UNIVERSITIES AND POLITICAL CONFLICT

UNIVERSITIES AND POLITICAL CONFLICT

Harry Targ

Since Arab Spring and the Occupy Movement almost every institution in American life--financial, corporate, political party, media, military, and religious--has appropriately become subject to scrutiny and evaluation. In each case analysts and activists have begun to raise questions about what these institutions look like, whose interests they serve, and how they contribute to the well-being of society.

Until recently colleges and universities have been largely above reproach. Research and education have been seen as the cornerstone of American democracy and economic development. The appointment of Governor Mitch Daniels as the new president of Purdue University and the firing and rehiring of the University of Virginia President Teresa Sullivan provides the occasion for a reexamination of higher education.

Institutions of higher education have traditionally performed four tasks in the service of maintaining and enhancing the development of the other institutions referred to above. First, universities, particularly since World War II, have provided research resources to produce the products and technologies that have stimulated the capitalist system. Often basic research has fed into major enterprises in society, from promoting a global food system, to building sophisticated armies, to developing new high speed systems of communication that maximize control of economies and peoples. Major universities bring together talented research scholars and public and private research dollars to create inventions that promote greater control of nature and people and to expand profit.

Second, universities train work forces. Some graduates will become the research scholars who will continue the tradition of study and economic development to advance the economy and the polity further. Others will be provided the skills to work in the private and public sectors to carry out the work of institutional perpetuation. Corporate managers, computer specialists, tourism experts, and employees in the public sphere are trained at the modern university. And, increasingly universities train the soldiers who will fight the wars that the United States continues to fight.

Third, universities provide an education that in the main facilitates the transfer of legitimated knowledge to consumers of that knowledge. Particular attention is given to the promotion of a scientific worldview that reduces physical and social reality to a multiplicity of “variables” that can be studied with statistical rigor. Knowledge is primarily scientific knowledge.

Legitimated knowledge that is passed along to college students also includes highly selective portraits of how economies work, what constitutes democratic political institutions, and what constitutes standards of quality in the arts. In subtle forms, universities pass along celebratory, often uncritical, images of the society in which students live.

Finally, universities are credentialing institutions. They reward students with degrees, recommendations, and honors, which can be used as licenses to participate in the other institutions in society. Even when political and economic elites receive prestigious degrees through family connections, it is the degree that helps the accumulation of power.

The four functions --research, training, legitimizing, and credentialing--have changed concretely over time. For example, in the United States, the development of the modern university paralleled the industrial revolution. Prestigious universities, such as Harvard, initiated modern departments at the dawn of the twentieth century replacing the primacy of theology and law with economics, business administration, and industrial engineering. Training in fields such as education was designed to create a literate work force that could staff the factories of modern society. And social sciences were created to develop theories that comported with industrial development, such as Social Darwinism. These theories largely justified the distribution of wealth and power within societies and in the international system.

After World War II higher education took on vital functions in new ways. The GI Bill funded college education for veterans to train the scientists and managers of the new age. Also, higher education would credential students to be placed in higher paying jobs so that they could earn enough to buy the goods that a booming American economy was producing.

By the 1960s, higher education experienced enormous growth. For University of California President Clark Kerr, the “multiversity” was the institution critical for the development of a new global economy, scientific and technological advances, and the invention of new tools to fight the Cold War. In addition, social scientists and economists, studying development, would generate theories to guide public policy, particularly in poorer countries experiencing revolutionary ferment.

The massive growth in higher education from the 1960s to the new century led to increased university budgets, higher tuition costs, over-trained and underemployed college graduates, and a layer of overpaid administrators who had taken over the operations of most universities from the professor ranks. In addition, many non-professional workers at the university kept universities operational and were paid a living wage with justifiably secure benefits.

Now, in the midst of a deep economic crisis, political and economic elites are lobbying to create new structures of power in higher education while still supporting research, training, legitimating, and credentialing. The approach that is increasingly promoted by political leaders, educational foundations, and most important, Boards of Trustees of universities, is what Kevin Phillips labeled “market fundamentalism.”

The market fundamentalist approach emphasizes cutting public support for higher education and reducing financial support for students, particularly underrepresented students. In other words, as opposed to the era of the GI Bill, the operant vision is ultimately to reduce access to higher education which will contribute to the increasing inequality in wealth and income in the United States.

Also, market fundamentalism relies on the market to induce “competition” to reduce costs among universities. It encourages new profit-based universities that can sell college degrees cheaply, primarily by substituting on-line courses for campus experienced-based education. In addition, market fundamentalists call for forcing universities to make every academic unit in the university pay for itself.

What is new about the crisis in higher education today, what appointment of new presidents such as Tea Party friend Mitch Daniels represents, is that economic and political elites wish to continue the traditional functions of the university while reducing costs in higher education.

They want to transfer continuing costs to students and workers at the university.

They are working to streamline university education to research on corporate agriculture, medicine, computer technology, military developments, and allied fields.

And they want to cut educational programs that link research, education, and community service. This may entail eliminating programs that cannot be linked to the making of profit, such as in literature, the arts, and various social sciences and cultural studies. This is probably what the U.S. Chamber of Commerce meant when it warned of “growing skepticism about whether those lucky enough to graduate have acquired the skills and knowledge necessary for success in the 21^st century economy.”

