Harry Targ
LABOR DAY PARADE, 1882. The first Labor Day Parade, held in
Union Square, New York City, by the Knights of Labor on 5 September 1882. Wood
engraving from a contemporary American newspaper.
https://www.granger.com/results.asp?image=0041831
https://www.hardballpress.com/about-hard-ball-press.html
Harry Targ
The massive atrocities of World War II led nations to commit themselves permanently to the protection of basic rights for all human beings. Eleanor Roosevelt, the widow of the wartime President, Franklin Roosevelt, worked diligently with leaders from around the world to develop a document, to articulate a set of principles, which would bind humankind to never carry out acts of mass murder again. In addition, the document also committed nations to work to end most forms of pain and suffering.
To paraphrase Joe Hill: “Don’t Mourn, Organize!”
“I
hate a song that makes you think that you are not any good. I hate a song that
makes you think that you are just born to lose. Bound to lose. No good to
nobody. No good for nothing. Because you are too old or too young or too fat or
too slim or too ugly or too this or too that. Songs that run you down or poke
fun at you on account of your bad luck or hard travelling. I am out to fight
those songs to my very last breath of air and my last drop of blood. (Woody
Guthrie).
Harry R. Targ
Perhaps the most useful concept of “ideology” is one
that refers to a body of interconnected ideas or a system of thought about how
the world works. These ideas often explain the meaning of life, how and why
society is organized the way it is, and also how it ought to be organized.
However, ideas do not come from the ether. They come from class position and
concrete interests, background, social status, and education by family,
schools, peer groups, and popular culture.
What is important about ideologies goes beyond which
ones are more accurate than others but how ideological clashes might help
explain political conflict. As the long and painful presidential election
season unfolds, it is useful to analyze the three competing ideologies that
dominate current debate. Each has its adherents. Each represents interests.
Each explains how the world works in a different way. And each has a different
vision of a better future.
The dominant ideology in the United States today,
indeed much of the industrial capitalist world, is “neoliberalism.”
Neoliberalism has a long history with roots in the founding of classical
capitalist economic theory. “Neo” refers to the contemporary manifestation of
the classic tradition. Neoliberalism assumes that humankind is comprised of
value-maximizing individuals existing in a competitive, sometimes alien social
world. Society is a constellation of competing economic actors, in our own day
mostly huge corporations and banks. The ideology claims that corporations and
banks engage in economic activity in a marketplace. Through competition some
grow and contribute to society and others are unable to compete. It is through
market competition of economic actors that individuals sustain themselves and
improve their material conditions.
According to neoliberalism, the fundamental
institutions and processes in society are markets that promote competition.
Political institutions are constructed to protect and enhance market
competition. Political institutions must be limited in power, neoliberalism
suggests, such that they do not interfere with the workings of the market.
Since the 1970s, proponents of neoliberal ideology have advocated downsizing
government (except the military), privatizing public institutions, deregulating
how markets work, and liberating the citizenry from controls, constraints, and
safety nets. Neoliberal policies are usually called austerity policies.
In the end, society is comprised of atomized
individuals and corporate economic actors who pursue their own gain and out of
this pursuit, the collective good will emerge. Neoliberal ideology is shared by
mainstream Democrats and Republicans, professional economists, most of the
media, educational institutions, and popular culture.
A new ideology that has emerged from recent electoral debates might be called the
“virtues of wealth” ideology. This perspective suggests that individuals exist
in competitive societies and markets reign supreme. And while this is an
historical inevitability and as a practical matter a pretty good way to
organize society, sometimes the accumulation of wealth fosters greed, avarice,
and stupidity. The political system falls prey to the influence of those with
large wealth who seek to buy elections, bribe politicians, and in other ways
influence the political process by misusing their resources. The ideology about
the virtues of wealth suggests that the corruption of accumulated wealth
sometimes leads to the rise of incompetence in public policy. Unless there are
appropriately wise guardians, accumulated wealth can lead to bad government.
During times of extreme misuse of power, new guardians of the public must
emerge to correct the errors of government and the economy.
The best candidates to reconstruct the state come from
those who are independently wealthy and who do not have to rely on a donor
class to win elections. They are the disinterested wealthy. And in fact, they
have the freedom by virtue of their wealth to challenge economic and political
elites who rule because they secured financial support from others and gained
wealth from participating in government. The virtues of wealth ideology allow
its believers to challenge the economic ruling class and political elites in
such a way as to appeal to the majority who have no wealth or power and who
clearly recognize that they are being lied to by the ruling elite. Finally,
deeply embedded in this ideology also is a sense of how wealth proves talent
and virtue. Conversely those without wealth and privilege lack virtue. In this
way, the virtue of wealth ideology is profoundly
racist. During recenr presidential races Donald Trump has
emerged as the preeminent expression and promoter of the ideology of the
virtuous wealthy.
