freedom currents spreading like wildfire in the 1940s and 1950s helped form the Congolese National Movement (MNC) in 1958. The MNC movement joined with the broad Pan African forces at the All-African People’s Conference in Accra, Ghana in that year. Sensing the growing demands for change in Africa’s third largest country, the Belgian government began to extricate itself from its colony. National elections were held in May,1960 to establish the first independent government of the Congo. The MNC won the elections and Patrice Lumumba became the government’s first prime minister, and Joseph Kasavubu its president. 

 Shortly thereafter, political leaders from the resource rich Congo province of Katanga, encouraged by the Belgians, seceded. Internal strife spread to the Congolese capital. In the fall of 1960 Lumumba, who had become a world-renowned symbol of African liberation, was kidnapped by dissident members of the new Congolese army and killed in 1961. 

Both the United Nations and the Central Intelligence Agency of the United States have long been viewed as being complicit in the assassination. Before the kidnapping Lumumba appealed for assistance to quell civil war in his country. UN peacekeeping forces failed to support the newly created government. 

Since Lumumba asked for military equipment from the former Soviet Union the Eisenhower administration became convinced that now Lumumba, the African nationalist, had become an agent of international communism. After Lumumba’s death, and years of internal political conflict, Colonel Joseph Mobutu, the leader of the plot to capture and kill Lumumba seized state power. 

In 1971, Mobutu (later called Mobutu Sese Seko) renamed the Congo, Zaire, and for over twenty years robbed the country of its wealth. When his regime collapsed in the 1990s, due to internal and external forces, a civil war, often referred to as “Africa’s World War,” ensued. 

Bloody violence, estimated deaths range from 3 to 5 million people, involving Congolese forces, intervening armies from Uganda, and Rwanda, and indirect support of one side or another from European powers and western economic interests continued from 1998 to 2003. After a short ceasefire and the creation of a new DCR government, civil war in parts of the country resumed. Domestic instability and contested rule ensured until a 2018 election led to a peaceful transition of power. Meanwhile, the DCR, endowed with enormous natural resources remains one of the poorest countries in the world. The legacy of colonialism and neo-colonialism has been a painful burden on the nation's more than one hundred million people,

The history of the Congolese people is complicated but several historical and contemporary lessons can be drawn as we reflect on the anniversary of the death of Patrice Lumumba. 

 First, Patrice Lumumba represents that great generation of African anti-colonial leaders, who, through their words and deeds, encouraged African masses to rise up against colonial masters, neo-colonial leaders tied to traditional empires, and to do so celebrating independent nationhood. Leaders such as Jomo Kenyatta, Kwame Nkrumah, Amilcar Cabral, and Nelson Mandela inspired the transformation of the political, economic, and cultural life of the African continent. While their struggles remain incomplete, they did succeed in leading the African masses to overthrow the formal colonial order that had been in place for four hundred years. 

Second, Americans, such as historian Perry Miller, experienced Africa only as the backdrop for their own musings about America’s identity. Others described Africa as a continent devoid of people, history, and culture, and ignored leaders like Lumumba who had a tremendous impact on the consciousness of peoples victimized by colonial exploitation and racism everywhere. 

Third, as Penny M. Von Eschen points out (Race Against Empire: Black Americans and Anticolonialism 1937-1957, 1997), during the time of anti-colonial struggles there were over 200 newspapers in African-American communities across the United States. Their readers knew much about colonialism and the struggles against it in Asia, Africa, and Latin America. Members of Black communities in the United States read reports on Asia, Africa, and Latin America from such prolific writers as George Padmore, W.E.B. DuBois, and Paul Robeson. Fighters for freedom in the United States, such as Malcolm X, knew full well about the trials and tribulations of Patrice Lumumba and drew analogies between struggles against colonialism and neo-colonialism in Africa and campaigns for racial justice in the United States. 

And finally, the disintegration of one of the largest countries in the world and its replacement by a brutal dictatorship from the 1960s to the 1990s, had its roots in the 1960 murder of the Democratic Republic of the Congo’s first prime minister. In addition, the “African World War” must be seen as connected to the assassination of the proud African nationalist leader, Patrice Lumumba, 61 years ago. 