And finally, since politics has never been absent from debates about higher education, in today’s context corporate elites including those in the media, wish to eliminate the enduring tradition of “academic freedom” which has celebrated the view that the university must be a venue for the pursuit of “the marketplace of ideas.”

Expect the university to be another emerging site for contestation and political struggle.

REVISITING THE CUBAN REVOLUTION

Harry Targ

I participated in the 2012 “Seminar on Socialist Renewal and the Capitalist Crisis” co-sponsored by the Radical Philosophy Association and the Institute of Philosophy, University of Havana. More than forty US/Canadian/ Latin American scholars met in conference with at least 75 Cuban scholars in a five day conference to discuss the political and economic changes occurring in Cuba and the United States.

I purposely entitle this essay “revisiting the Cuban Revolution” because I came away from this exciting conference convinced that the revolution continues.  I say this because I saw no reason to revise what I wrote in 1992 about the Cuban Revolution (Cuba and the USA: A New World Order? International Publishers, 6):

“….the Cuban revolution (even until this day) has constituted a living experiment that most progressive forces around the world identify with. Even though each society has its own history, class structure, level of development, and revolutionary potential, Cuba’s desire to create a government to serve its people and at the same time to transform them from a traditional consciousness to a revolutionary consciousness is shared by progressives everywhere. For progressives, Cuba is a laboratory, a grand social experiment that will provide knowledge for others as they seek fundamental change in their own societies…..Cuba’s successes in the years ahead are successes of all progressive forces and, similarly Cuba’s defeats are defeats for all who wish to create egalitarian  and humane societies”.

The idea of “revolution” refers to a fundamental transformation of economic and political structures and peoples’ consciousness of their place in society and the values that should determine human behavior. Also, revolution is not a fixed “thing” but a process. That means that changes in structures, patterns of behavior, and consciousness are changing over time and in the case of revolution are moving toward, rather than away from, more complete human fulfillment.

What has been most fascinating to observe about the Cuban Revolution is its constantly changing character. Cubans have debated and made decisions about gradual versus fundamental changes, the need to experiment with different ways to allocate scarce national resources and, most critical, how to respond to external economic, political, and military assaults.  Cuban society has been an experimental laboratory, changing public policies as contexts demand. If one set of policies became problematic, the Cubans moved in different directions. Usually change came after heated debate at all levels of society.

For example, after the 26^th of July Movement seized power, the revolutionary regime launched programs to reduce rents for urban dwellers, established a nationwide literacy campaign, and after a cool U.S. response to the new government, put in place a large agrarian reform program. As United States hostility escalated Cuba established diplomatic and economic relations with the former Soviet Union. From that point US/Cuban hostilities became permanent.

In the mid-1960s, Cuba engaged in a great debate, to some degree unresolved, between those who wanted to move the Revolution along the path to “moral incentives,” that is creating a society in which people act because of their commitment to communist ideals, versus those who argued that in the short run “material incentives,” wages and benefits, needed to serve as the source of human motivation.

Later, the Cuban government embarked on a campaign to produce more sugar than ever before to earn scarce foreign exchange in order to advance the domestic economy. The 10 million ton sugar campaign failed with negative consequences for the sectors of Cuban society that were ignored. Then Cuba embraced the Soviet model of development, including joining the Eastern European Common Market.

By the 1980s, while the economy grew, Cubans saw a decline in the commitment to the Revolution. This recognition led to a campaign of “Rectification,” to re-instill in society and consciousness, the spirit of the Revolution. When the Socialist Bloc collapsed between 1989 and 1991, once again the Cuban Revolution had to adapt. “The Special Period” was instituted in the face of a decline in the economy of at least 40 percent. The Revolution survived, contrary to the predictions of outside experts.

In the 21^st century, despite devastating hurricanes, a global economic crisis, and an escalating United States economic blockade, the Revolution continued.

Now, the Cubans are embarking on a new set of policies that are designed to overcome economic stagnation, inadequate agricultural productivity, bureaucracy and corruption in government, and insufficient grassroots participation in decision-making, particularly at the work place. After extensive debate in the society at large, from the leadership of the Communist Party to virtually every workplace, neighborhood and village, the Cubans have decided on new structures and policies.

The new policy guidelines include the expansion of a market in the production of goods and services. This expansion will include a dramatic shift of employment from the state sector to self-employment. Emphasis will be placed on developing cooperatives in manufacturing and services as well as in agriculture. In the agricultural sector efforts are being initiated to encourage a dramatic increase in those who can return to the land, increasing domestic food production while reducing the need to import food from abroad. New forms of grassroots participation in addition to revitalizing the mass organizations will occur. And the ration system of food distribution will be replaced by the establishment of a safety net for those still in need of food.  And where possible, enterprise autonomy, such as in the renovation of Old Havana, will be encouraged and supported.

The new guidelines, over 300 in all, are designed to renovate economic and political institutions, stimulate local entrepreneurial enterprise, increase political participation, and overcome the continuing economic crisis that a small country such as Cuba finds itself in as a result of natural and political disasters as well as a continued effort by the “Colossus of the North” to overthrow the regime.