A third ideology, twenty-first century socialism,
emphasizes that the interconnection of global problems--from environmental
devastation to class exploitation and growing economic inequality, to racism,
sexism, and homophobia, to authoritarianism, and internal and international
violence--are intimately connected to the development of the capitalist system.
Twenty-first century socialism sees the concentration and centralization of
economic power as the driving force in creating a world order dominated by finance
capital, a few hundred multinational corporations, and imperial states.
The ideology of twenty-first century socialism, while
recognizing the historic rise to power of global capitalism also recognizes
that capitalism generates growing resistance and creates demands for change.
The magnitude of resistance varies from epoch to epoch, but the totality of
what is called history is comprised of the drive to hegemony contradicted by
resistance to it. Those who resist engage in education, organization, and
agitation to create human unity.
According to this third ideology, societies are
constituted by communities and the presupposition that being human means being
part of communities of activity. The belief in community is fundamentally
opposed to the neoliberal conceptualization that the basic units of societies,
atomized individuals, can only survive by acting independently of others. The
vision of twenty-first century socialism is based on the proposition that work
should be organized cooperatively and the wealth produced by society should be
shared equitably by everyone who helps produce it. Class exploitation, racism,
sexism, and homophobia are antithetical to the core of this ideology.
The twenty-first century socialist ideology assumes
that building human solidarity, working together to create grassroots forms of
production and distribution, and struggling for the political empowerment of
the people offer the possibility for further human development. Paradoxically
more people in the United States and around the world share the ideology of
twenty-first century socialism than the other two but currently appear to be
the weakest politically of the three ideologies. How to realize the vision
embedded in this ideology is the human project of our time.
Harry Targ
The ideas of community, empowerment, and social justice were articulated for the Sixties in the Port Huron Statement, written by founders of the Students for a Democratic Society, particularly Tom Hayden. While written by and for a relatively privileged sector of disenchanted youth in a period of booming economic growth and military expansion, the document spoke to the passion for justice, participation, and community, and an “…unrealized potential for self-cultivation, self-direction, self-understanding, and creativity.”
It called for the creation of “human interdependence,”
replacing “…power rooted in possession, privilege, or circumstance…” by “power
and uniqueness rooted in love, reflectiveness, reason and creativity.”
By the late Sixties many were identifying a new
society based on the Port Huron vision built on core principles. These
included:
local control and participatory democracy;
racial justice;
gender equality;
equitable distribution of resources and the collective
product of human labor;
commitments to the satisfaction of minimal basic needs
for all of humankind;
the development of an ethic that connects survival to
human existence, not to specific jobs;
human control over technology; and
a new “land ethic” that conceives of humankind as part
of nature, not in conflict with it.
The vision led to the exploration of the impediments
to the construction of a society based on human scale that would celebrate both
individual creativity and community. Growing familiarization with the critique
of capitalism suggested that the capitalist mode of production, dominant over
two-thirds of the world, was based upon the exploitation, oppression,
dehumanization, and repression of the vast majority of humankind.
Incorporating an understanding of the workings of
capitalism reinforced the vision that philosopher Martin Buber called the
decentralized social principle embedded in Port Huron’s eloquent call for
“community.” Building a new society entailed class struggle which would
manifest itself in factories and fields, in rich and poor countries, and in
political venues from the ballot box to the streets.
Bringing about positive change was a much more
complicated affair than activists originally thought, but the sustained and
sometimes brutal opposition to visions, like that reflected in The Port Huron
Statement, validated the general correctness of them.
Today, new generations of activists, along with older
ones, are reflecting and participating in diverse social movements in our
cities and towns. They have hit the streets demanding a ceasefire in the Middle East and a humane
future for the Palestinian people. And now masses of activists reject the
military/industrial complex, racism, sexism, homophobia, Islamophobia, antisemitism, and the
brutalization of the environment.
The efforts of Venezuelans, Bolivians, Colombians, and
the Cubans who inspired us so much over the years are applauded. Now that energy is coming from all over the Global South. Important
debates about social market economies, workers’ management of large
enterprises, this or that candidate or political party particularly as modest
forms of democracy are under threat, are occurring on the Internet and in the
streets.
Although the times are so different from the 1960s,
perhaps the vision of community that animated thinking then (which we in turn
learned from those who preceded us) may still be relevant for today.