IN THE SPIRIT OF DR. MARTIN LUTHER KING

 

IN THE SPIRIT OF Dr6 2.docx

THE POLITICAL ECONOMY OF INDIANA, 2017 and 2022

 Harry Targ

       

It is time for all Hoosier progressives to organize pressure on the state legislature and to support political candidates for all offices who are working on policies to end hunger, egregious economic inequality, inadequate health care, limited child support, inadequate funding for public education, attacks on unions, and, in sum, to support economic justice as a human right. As the United Way ALICE reports indicate Indiana government has been moving in the wrong direction for years; privileging the wealthy and powerful at the expense of the majority of Hoosiers. As a recent report said:

"In 2018, 37% of Indiana’s 2,592,262 households still struggled to make ends meet. 11% of households were vulnerable to an economic disruption, like the COVID-19 crisis, and on the brink of the ALICE threshold."

From:

https://iuw.org/alice/

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

(The essay on the Indiana political economy below was posted in February, 2017. The history is important and not much has changed for working families since then.)

Social and Economic Wellbeing Survey Shows No Progress

A flurry of newspaper stories appeared the first week of February in The Wall Street Journal and several Indiana newspapers reporting on data from a “health and wellness” national survey about the performance of the 50 states. Indiana according to several measures was ranked as the fourth “worst state” in the country. The national survey consisted of data from 177,281 people interviewed by the Gallup and Healthways organizations. Data included responses to questions about feelings of community support and pride, physical health, and financial security.

According to the survey The Times of Northwest Indiana, (February 8, 2017) reported, “31.3 percent of Indiana residents are obese, 30.6 smoke, and 29.4 percent don’t exercise at all.” Only 24.9 percent of the population has a bachelor’s degree (one of the lowest percentages of any state).  The NWIT article indicated that median household income of Hoosiers was $5,000 less than the national median income.

As The Wall Street Journal put it: “Indiana is one of just a handful of states to rank worse in every category of well-being--sense of purpose, social life, financial health, community pride, and physical fitness--than most other states…”  On all these measures combined Indiana’s rank was only ahead of Oklahoma, Kentucky, and West Virginia.

Previous Data on the Indiana Economy

The centerpiece of Indiana public policy since 2004 has been corporate and individual tax cuts and reduced budgets for education, health care, and other public services. Indiana was one of the first states to begin the privatization of the public sector, including transferring educational funds from public to charter schools. It established a voucher system to encourage parents to send their children to private schools. Also Indiana sold public roads; privatized public services; and recruited controversial corporations such as Duke Power to support research at the state’s flagship research universities. Meanwhile the manufacturing base of the state shifted from higher paying and unionized industrial labor (automobiles, steel, and durable goods) to lower paying service jobs and non-union work such as at the Amazon distribution center.

The narrative about Indiana economic growth presented by the former Governor Mike Pence varied greatly from data gathered between 2012 and 2014. For example, between 2013 and 2014, despite enticements to business, Indiana grew at a 0.4 percent pace while the nation at large experienced 2.2 percent growth.

Indiana’s economy historically was based on manufacturing but has experienced declines since the 1980s (with only modest increases in recent years).  However, newer manufacturing between 2014 and 2016 has been mostly in low-wage non-unionized sectors.   For example, the Indiana Institute for Working Families reported on data from a study of work and poverty in Marion County, which includes the state’s largest city, Indianapolis.  Four of five of the largest growing industries in the county paid wages at or below family sustainability ($798 per week for a family of three) and individual and household wages declined significantly between 2008 and 2012 (Derek Thomas, “Inequality in Indy - A Rising Problem With Ready Solutions,” August 13, 2014, (www.iiwf.blogspot.com).

Further, Thomas quoted a U.S. Conference of Mayors’ report on wages and income: “…wage inequality grew twice as rapidly in the Indianapolis metro area as in the rest of the nation since the recession.” This is so because new jobs created paid less on average than the jobs that were lost since the recession started.

Thomas pointed out that the mayors’ report had several concrete proposals that could address declining real wages and stimulate job growth. These included “raising the minimum wage, strengthening the Earned Income Tax Credit, public programs to retrain displaced workers,” and developing universal pre-kindergarten and programs to rebuild the state’s crumbling infrastructure. They may have added that declining real wages also relates to attacks on unions in both the private and public sectors and the dramatic reduction in public sector employment.

Thomas recommended in 2012 that Indianapolis (and Indiana) should have taken these data seriously because in Marion County “poverty is still rising, the minimum wage is less than half of what it takes for a single-mother with an infant to be economically self-sufficient; 47 percent of workers do not have access to a paid sick day from work, and a full 32 percent are at or below 150 percent of the federal poverty guidelines ($29,685 for a family of three).” 

More recently, November 10, 2014, the Indiana Association of United Ways issued a 250 page report on the state called the “Study of Financial Hardship.” The study, parallel to similar studies in five other states and prepared by a research team at Rutgers University, introduced the concept of  Asset Limited, Income Constrained, Employed or (ALICE). ALICE refers to households with incomes that are above the poverty rate but below “the basic cost of living.” The startling data revealed that:

-a third of Hoosier households cannot afford adequate housing, food, health care, child care, and transportation.