Debate within Cuban society (and among our North American delegation) about these new guidelines has been animated.  Perhaps most basic is the concern about whether the economic reforms will undermine the Socialist character of Cuban society after over 60 years of struggle. Some worry that the introduction of markets may undermine the spirit of compassion and revolutionary consciousness that was inspired by the heroic Che Guevara and the band of scruffy revolutionaries who overthrew a neo-colonial regime in 1959.

Still others debate about whether cooperatives constitute a productive and yet inspirational step in the long history of building Socialism and Communism. And what about youth, people ask. Is the revolution ancient history for young people, a youthful population that has had access to a rich educational experience and live a healthful life. Will they have the same fervor for the Revolution that their elders and foreign friends have had? And, in fairness to the young, how can the Revolution be preserved while serving the lives of people whose historical experiences are different from their elders?

There are no easy answers to these questions; no guarantees of success; no convincing narratives of a linear development from a contradictory present to a utopian future. But, as I clearly saw in 1990 when I started attending meetings of U.S. and Cuban scholars, there is reason for hope. The Cuban Revolution has survived, given so much to the world, and continued to intrigue progressives everywhere. I returned from my encounter to Cuba in June, 2012, with renewed optimism.

THE CRISIS IN HIGHER EDUCATION CONTINUES: THE SELECTION OF NEW PRESIDENTS

Harry Targ

Big banks, multinational corporations, political parties, and upcoming elections dominate our public discourse as they should. But there is a danger that the fabric of social institutions is being transformed before our eyes but yet beyond our consciousness. Such is the case of the radical changes occurring in education, from kindergarten through college.

Calls for free, open, accessible, and transparent education have been a tradition almost as long as the rhetorical commitment to democracy itself. In fact most people believe that education, democracy, and the economy are inextricably connected. However, the education/democracy connection has been weakening ever since the 1960s.

After World War II, the GI Bill began providing educational opportunities for returning veterans. They were to become the trained work force and expanding consumers for a booming economy. However, the expansion of higher education was coupled with a campaign to purge dangerous and subversive professors and curricula from the university. Access to higher education spread while the range of ideas studied narrowed.

In the 1960s, student activists, now enrolled in thousands of small and large colleges and universities, rebelled against the narrowing focus of knowledge. The   university as the site for training to advance capitalism and technical skills, what Clark Kerr, former president of the University of California called “the multiversity,” was challenged; for a time successfully. Academic programs that did not fit traditional classical studies or new scientific/technical fields were allowed to flower and grow.

The so-called Reagan revolution brought a shift in economic policy downsizing the growth in the welfare state, government spending for social safety nets, and support for public institutions such as education. In addition, the new ideology preached privatization, shifting public sector spending for the provision of services to the marketplace. By the 1990s, both political parties endorsed public policies that decreased support for the many to further economic rewards for the few. Tax breaks for the rich, cuts in welfare protections, declining support for public education, public libraries, transportation, and housing continued the shift in wealth from the working class to the economic ruling class.

Rightwing radio host Rush Limbaugh once remarked that the economic and political transformation of U.S. society was near complete. The only institution which the rightwing did not control was the university. By the 1990s powerful groups began to remake the university too.

Since the dawn of the new century higher education budgets have been slashed. College tuitions are skyrocketing, class size is increasing, and many of the programs designed to develop new ways of thinking about the world (particularly in the social sciences and humanities) are being cut.

State universities originally created to educate small farmers and workers in order to advance their economic status have become low-cost research arms of huge corporations such as Eli Lilly in pharmaceuticals and Monsanto, in the agricultural sector (both are huge worldwide corporations). In the 21^st century universities have not shrunk. More and more top heavy administrations and human relations departments control the main activities that used to be determined by faculty.

The process of selecting university presidents reflects the qualitative changes occurring in higher education. At the University of Virginia, President Teresa Sullivan, was ousted recently in a secret coup engineered by the “Board of Visitors,” a seventeen person body that controls major policy decisions at that university. Of the 17 only four members had any higher education experience but the body in total contributed over $800,000 to candidates for state office; $680,000 to Republicans and $150,000 to Democrats. The Governor appoints this body. And in the case of ousted President Sullivan, it objected to her consultation with Deans and faculty before making decisions about shifting budgets. Unusual in this day and age, 2,000 students and faculty recently rallied on campus to demand her reinstatement.

In Indiana the Purdue University Board of Trustees (10 of 12 selected by sitting Governor Mitch Daniels) announced that it was appointing Daniels to be Purdue University’s twelfth president. Daniels will be completing his second term as Governor and will take office as Purdue’s president in January, 2013.

Daniels has been a visible politician over the last decade in several arenas. These include a stint as President Bush’s Budget Director from 2001 to 2004 when taxes were lowered, two wars were launched, and the seeds were planted for the current economic crisis. Daniels was elected Indiana’s governor in 2004. In his first day in office he eliminated the prior Governor’s order that allowed public sector workers to unionize. Subsequently, he led Hoosier rightwing politicians in supporting charter schools with public money, cutting education spending at all levels by $150 million (including a $30 million cut in higher education), sold off some of Indiana’s highway system to European investors, shifted family services to an ill-equipped private corporation, and cut funding for reproductive health services. He worked to pass a so-called Right-to-Work bill after telling union supporters that he would never do that.

