DELUSIONS AND UNITED STATES FOREIGN POLICY: Fantasies Continue

American leadership is what holds the world together. American alliances are what keep us, America, safe. American values are what make us a partner that other nations want to work with. To put all that at risk if we walk away from Ukraine, if we turn our backs on Israel, it’s just not worth it…We are, as my friend Madeleine Albright said, the indispensable nation. (Joe Biden, New York Times, October 19, 2023).

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….It is elemental...it is racial. God has not been preparing the English-speaking and teutonic peoples for a thousand years for nothing but vain and idle self-contemplation and self-admiration. No! He has made us the master organizers of the world to establish system where chaos reigns. He has given us the spirit of progress to overwhelm the forces of reaction throughout the earth.” Senator Albert Beveridge, Indiana, Congressional Record, 56 Congress, I Session, pp.704-712, 1898).

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An earlier version was reprinted in Portside

Harry Targ, Stephen David

The brutal war in Ukraine continues. Russia attacks targets in various parts of the country, mostly in the South and East. Ukrainians and Russian soldiers die. Millions flee the violence as the  physical landscape of cities and towns are destroyed. And neither Russia, Ukraine, or NATO/the United States appear to engage in any serious negotiations to end the violence.

Meanwhile military spending in the United States and Europe increase at the expense of desperately needed social programs and transformations from economies based on fossil fuels. Presumably the Russian military/industrial complex (and perhaps the Ukrainian military establishment) experiences boosts in resources and legitimacy as is occurring in the west. And on all sides the mass media and cultural and educational institutions spin narratives about the righteousness, glory, and the efficacy of policy of the country from which the narratives are produced.

Spokespersons from the United States government and the US corporate media particularly have produced and disseminated stories about aspects of the Ukraine war that together constitute a series of interconnected delusions about the context and causes of the war in Ukraine; the US/NATO response; the deleterious impacts of the war on the Russian invaders; and, most importantly, the immediate and long-term impacts of the war on international affairs. A delusion is "an idiosyncratic belief or impression that is firmly maintained despite being contradicted by what is generally accepted as reality or rational argument."

If one goes beyond the US/Western corporate media and if one gives serious thought to the historical logic of such narratives it would be clear that core premises of US/NATO policies are delusional.

For example, there are at least seven kinds of delusions that are broadly accepted and/or articulated by the US government and the corporate media.

Delusion number one  is that the United States can reproduce the coalition of hegemonic forces that existed after World War 2. It is clear that the US Cold War international system cannot be replicated. After World War 2, the United States, the overwhelmingly hegemonic economic and military power,  institutionalized a world order based upon economics (the Bretton Woods system, the Marshall Plan, the subsequent development of the European Economic Community and the European Union),  military dominance (from the construction of the NATO alliance to a worldwide network of alliances, bilateral treaties, and military bases), and an ideology (the “free world versus communism” or in our own day “democracy” versus “authoritarianism”). While this hegemonic goal - economics, military and ideological - was never fully achieved it has been whittled away by multiple poles of economic power (particularly the rise of the Chinese economy), a declining ability of the United States to control the world militarily (as evidenced historically by military defeats from Korea, Vietnam, Afghanistan, Iraq, and even in the Western hemisphere), and growing global skepticism about what the United States means by “democracy.”

Delusion number two  suggests that the United States can remain the global hegemon. Here again any number of writers, and more importantly key leaders from countries in Europe, Asia, and throughout the Global South see the United States as a declining power economically, militarily, and politically. As the Ukraine crisis has unfolded many voices from the Global South have evidenced indifference to what appears to be a “white people’s war” that is being  used  to increase demands for fundamental changes in global economics and politics. Many around the world see the conflicts in Eastern Europe as a manifestation of the breakdown of North American and European power and control of what goes on in their countries. The most significant takeaway from the United Nations General Assembly resolution condemning the Russian intervention in Ukraine is the fact that 35 countries abstained in the vote; not only African and Asian countries but several from the Western Hemisphere. The population of those countries constituted about one-third of the population of the world. Not too long ago a loose coalition of big powers, the BRICS, began dialoguing about making modest demands for changes in power dynamics in global institutions and practice. Witnessing greater underdevelopment in developing countries instead of the promise of development, BRICS began charting a course not entirely dependent on the World Bank, IMF, and World Trade Organizations. While the BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa) talks have stalled, it is expected (particularly after upcoming elections in Brazil) they will resume. Some modest redistribution of decisioning power in major international institutions is in the air.

Delusion number three is that the United States can intimidate China. Since the 1980s, China has steered an economic course that involves encouraging foreign investment, utilizing technologies derived from these investments, and adopting an economic development model incorporating advanced capitalism and appropriate state controls. Not only is China about to surpass the United States in its gross domestic product but in its progress it has lifted 700 million Chinese out of poverty. And in terms of China’s global presence, it is establishing more attractive economic relations with nations all across the globe. Through its Belt and Road Initiative for example, China has already become the largest trading partner with the countries of Latin America. In this context, media reports of US threats if China maintains economic ties with Russia are matters of bluster and of little consequence.