-specifically, 14 percent of households are below the poverty line and 23 percent above poverty but below the threshold out of ALICE, or earning enough to provide for the basic cost of living.

-570,000 households are within the ALICE status and 353,000 below the poverty line.

-over 21 percent of households in every Indiana county are above poverty but below the capacity to provide for basic sustenance.

Referring to those within the ALICE category of wage earners who have struggled to survive but earn less than what it takes to meet basic needs, Kathy Ertel, Board Chairperson of Indiana Association of United Ways said: “ALICE is our child care worker, our retail clerk, the person who cares for our grandparents, and our delivery driver” (Roger L. Frick, “Groundbreaking Study Reveals 37% of Hoosier Households Struggle With the Basics,” Indiana Association of United Ways, November 10, 2014, Roger.Frick@iauw.org).

Assessing these recent studies and the 2017 report cited at the outset leads to the conclusion that an evaluation of the current state of the Indiana economy depends upon where one is located in terms of economic, political, or professional position. Those Indiana men, women, and children who come from the 37 percent of households who earn less, at, or slightly above the poverty line probably have a negative view of their futures. For them, the tax breaks for the rich and the austerity policies for the poor are not positive. 

Indiana Politics

Perhaps the starkest fact to note in reference to the growing economic insecurity in the state of Indiana over time is that in 1970 forty percent of Hoosier workers were in unions, then the state with the third highest union density. By the dawn of the second decade of the twenty-first century only 11 percent of workers were in trade unions. Recent legislation has disadvantaged Hoosier workers including passage of a Right to Work law and repeal of the state version of prevailing wage. The Mitch Daniels/Mike Pence administrations (2004-2016) have used charter schools and vouchers to weaken teachers' unions. In addition, in his first day in office in January, 2004, newly elected Governor Mitch Daniels signed an executive order abolishing the right of state employees to form unions. 

In 2005 the Indiana state government (legislature and governor) passed the first and most extreme voter identification law. Voters were required to secure voter identification photos. Michael Macdonald a University of Florida political scientist estimated that requiring voter IDs reduces voter participation by 4-5 percent, hitting the poor and elderly the hardest. In addition, Indiana law ended voter registration in the state one month before election day. And polls close at 6 p.m. election day, among the earliest closing times in the country. Finally, requests for absentee ballots require written excuses. 

Republican control of the executive and both legislative branches led to redistricting which further empowered Republicans and weakened not only Democrats but the young and old and the African American community. Nine solidly Republican congressional districts were drawn in 2000.  In 2014, of 125 state legislative seats up for election, 69 were uncontested.  2014 Indiana voter turnout was 28 percent, the lowest state turnout in the country. The Governor’s office has been held by Republicans since 2004 and Republicans have had majorities in both legislative bodies since 2010, when statewide redistricting was implemented.

Traditionally when Democrats were in the Governor’s mansion and/or controlled a branch of the legislature, they too tended to support neoliberal economic policies, but less draconian, and had been more moderate on social policy questions. In recent years, many legislators and the two most recent governors have been friends of or received support from the American Legislative Exchange Council (or ALEC) funded by major corporations and the Koch brothers. 

With ALEC money, some active Tea Party organizations, the growth of rightwing Republican power, and centrist Democrats, Indiana government has been able to initiate some of the most regressive policies in reference to voting rights, education, taxing, and deregulation in the country. And as the data above suggests, the political economy of Indiana has increased the suffering of the vast majority of working families in the state. Other data suggests that the quality of health care, education, the environment, and transportation have declined as well.

The political picture is made more complicated by the fact that Indiana is really “three states.” The Northwest corridor, including Gary and Hammond, are cities which have experienced extreme deindustrialization, white flight, and vastly increased poverty. Political activists from the area look to greater Chicago for their political inspiration and organizational involvement. Democratic parties are strong in these areas but voter participation is very low. 

Central Indiana includes a broad swath of territory with small cities and towns and the largest city in the state, Indianapolis. Much of the area is Republican, many counties have significant numbers of families in poverty, and some smaller cities have pockets of relative wealth. Democrats hold some city offices but the area is predominantly Republican.

The southern part of the state, south of Indianapolis, in terms of income, political culture, and history resembles its southern neighbor Kentucky, more than the northern parts of the state. The state of Indiana was the northern home of the twentieth century version of the Ku Klux Klan. In the 1920s, the KKK controlled Indiana state government. That reality, the institutionalized presence of overt racism, remains an aspect of Hoosier history that may still affect state politics.