In addition, Daniels served as an executive at Eli Lilly, and CEO at the conservative think tank, the Hudson Institute, and was affiliated with an on-line university, Western Governors University, that could potentially compete with state colleges and universities. Most important Daniels has no administrative experience in higher education except appointing the Board of Trustees members who in secret carried out a presidential search that led to his appointment.

The political corruption and dubious merit of the selection of Daniels as Purdue President are obvious. What is less obvious is that this appointment like the appointment of many other university presidents and the firing of Virginia President Theresa Sullivan, is part of the shift in higher education from a model of the university as a site for research and teaching about ideas and as an institution that serves the needs of the society at large to a corporate model.
The GI Bill educated a whole generation of veterans to lift themselves and society. The expansion of the meaning of the university as a result of student protest and the civil rights movements of the 1960s brought new ideas to a larger number of young people.

Educator Henry Giroux put it well: “Knowledge has become capital to invest in the market but has little to do with the power of self-definition, civic commitments, or ethical responsibilities….and with questions of justice.” In the end, this is most troubling about the transformation of the modern university which appointments of presidents like Governor Daniels signify.

THINKING ABOUT WISCONSIN

Harry Targ

I have been thinking about Wisconsin a lot over the last week. Since I spent five days in Milwaukee visiting my daughter, by today’s journalistic standards, that time makes me an expert on Wisconsin. So I feel compelled to make a few comments on the outcome of the recent recall election in that state.

First, and perhaps most important, the forces supporting the incumbent Governor Scott Walker, the Lt. Governor, and three of four state senators also forced into recall elections were victorious because they had the most votes. Those of us on the Left as well as the other side and the so-called “mainstream” media have a propensity to over-theorize. We often forget that in any institutionalized competition some win and others lose. I don’t think that contests constitute a good way to organize public life, but in a society based on competition there are winners and losers.

Second, Wisconsin has been a deeply divided political state. In fact, two important political figures in the state’s history personify the political divisions that shaped competition in the state and the United States at large for at least one hundred years. Senator Joseph McCarthy represented the outlook shared by many that government is the enemy of humankind. To further tyranny, subversive forces from time to time infest institutions with ideologies that are essentially anti-American. And to the contrary, Senators Robert LaFollette Senior and Junior represented that strand of political discourse that sees the possibility of creating governmental institutions that can protect the innocent from the criminal, provide for the less fortunate, and use public resources to advance human possibility. Descendants of both political traditions have fought it out over the years, often splitting national and state offices. And the battle of ideas that have their roots in these political figures has never been more intense than since 2010.

Third, according to exit polls sixty percent of the electorate opposed having the recall election at all. Apparently respondents felt that recall elections should be reserved for situations when incumbent politicians violated a public trust. And for these people supporting draconian policies to crush public sector unions, abolish equal pay for equal work,  and reduce public health care and educational services did not measure up to allegations of criminality. These ideas were propagated in well-crafted television advertisements. It could be that a certain percentage of those who voted for Walker did so because they opposed the recall rather than supported his rule.

Fourth, the leadership of the Democratic Party including the President himself remained absent from endorsement or work for the insurgent Barrett candidacy (Only the recycled and overrated Bill Clinton made a big splash near the end of the campaign and, as always,  the important contribution of the Reverend Jesse Jackson was largely ignored by the media). From their point of view, since Barrett was bound to lose, active participation would damage the reelection chances of Barack Obama.  Even if the “experts” in the party turned out to be correct, that  Walker would be reelected, political elites should have followed the people. If masses of Wisconsin grassroots workers wanted to launch a campaign to recall Scott Walker, the leadership of the party should have taken a principled position and supported that decision.

Fifth, big money does matter.  Millions of dollars were spent on advertisements that lied about the record of Scott Walker, misrepresented occasions for which recall elections are justified, slandered public employee unions, and misrepresented perspective policies of candidate Barrett including claims that the latter would “take away our guns.” But, in the long run infusions of money are more effective in shaping the day-to-day framing of news in the media between election campaigns as well as during them.

However, as activists know, massive amounts of outside money do not always ensure election victories. Effective get-out-the-vote campaigns rely as much on grassroots organizing and personal contacts as media campaigns. And in the Wisconsin case there was effective organizing but not enough to achieve victory.

Sixth, progressives need to develop more effective ways to defend the centrality of public employment for today’s capitalist order as well as a new society. As Massachusetts senatorial candidate Elizabeth Warren has argued, government, and by extension public sector work, has been fundamental to the development of industrial capitalism. Education, highway systems, and a broad array of public works have undergirded economic development in the twentieth century. And their decline rebounds negatively on employment rates, infrastructure, and the development of human capital. Public employee unions and collective bargaining are as essential for reversing the long recession as the organizing of industrial workers in the private sector in the 1930s.

Seventh, while the short-term impacts of the recall failure will not be great on Wisconsin workers (much of the damage has already been done and could not have been reversed before the November general election) and long-term impacts on the national election will also be limited, the major issue remains maintaining the organizing momentum created by the Wisconsin movement itself. Masses of young people, trade unionists, people of color, women and men, have been mobilizing for fifteen months. They have been enthusiastic, hard-working, single-minded, and have expressed an openness to each other. Their organization around a variety of the issues facing working people could still plant the seeds for building a progressive majority in the Heartland. The major deleterious effect of the failed recall is the possibility that the defeat will deflate the enthusiasm, energy, and will of the people, in Wisconsin and around the nation.