Tom Hayden and his comrades proclaimed that we must
remain committed to the sanctity of human life, to equality, to popular control
of all our institutions, to a reverence for the environment, and to the idea
that the best of society comes from communal efforts to make living better for
all. The Port Huron vision survives.
Harry Targ originally posted on Tuesday, October 1, 2019
As we enter the national election season we are gripped with a very
complicated constellation of forces. The Republican Party, once a “respectable”
advocate for “limited government,” benefits for the wealthy, and in general a
celebrant of the “magic of the marketplace,” has been transformed into a party
of racism, xenophobia, and a critic of whatever democracy exists in the US.
They are opposed to women, people of color, and many endorse the establishment
of the United States as a “Christian nation.”
While large percentages
of the US population, including radicals and progressives, oppose the
Republican agenda, the alternatives offered by much of the Democratic Party, while woefully inadequate, sometimes have begun to address the needs of the majority of people. In addition to criticisms that can be raised
about domestic policies advocated by many Democratic spokespersons, “the
elephant in the room,” that is foreign policy, remains the Achilles heel of
Democratic Party platforms. Since this essay was written and rewritten, the US
has escalated support for the war in
Ukraine, dramatically increased its commitments to Israel, maintained military
bases in over 170 countries, expanded NATO-type connections in Africa, and maintained sanctions in over 30 countries. It continues to engage in efforts to
crush the Cuban and Bolivarian Revolutions and is launching a “New Cold War”
against China.
Given this reality,
thousands of protestors came to Milwaukee to protest the Republican convention,
and similar numbers are expected to protest at the Democratic Convention in
Chicago.
What the essay below
argued in 2016 and 2020 is still relevant today; that is there is an
inextricable connection between domestic and foreign policy. A deep dive into
the history of the Cold War from 1945 on, the changing US economy, and the
perpetual wars that have occurred from then to now make it clear that the tasks
of progressives remain combatting rightwing dictatorship at home AND
imperialism overseas. And foreign policy remains “the elephant in the room.”
An Empire in Decline
United
States global hegemony is coming to an end. The United States was the country
that collaborated with the Soviet Union to defeat fascism in Europe and with
Great Britain to crush Japanese militarism in Asia in 1945. The Soviet Union,
the first Socialist state, suffered 27 million dead in the war to defeat the
Nazis. Great Britain, the last great imperial power, was near the end of its
global reach because of war and the rise of anti-colonial movements in Asia and
Africa.
As the beneficiary of war-driven industrial growth and the
development of a military-industrial complex unparalleled in world history, the
United States was in a position in 1945 to construct a post-war international
political and economic order based on huge banks and corporations. The United
States created the international financial and trading system, imposed the
dollar as the global currency, built military alliances to challenge the
Socialist Bloc, and used its massive military might and capacity for economic
penetration to infiltrate, subvert, and dominate most of the economic and
political regimes across the globe.
The
United States always faced resistance and was by virtue of its economic system
and ideology drawn into perpetual wars, leading to trillions of dollars in
military spending, the loss of hundreds of thousands of American lives, and the
deaths of literally millions of people, mostly people of color, to maintain its
empire.
As was the case of prior empires, the United States empire
is coming to an end. A multipolar world is reemerging with challenges to
traditional hegemony coming from China, India, Russia, and the larger less
developed countries such as Brazil, Argentina, South Africa,
South Korea, and Thailand. By the 1970s, traditional allies in Europe and Japan
had become economic competitors of the United States.
The
United States throughout this period of change has remained the overwhelming
military power, however, spending more on defense than the next seven countries
combined. It remains the world’s economic giant even though growth in domestic
product between 1980 and 2000 has been a third of its GDP growth from 1960 to
1980. Confronted with economic stagnation and declining profit rates the United
States economy began in the 1970s to transition from a vibrant industrial base
to financial speculation and the globalization of production.
The latest phase of capitalism, the era of neoliberal
globalization, has required massive shifts of surplus value from workers to
bankers and the top 200 hundred corporations which by the 1980s controlled
about one-third of all production. The instruments of consciousness, a handful
of media conglomerates, have consolidated their control of most of what people
read, see, hear, and learn about the world.
A
policy centerpiece of the new era, roughly spanning the rise to power of Ronald
Reagan to today, including the eight years of the Obama Administration, has
been a massive shift of wealth from the many to the few. A series of graphs
published by the Economic Policy Institute in December, 2016 showed that
productivity, profits, and economic concentration had risen while real wages
declined, inequality increased, gaps between the earnings of people of color
and women and white men grew, and persistent poverty remained for twenty
percent of the population. The austerity policies, the centerpiece of
neoliberalism, spread across the globe. That is what globalization has been
about.