In sum, the working people of Indiana enter the coming period with little economic hope, a politics of red state dominance, and the number two person in the White House who bears some responsibility for the economics and politics left behind. Social change in Indiana, as with the nation at large, will require a vibrant, active progressive program in the electoral arena, the 2018 (now 2022) elections for example, at the same time that mass movements direct their attention to improving the lives of the 99 percent.

THE THREATS TO DEMOCRACY CONTINUE

 a repost from SUNDAY, JULY 11, 2021

Harry Targ

Nancy MacLean in her groundbreaking 2017 book, “Democracy in Chains: The Deep History of the Radical Right’s Stealth Plan for America,” addresses one of the central problems facing the American people, indeed majorities of people around the world; the contradiction between democracy and capitalism. As we look to the 2022 elections, the seemingly successful efforts of state governments, with support from the court system, to suppress voting, gerrymander districts, and in other ways to squelch the voices of the people, threatens majority rule. In addition, media consolidation, the creation of “news deserts,” restricting what is to be taught in the education system from grade one through the university, all are part of the concerted threat to fully inform publics. This too is a threat to democratic participation and majority rule. Consequently, it is useful to revisit MacLean’s main arguments.

MacLean begins by analyzing central premises of the so-called Austrian school of economics. Nineteenth and twentieth century luminaries from this tradition, particularly Van Mises and Hayek, articulated the view that the main priority of any society, but particularly democracies, is the extent to which markets are allowed to flourish, unencumbered by governments.

According to this view in a truly free society markets remain supreme. In fact, “liberty” exists in a society to the extent economic actors are unrestrained in the marketplace. Virtually all limitations on economic liberty so defined constitute a threat to “real” democracy. Governments exist only to maintain domestic order (the police power) and to defend the nation from external aggression (defense of national security). Governments provide police protection and armies. And that should be all. In sum, as President Ronald Reagan expressed the market vision: “Government is not the solution. Government is the problem.”

To further illustrate, MacLean describes the brutal dictatorship that overthrew the democratically elected president of Chile, Salvador Allende. Allende, a socialist, was elected by a plurality in the 1970 presidential election in that country and in the spring, 1973 in municipal elections held across the country, Allende’s coalition of parties drew even more votes for their candidates than did Allende in 1970. The United States, based on directives from President Nixon, had already moved to make the Chilean economy “scream” and had initiated contacts with Chilean generals who would be prepared to carry out a military coup against the popular government.  The military coup, ousting Allende from power, was launched, ironically on September 11, 1973.

As MacLean points out, in the aftermath of the coup, General Augusto Pinochet rounded up and killed thousands of Allende supporters, destroyed the long tradition of electoral politics, abolished trade unions, and began the process of ending government involvement in the economy and public institutions. Social security and education were privatized. Policies of nationalization of key industries were reversed. The shifts to what the Austrian school called economic liberty were imposed on the Chilean people with the advice of University of Chicago economists, such as Milton Friedman, and later, George Mason University economist, James Buchanan, who was instrumental in recommending “reforms” to the Chilean constitution making return to democracy more difficult. Subsequently only a few other dictatorships in Latin America showed any sympathy for the Pinochet regime with most of the world condemning its domestic brutality. But as MacLean reports, Milton Friedman and his colleagues never condemned the Chilean regime and Buchanan regarded it as a paradigmatic case of economic liberty, a model which the world should emulate. (And today, the Chilean people are rising up to rewrite the Pinochet era constitution that suppressed democracy).

Although the Chilean case represents an extreme example of dictatorship and free market capitalism, she uses it to illustrate a central point. In most societies, and the United States is no exception, majorities of people endorse government policies that can and often do serve the people. Ordinarily, citizens support public transportation, schools, highways, libraries, retirement guarantees, some publicly provided health care, and regulations to protect the environment, as well as police and military protection. The problem for Buchanan and his colleagues is that each one of these government programs. except for the police and military, constrains the “liberty” of entrepreneurs to pursue profit.

To put it simply, if citizens of the United States were asked if they support public programs, majorities would say “yes.” Although there have been extraordinary constraints on majority rule, even enshrined in the US constitution, the history of the United States can be seen as a history of struggles to improve and achieve majoritarian democracy. Demands for voting rights for women, African/Americans, non-propertied and low-income workers, released prisoners, and others have been basic to the American experience. The great anti-colonial struggles of the twentieth century all across the globe were premised on the vision of individual and collective sovereignty of the people. If economic liberty is conceptualized as inversely related to majoritarian democracy, then capitalism and democracy are incompatible.