In sum, then, the reasons for the recall defeat are varied. The impacts also are mixed. The Democrats did gain an additional seat in the State Senate, thus creating one body that will oppose the Walker administration. And, in all the commentary so far, no mention was made of the clear victory of workers in Ohio last fall, repealing that state’s recent anti-collective bargaining law. Perhaps, the only conclusion to be drawn from the Wisconsin election is that more grassroots organizing is needed. To paraphrase Joe Hill, don’t mourn, organize. 

UNITED STATES/LATIN AMERICAN/CUBAN RELATIONS:THE IDEOLOGICAL DIMENSION

Harry Targ

(The remarks below are part of a presentation that will be given at a conference co-sponsored by the Radical Philosophy Association and the University of Havana in Cuba between June 18 and 22.Revisiting the remarks of key foreign policy elites from the 1890s until now suggest the commonality of outlook that pervades how the United States views the Global South and particularly Cuba. Ironically not much has changed in that outlook.)

U.S. policymakers believe and/or propagate various illusions or rationales for United States foreign policy that become part of common political discourse. In relations with Latin America, and particularly Cuba, policy has been built upon economic interest, geopolitics, and ideology. The ideological discourse justifying U.S. hegemony in the Western Hemisphere can be traced back to the nineteenth century. Its modern exposition is surprisingly similar to significant declarations by foreign policy elites during the era of the Cuban war against Spanish colonialism.

For example, shortly after the U.S. victory in the Spanish/Cuban/American war, Indiana Senator Albert Beveridge articulated what was to become the new ideology of American empire linking economics to Godly purpose: “We will establish trading posts throughout the world as distributing points for American products.” “Great colonies, governing themselves, flying our flag and trading with us, will grow about our posts of trade, And American law, American order, American civilization, and the American flag will plant themselves on shores hitherto bloody and benighted” (in Greg Jones, Honor in the Dust: Theodore Roosevelt, War in the Philippines, and the Rise and Fall of America’s Imperial Dream, 2012, 93).

In a campaign speech in Indianapolis, Beveridge articulated a spiritual call and rationale for a global policy that transcended mere economic gain. America’s destiny required the U.S. “…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" (in Jones, 96). And speaking before the Senate justifying the colonization of the Philippines he proclaimed a U.S. mission that transcended politics; “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.” (Congressional Record, 56 Congress, I Session, pp.704-712).

Within a few years of the U.S. colonization of Cuba and the Philippines, President Theodore Roosevelt elaborated on the U.S. world mission. He spoke of the necessity of promoting peace and justice in the world: a project that required adequate military capabilities both for “securing respect for itself and of doing good to others.” To those who claim that the United States seeks material advantage in its activist policy toward the countries of the Western Hemisphere, Roosevelt responded that such claims were untrue. The U.S., he said, is motivated by altruism: “All that this country desires is to see the neighboring countries stable, orderly, and prosperous. Any country whose people conduct themselves well can count upon our hearty friendship.”

Cuba was an example, he said: “If every country washed by the Caribbean Sea would show the progress in stable and just civilization which with the aid of the Platt Amendment Cuba has shown since our troops left the island, and which so many of the republics in both Americas are constantly and brilliantly showing, all questions of interference by the Nation with their affairs would be at an end.” He assured Latin Americans in this address to Congress in 1904 that if “….if they thus obey the primary laws of civilized society they may rest assured that they will be treated by us in a spirit of cordial and helpful sympathy. We would interfere with them only in the last resort….” (“Roosevelt Corollary to the Monroe Doctrine,” President’s Annual Message to Congress, December 6, 1904). 

During a presentation in Norway in 1910 Roosevelt praised the U.S. for leaving Cuba as promised after the war to return only   temporarily because of “….a disaster…a revolution” such that  “….we were obliged to land troops again.” The President proudly declared that: “And before I left the Presidency Cuba resumed its career as a separate republic, holding its head erect as a sovereign state among the other nations of the earth. All that our people want is just exactly what the Cuban people themselves want—that is, a continuance of order within the island, and peace and prosperity, so that there shall be no shadow of an excuse for any outside intervention.” (“the Colonial Policy of the United States,” An Address Delivered at Christiania, Norway, May 5, 1910).

Earlier on January 18, 1909 to the Methodist Episcopal Church (“The Expansion of the White Races”) Roosevelt applauded the increasing presence--he estimated 100 million people—of “European races” throughout the world. The indigenous peoples of the Western Hemisphere have been assimilated with their “intruders” with the end result “that the Indian population of America is larger today than it was when Columbus discovered the continent, and stands on a far higher plane of happiness and efficiency.”

And to highlight the missionary message Roosevelt added: “Of course the best that can happen to any people that has not already a high civilization of its own is to assimilate and profit by American or European ideas, the ideas of civilization and Christianity, without submitting to alien control; but such control, in spite of all its defects, is in a very large number of cases the prerequisite condition to the moral and material advance of the peoples who dwell in the darker corners of the earth.” 

Before the reader dismisses these simplistic, racist statements, it is useful to examine more recent proclamations of the motivations for United States foreign policy particularly toward Latin America. It is worth remembering that recent U.S. presidents, including Barack Obama, quote favorably from the words of Theodore Roosevelt on various subjects.