Paralleling the shifts toward a transnational capitalist
system and the concentration of wealth and power on a global level, the decline
of U.S power, relative to other nation-states in the twenty-first century, has
increased. The wars in Afghanistan, Iraq, and the spreading violence
throughout the Middle East have overwhelmed US efforts to control events.
Russia, Iran, China, and even weaker nations in the United Nations Security
Council have begun to challenge its power and authority. Mass movements increasingly
mobilize against vial regimes supported by the United States virtually
everywhere (including within the U.S. as well).
However,
most U.S. politicians still articulate the mantra of “the United States as the
indispensable nation.” The articulation of the myth of American Exceptionalism
represents an effort to maintain a global hegemony that no longer exists and a
rationale to justify the massive military-industrial complex which fuels much
of the United States economy.
Imperial Decline and Domestic Politics
The
narrative above is of necessity brief and oversimplified but provides a back
drop for reflecting on the substantial shifts in American politics. The
argument here is that foreign policy and international political economy are
“the elephants in the room” as we reflect on the outcomes of recent elections
and their ongoing consequences. It
does not replace other explanations or “causes” of United States politics today
but supplements them.
First, the pursuit of austerity policies, particularly in
other countries (the cornerstone of neoliberal globalization) has been a
central feature of international economics since the late 1970s. From the
establishment of the debt system in the Global South, to “shock therapy” in
countries as varied as Bolivia and the former Socialist Bloc, to European bank
demands on Greece, Spain, Portugal, and Ireland, to Reaganomics and the
promotion of Clinton’s “market democracies,” the wealth of the world has been shifting from the poor and working classes to
the rich.
Second,
to promote neoliberal globalization, the United States has constructed by far
the world’s largest war machine. With growing opposition to U.S. militarism
around the world, policy has shifted in recent years from “boots on the
ground,” (although there still are many), to special ops, private contractors,
drones, cyberwar, spying, and “quiet coups,” such as in Brazil and Venezuela,
to achieve neoliberal advances.
One group of foreign policy insiders, the humanitarian
interventionists, has lobbied for varied forms of intervention to promote
“human rights, democratization, and markets.” 2016 presidential candidate
Hillary Clinton and a host of “deep state” insiders advocated for support of
the military coup in Honduras, a NATO coalition effort to topple the regime in
Libya, the expansion of troops in Afghanistan, even stronger support of Israel,
funding and training antigovernmental rebels in Syria, and the overthrow of the
elected government of Ukraine. Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton was a major
advocate for humanitarian interventionist policies in the Obama administration,
as was Vice President Joe Biden. These policies continued since 2020. In addition, this perspective has been broadly
accepted by Democrats and Republicans alike.
Humanitarian
interventionists have joined forces with “neoconservatives” in the new century
to advocate policies that, they believe, would reverse the declining relative
power of the United States. This coalition of foreign policy influentials has
promoted a New Cold War against Russia and an Asian pivot to challenge the
emerging multipolar world, largely a result of the rising economic and
diplomatic influence of China. The growing turmoil in the Middle East and the
new rising powers in Eurasia also provide rationale for qualitative increases
in military spending, enormous increases in research and development of new
military technologies, and the reintroduction of ideologies that were current
during the last century about mortal enemies and the inevitability of war.
The “elephant in the room” that pertained to the 2016
election and still does in 2024 is growing opposition to an activist United States
economic/political/military role in the world. Many center/left Americans, to
the extent that they were motivated by international issues, saw the Clinton
foreign policy record in 2016 and the incumbent administration today as emblematic of the long history of United States
imperialism. Further, given the fact that U.S. interventionism and support for
neoliberalism have generated growing global opposition, many voters fear a Democratic Party victory presidency in November, 2024 would extend foreign policies that have already
created chaos and anger, particularly in the Middle East and the Persian Gulf.
Finally, to the extent that economics affect electoral outcomes, the neoliberal global agenda that has been enshrined in United States international economic policy since the 1970s, has had much to do with rising austerity, growing disparities of wealth and power, wage and income stagnation, and declining social safety nets at home as well. And more and more Americans see the connections between burgeoning military expenditures and inadequate resources for healthcare, protecting the environment, ending homelessness, and generally providing for the economic needs of the population (rather than the major military contractors).
In sum, foreign policy continues to be an “elephant in the
room” as millions of Americans struggle with the devastatingly
inhumane policies at home and abroad.