Nancy MacLean, based on this fundamental contradiction, develops a narrative of efforts by celebrants of economic liberty, the Koch brothers and their allies, to build campaigns in virtually every state and locale to disenfranchise people. ALEC affiliates in state legislatures over the last decade have promoted legislation to suppress the right to vote, eliminate the rights of workers to unionize, disempower city councils, eliminate the right of local governments to make fiscal decisions, and to enshrine in curricula in K to 12 education systems and the universities ideologies about the virtues of economic freedom. There are powerful political pressures to privatize every existing public institution. And these pressures have increased and today come from almost the entirety of the Republican Party and some of the Democratic Party as well (including efforts to defeat progressives within their ranks). Again, the best government is no government (except for the maintenance of police force to squelch demands for change and military power to protect the nation at home and abroad).

Nancy MacLean is warning us that there is a powerful drive, based on wealth and power, in the United States to destroy democracy. This democracy, while flawed, has been fought for since the founding of the United States. Its continuation, leaving aside its need for improvement, is under fundamental threat. 

Reflections on the Cuban Revolution : 2008

 Harry Targ

Date posted originally: Saturday, February 23, 2008

President Bush now travels through the African continent trumpeting the United States as a model for the peoples of the Global South. At the same time Fidel Castro steps down as Cuba’s chief of state, stimulating reflections on the role of the Cuban revolution at home and abroad. Which country has had a more progressive impact on the historical development of the world?

Despite enormous changes and advances since the 1959 Cuban revolution, Cuba remains part of the Global South (what used to be referred to as “Third World” or “developing countries”), a world that has been shaped and distorted in its economics and politics for 400 years by the global capitalist system. Cuba, while in many ways a developed and even industrialized country, remains closer in economic profile and diplomatic standing and possibility to the nations of Asia, Africa, the Middle East and Latin America than the industrial capitalist countries of North America, Europe and Japan

In the words of C. Wright Mills, reflecting on the Cuban revolution at its outset, Cuba remains part of the “hungry bloc,” not in the sense of poverty and scarcity as he meant it — Cuba is part of the developed world in these terms — but in the sense of still struggling to achieve its right and capacity to define its own destiny. In fact, it could be argued that Cuba’s “hunger” for self-determination, its spirit of nationalism, is what drove the revolution in the 19th century, in the 1930s, in 1959 and still drives the revolution today.

The spirit of revolution links Cuba’s past to its present. There have been other continuities in Cuban history as well, particularly since 1959. The most obvious one has been the hatred and aggressive stance of the United States. The United States suspended formal diplomatic relations with the island nation before President Eisenhower left office, launched a full-scale economic blockade of Cuba in the Kennedy period, initiated a long-term program of subversion and sabotage of the islands economy and polity, and extended the blockade to pressure other countries to cut their ties to the island’s economy.

The hostile United States policy since the 1950s has been driven by the needs and hopes of capitalism; cold war fears of “communism;” the “realpolitik” philosophy which says that Cuba is within the U.S. sphere of influence; and the historically claimed right of the U.S. to control Cuba’s destiny enshrined in the Monroe Doctrine of the 1820s.

Despite this hostility, since 1959 there has been a high level of support for the revolution among Cubans because it provided substantial economic advances for the people and satisfied their thirst for self-determination. Consequently, even during the “special period” of the 1990s support, while declining, held because the revolution continued to represent the spirit of nationalism for the vast majority of the Cuban people.

Finally, a continuous element of the Cuban revolution has been change and a pragmatic spirit that addresses needs, possibilities, and dangers as they arise. Cuba has been one vast laboratory experiment in which new policies, priorities and programs have been introduced to meet the exigencies of the moment. Alongside inevitable dogmatisms and bureaucratic resistances has been the willingness of Cubans to throw out the old, the unworkable, the threatened, and replace it with the new as history requires (shifting from fertilizer, pesticides and hybrid seeds to organic agriculture for example). Over its long history, the revolution ended foreign ownership of the Cuban economy. It created an egalitarian society. It provided health care, education, jobs and a rich cultural life for most of its citizens.

At the most fundamental level, the revolution fulfilled all of the economic and social goals Fidel Castro articulated in his 1953 “History Will Absolve Me” speech. For most Cubans alive before 1959, there is no question that the revolution has been an outstanding success. This is true for their sons and daughters if one could compare what would have been their possibilities before 1959 with what they have achieved today. The revolution has worked.

And finally, in the great debate between the U.S. and Cuba as inspirations and models for most of the citizens of the globe, Fidel Castro might say again “History Will Absolve Me.”