For example, in March, 1961, and clearly as a response to the Cuban revolution, President John Kennedy announced the creation of a new “Alliance for Progress,” in Latin American, “a vast cooperative effort, unparalleled in magnitude and nobility of purpose, to satisfy the basic needs of the American people for homes, work, and land, health and schools.” The Alliance was to be a ten-year program of social and economic development that would transform the hemisphere “into an historic decade of democratic progress.” Representatives of participating countries would prepare plans for their own development that would “establish targets and priorities, insure monetary stability, establish the machinery for vital social change, stimulate private activity and initiative, and provide for a maximum national effort.” JFK promised U.S financial contributions to stimulate economic reform and in the end transform “the fragmentation of Latin American economies.” The variety of programs—education, land reform, tax reform—would rebuild the region.

The United States also pledged its assistance to those countries whose independence might be threatened. And, of course, the President proclaimed that the United States supports an alliance of free governments and will work to eliminate “tyranny”. JFK expressed “our special friendship to the people of Cuba and the Dominican Republic and the hope they will soon rejoin the society of free men….” Sixty years after the proclamations of Teddy Roosevelt the United States remained committed to offer the blessings of freedom and democracy to the peoples of Cuba. (President John F. Kennedy “Preliminary Formulations of the Alliance for Progress,” March 13, 1961).

Twenty-two years later President Reagan again underscored the U.S. presumption of its special role in the Hemisphere, restating the U.S. role more in the language of Roosevelt than the subtler Kennedy. The speech was presented at a gathering of Cuban-Americans. Reagan praised assembled Cuban-Americans, such as Jorge Mas Canosa, who came to the United States motivated by a passion for liberty. Reagan spoke of descendants of pioneers and emigrants from various locales who started “fresh” in the “New World”; people who “share the same fundamental values of God, family, work, freedom, democracy, and justice.” (“Perhaps the greatest tie between us can be seen in the incredible number of cathedrals and churches found throughout the hemisphere. Our forefathers took the worship of God seriously.”)

Reagan then warned of the “new colonialism that threatens the Americas.” This, of course, was represented by the revolutionary government of Nicaragua, the revolutionaries fighting against dictatorship in El Salvador, and the enduring threat to freedom, Cuba. In the latter, the independent labor movement was destroyed in 1959, churches suppressed, all free speech eliminated, and young Cubans sent to faraway places to defend unpopular regimes. And remembering the sacrifices of the United States in the Cuban war against Spanish colonialism, Reagan regretted that “Cuba is no longer independent.” He promised that “we will not let this same fate befall others in the hemisphere….”

After endorsing 1980s policies such as the Caribbean Basin Initiative and Radio Marti President Reagan reminded his audience of the perpetual burden Americans face in defending freedom. He quoted Teddy Roosevelt; “We, here in America, hold in our hands the hope of the world, the fate of the coming years; and shame and disgrace will be ours if in our eyes the light of high resolve is dimmed, if we trail in the dust the golden hopes of men.” And Reagan ended: “finally, let us pledge ourselves to meet this sacred responsibility. And let us pledge ourselves to the freedom of the noble, long suffering, Cuban people.” (“Text of President Reagan’s Speech on Threat to Latin America, New York Time, May 21, 1983).

President Obama’s opening remarks at the Summit of the Americas (April 14, 2012) were different in tone than those cited above. He celebrated economic development in the region, encouraged continued economic globalization, praised the growth of Latin American nations such as Brazil and Colombia proving that “a lot of the old arguments on the left and the right no longer apply.” The challenge for the future, he said, was to continue distributing the benefits of globalization to more and more people and “giving businesses opportunities to thrive and create new products and new services and enjoy the global marketplace.”

The President called on the Hemisphere nations to continue training people to compete in the global economy, stimulate trade, establish more mutually beneficial trade agreements like the one he signed with the President of Colombia, become more energy efficient, and promote education. He concluded with some of the more traditional presidential language, albeit in less than messianic terms, about core principles of governance: “democracy and rule of law, human rights being observed, freedom of expression.”  In addition, he mentioned “personal security, the capacity for people to feel as if they work hard then they’re able to achieve, and they have motivation to start a business and to know that their own work will pay off.”

President Obama emphasized the connections between “clean, transparent open government that is working on behalf of its people.” These features, he said, were important for business. “The days when a business feels good working in a place where people are being oppressed—ultimately that’s an unstable environment for you to do business. You do business well when you know that it’s a well-functioning society and that there’s a legitimate government in place that is going to be looking out for its people.” With that said, Obama praised both the governments of Colombia and Brazil.

The Obama comments at the opening Summit of the Americas in 2012, more paralleling the language of President Kennedy’s Alliance speech than the missionary statements of Beveridge, Roosevelt, and Reagan, still suggest that the United States, and some Latin American political and economic elites, reflect the interests and values of the masses of Latin America’s citizens. All the speeches offer a common standard to judge what is best for the vast majorities of the peoples of the Hemisphere; whether the region is moving toward or away from God, Democracy (defined in very selective ways) and Markets. And, whether stated or implied, the polar opposite of this standard is most starkly represented by the Cuban revolution.

WISCONSIN IS IMPORTANT

Harry Targ

Progressives look to cities and states that have been models of legislation and activism for inspiration. Of course, East Coasters look to New York City and West Coasters get their ideas from the Bay Area.  If you grow up in “the Heartland,” that is the Midwest, you take from the historic example of certain states, such as Wisconsin.

A long time ago a noted political scientist, John Fenton, studied the politics of six Midwestern states identifying central features dividing them. The so-called “job-oriented states,” Indiana, Illinois, and Ohio, were driven by money, power, and politics narrowly defined. The “issue-oriented states,” Wisconsin, Michigan, and Minnesota, had a politics that was significantly shaped by political ideologies and the promotion of various progressive values and principles.

Taking Wisconsin as a prime example, the state has historically distinguished itself by recognizing the right of public sector workers to form unions, the election of a Socialist mayor in Milwaukee, and the creation of a viable Progressive Party with presidential candidate Robert La Follette senior winning 17 percent of the vote in 1924 (the state of Wisconsin was carried by candidate La Follette).

Madison, Wisconsin was one of the homes of the intellectual and activist ferment that became “the 60s.” The “revisionist “ school of scholarship concerning the United States as an imperial power was popularized in the history department of the University of Wisconsin.  Among those activists that did some reading, William Appleman Williams’ ground-breaking , The Tragedy of American Diplomacy,  helped to reshape thinking about United States foreign policy. One of the premier journals of the early New Left, Studies on the Left, was initiated on the Madison campus. In addition, many remember Wisconsin politicians who crossed the line from Democrat to progressive over the years, from William Proxmire, to Russ Feingold, to Tammy Baldwin.

So watching the rise to power of Scott Walker and a bevy of tea party Republicans to office in 2010, such that the entire state government apparatus came under their control, was a puzzle to casual Heartland observers. Of course, progressives forget that Wisconsin was also the home of the very popular, at least for a time, Senator Joseph McCarthy who set the standard for public condemnation of those who disagreed with him and his rightwing colleagues and followers. Therefore, like most places, the political landscape in Wisconsin has been contradictory.

The Wisconsin contradiction has been no more glaring than during the time frame from early 2011 until today. The Walker administration, with no effort at dialogue and compromise, signed legislation denying most public sector workers the right to organize. He later worked to repeal existing legislation requiring equal pay for women. He, and his Republican legislature, embraced completely the legislative package of ALEC, the American Legislative Exchange Council, to reverse the populism that shaped Wisconsin’s political tradition.

These moves sparked an enormous outrage and political mobilization of opponents that fundamentally brought the spirit of Arab Spring to the United States. It can fairly be said that there was an inspirational link between Tunisia; Tahrir Square in Egypt; to Madison, Wisconsin, Ohio and Indiana; to the Dream Coalition; and most recently to the Occupy Movement. The Wisconsin opposition to the near fascist agenda of Scott Walker and his minions has essentially “brought the war home,” as a 60s slogan defined it.

But now the passion for fighting back against reaction and moving the country back on the path to progress is being threatened.  Just a week from now Wisconsin voters will decide whether the recalled Governor Walker will be reelected or be replaced by Democratic Party challenger Tom Barrett. The polls look like Walker could win reelection.

It is true that the rightwing billionaires--the Koch brothers and others--have outspent the Barrett forces 25 to 1. In a capitalist system money talks but money does not always determine the outcome. People-power which led to the recall of Walker in the first place overcame money in April.  And people-power must be the main resource if Barrett is to defeat Walker and the right. However, the national Democratic Party, from the Democratic National Committee, to President Obama, to Vice President Biden, to the Progressive Caucus in the House should be involved. And it remains a puzzle why Republican governors and billionaires are campaigning in Wisconsin while prominent Democrats are not visible with the exception of former Wisconsin Senator Russ Feingold.

Progressive forces around the country need to understand that the future of national, as well as state, politics will be affected by the outcome of the Walker/Barrett race. A Barrett victory could begin to reverse the process of assault on public sector unionism (and not just in Wisconsin). A Barrett victory might give energy to those in Wisconsin and all over the country who oppose attacks on public education (k-12, and university levels). A Barrett win would be an important step in the long-term “fight-the right” campaign which will continue even beyond the 2012 presidential election.

Perhaps most importantly, the defeat of Walker and his Republican legislative colleagues will give energy and enthusiasm to grassroots movements, which began in Wisconsin and spread like wild fire around the country. It will prove that people-power can trump money-power.  And, it will give proof once again that so-called “inside/outside” strategies remain useful tools for organizing. That is, as progressives build social movements, they use the electoral processes at their disposal to bring alternative visions to the people.

And, it needs to be said that a defeat for reform will be a defeat for progressive forces, not only in Wisconsin but nationally.

ENOUGH IS ENOUGH: THE END OF A LIFETIME LOVE AFFAIR WITH THE CHICAGO CUBS

Harry Targ

When I was about two years old my folks moved to a large apartment on Roscoe and Broadway Streets,  on the north side of Chicago, about one mile from Wrigley Field. This was during World War II and apartments were scarce. My grandmother lived with us and at least one of my mom’s brothers.

In those days the city was still known as “the Hog Butcher of the World,” as Carl Sandburg called it. Not only did the city house the meatpacking industry but also the steel industry, textiles, and electronics. But all of these industries, the heart and soul of Chicago, were centered primarily on the South, West, and near North sections of the city. The smells (particularly the Stockyards), the sounds and the worldwide image of the city came from these centers of production, unionization, and commerce.  But where I grew up, even during the World War, the atmosphere was shaped by the baseball team, the Chicago Cubs, at Wrigley Field a mile from where I lived. The air was infused with a narcotic, the more you breathe the more you forgot about victory, success, pride in workmanship, and even athleticism. Yes I was born to be a Cubs fan.

When I was about 7 years old, a friend of the family took me to my first Cubs game, a double-header. Only one image stands out from that initial experience. Phil Cavarretta, the Cubs first baseman, and batting champion in 1945 when most men were still in Europe or Asia fighting World War II, hit a game leading home run. However, as he rounded the bases he forgot to touch second base, or at least that was what one of the umpires ruled. Cavaretta’s homer was ruled a double. That decision led fans to shower pounds of paper products across the beautiful grass along the outfield. It took an hour to clean up the mess, to get the fans calmed down and for the game to resume.  My host had to leave so I don’t know if we ever found out who won that game. But in retrospect, what was significant was not so much whether the game would go in the Cubs win column or whether Cavarretta would have his hit count as a homer. The significance, I suppose, was that I was left with a feeling of passion for the Cubs at least until last week, a blind loyalty to the team even after I lost interest in the sport.

I still remember my first sports hero, outfielder/third baseman Andy Pafko. He was a slow fielding power hitter who was a Cubs star for about five years. When we moved further North in the city (I was about 10 years old), my hero Andy Pafko appeared at the Little Men’s store on Devon Avenue to sign autographs. I was pretty mad at my parents for not taking me to see Andy but that anger passed as I heard, the very next day , that Pafko was traded to the old Brooklyn Dodgers for Gene Hermanski. Maybe that shocking trade was the first planting of a seed of anger at big capital that would manifest itself in subsequent years in my radical and activist politics.

In the years since 1950, one event after another dashed my hopes about a bright Cubs future, even as my commitment to this sorry team deepened. Shortstop Roy Smalley, an athlete with a terrific arm, regularly threw balls intended for the first basemen into the stands miles beyond its target. The Cubs at one time acquired Ralph Kiner, aging home run hitter to traverse the outfield with home run star Hank Sauer. These almost immobile home run hitters played beside poor Frankie Baumholtz, the center fielder whose career was shortened by years because he had to cover the entire outfield.

In the mid 1950s the Cubs reluctantly broke the Chicago “color line.”  They recruited the great Negro League home run hitting shortstop Ernie Banks and a good second baseman, Gene Baker, to complete the double play combo. Later, they acquired a Hall of Fame African American outfielder, Billy Williams.

Ernie Banks coined a slogan that to me was as meaningful as “Workers of the World Unite” when he would say at the end of each season, “Wait til Next Year.” Unfortunately next year never came and the great Ernie Banks became a Republican. (I won’t even remind the reader that a young Ronald Reagan would broadcast Cubs games from a ticker tape, making up what was going on in the field without even being there. In addition, one of the Cubs major supporters until this day from the world of punditry is George Will!)

I could go on. The Cubs did make post-season playoffs in 1984, 1989, 2003, 2007, and 2008 but nothing inspired a fan’s enthusiasm more than the Cubs fifth place finish in 1952 (before the National League was divided into divisions). Radio commentator Jean Shepherd was reminiscing about his youthful indiscretion once; his support of the cross town losing rival the White Sox. He said one time he and his friends watched the White Sox lose a game 4 to 3 and they afterwards went out and held a victory celebration. That has been what life is like if one is a Chicagoan in residence and in spirit.

Well, my wife declared last year that “enough was enough.” Being a Cubs fan for 60 years without any positive reinforcement she felt is more than any person should be expected to endure. The loss of six playoff games in a row in 2007 and 2008 was more than she could take. I felt she was betraying a sacred trust, an obligation that we Chicagoans were ordained to honor. But she said no.

As I hinted at above, news stories last week have forced me to join my wife in redirecting my life. I could take 100 years without a World Series. I could adjust to the trade of the greatest Cub, Andy Pafko. I could remember with fondness Smalley’s wild throws into the stands. But what I cannot accept is the effort by Joe Ricketts the father of the current Cubs ownership, to fund a $10 million anti-Obama campaign that would highlight a racist attack linking the incumbent to his former minister Reverend Jeremiah Wright. Reverend Wright, an articulate and militant opponent of racism in the United States was unfairly tarnished during the 2008 election campaign and Obama, instead of defending his former minister, separated himself from him.

By revisiting the Wright/Obama affair, this proposed campaign was designed to stigmatize those who oppose racism, link the president with so-called “Black militancy,” and in the main use another coded form of racism to build opposition to the president. And to make matters even more bizarre, the senior Ricketts funds Koch brothers-like campaigns while his children seek massive tax breaks from Chicagoans to renovate my beloved Wrigley Field.

There comes a time when loyalties borne in impetuous youth must take a back seat to political principle. In this case, the billionaires of this world, unleashed by the Supreme Court, are working to reverse our political and economic life, returning to the extremes of class exploitation, racism, and sexism. The vision of “workers of the world unite” must take precedence over “wait til next year.”