Delusion number four is that the countries of the global south support the United States. Given the declining relative power of the United States on the global stage, the rising economic influence of China on the world stage, and the history of United States interference, (from sanctions to soldiers) in the affairs of other countries and peoples, nations of the Global South see the United States as the latest, perhaps last, imperial power. As V J Prashad pointed out, “all war is criminal” - both ‘hot’ and ‘cold’ wars. Therefore, economic exploitation and political interference in the  Global South is increasingly viewed with disdain and discomfort. Again, this disdain is suggested by the number of countries that refused to condemn the Russian invasion of Ukraine in the recent General Assembly vote. Yet despite such clear signs the US media continues to praise US sanctions against Cuba, Venezuela, Nicaragua, Syria, Afghanistan, Iran, and now Russia, without discussing the horrific impacts these sanctions have on ordinary people in these countries. Nor does the media report that the United States and the European Union currently have some kind of sanctions imposed on 39 nations. Sanctions alone make it very unlikely that victimized people from the Global South regard the United States with respect and admiration.*And alternative forms of payment and paths for international trade will be the logical outcome of weaponizing trade and the banking system.

Protesters demonstrate against police brutality in Nairobi, Kenya, on June 8, 2020. The protest against police brutality in Kenya was in support of the Black Lives Matter movement and in response to the recent killing of George Floyd by police officers in Minneapolis. 

Delusion number five is that the United States remains the ‘indispensable nation,” the “last resort,” the model of democracy and market economies for the world. For the reasons suggested above and the demonstrable racism, violence, environmental disasters more frequently associated with the United States itself (while admired for certain achievements such as in education and science) most global citizens regard the US as a failed state, surely one not to emulate. More recently the overbearing, unfair, and restrictive moves against Chinese competitive strength in the form of banning Huawei’s 5G technology and Tiktok compromises the notion of free-market fairness and a just global economic world order. The “American Dream” begins to morph into a hollow specter in the global context. Together they mark an unmistakable decline.

Delusion number six is that the United States cannot learn from others: Cuba, China, peoples on the Africa continent and elsewhere. It has historically been central to the consciousness of the hegemonic actors in the world, the imperial powers, that they are and can be the exemplars and teachers; and, the countries that have been conquered and/or been impoverished have nothing to teach the powerful and only have to follow. Meanwhile examples of alternative healthcare delivery systems, adaptations to the natural environment, or forms of workplace democracy in less powerful nations are ignored.

Cuban doctors travel around the world to help cure pandemics.

And delusion number seven suggests that global hegemony can be maintained or achieved without major (indeed nuclear) war and/or climate disaster. This is the most dangerous delusion because it suggests that the powerful countries can proceed with their drive to dominate without increasing the risk of nuclear war or speeding up the destruction of nature.

Therefore, one project the peace and justice movement in the United States and hopefully with peace and justice activists around the world can do is to challenge the delusions articulated by American and European leaders and to challenge the mythologies that are deeply embedded in the corporate media. And now, this includes developing an historically grounded analysis of the Ukraine war; one that denounces the initiation of the war but understands the history and mythologies that undergird it. With such understandings we can only improve our chances for a sounder basis for peace.

 

*Countries facing economic sanctions include: 1. Afghanistan, 2. Belarus, 3. Bosnia and Herzegovina, 4. Burundi, 5. Central African Republic, 6. China (PR), 7. Comoros 8. Crimea Region of Ukraine> 9. Cuba, 10. Cyprus, 11. Democratic Republic of the Congo, 12. Guinea, 13. Guinea Bissau, 14. Haiti, 15. Iran, 16. Iraq, 17. Kyrgyzstan, 18. Laos, 19. Lebanon, 20. Libya, 21. Mali 22. Mauritania 23. Moldova 24. Montenegro 25. Myanmar, 26. Nicaragua, 27. North Korea - DPRK, 28. Palestinian Territories, 29. Russia, 30. Rwanda, 31. Serbia 32. Somalia, 33. South Sudan, 34. Sudan, 35. Syria, 36. Tunisia 37. Venezuela, 38. Yemen, 39. Zimbabwe. https://sanctionskill.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/03/39SanctionedCountries3.pdf

Harry Targ is a long-time peace activist, writer, and teacher of courses on United States foreign policy. Stephen David is also a long-time peace activist, cultural critic, and participant in the struggles against apartheid in South Africa.

 

 

 

Patrick Chura, Mike Gold: The People’s Writer, SUNY Press, 2020.

Book Review: Socialism and Democracy, March 15, 2022

Harry R. Targ

 

Examining the Life of a Radical Writer: Mike Gold

    Mike Gold, was a literary critic, novelist, playwright, journalist, who learned his politics in the era of the construction of various radical movements-anarchist, socialist, syndicalist-in the context of being born and raised in impoverished tenements in the Jewish sector of the Lower East Side in New York City. In his mature years, he became a member of the Communist Party USA as editor of the New Masses and columnist in the Daily Worker. During this period he developed and articulated a critical stance and a more or less systematic analysis of the relationship between politics and art. He is credited with initiating an artistic genre he called "proletarian literature."

  Gold was born as Itzok Granich in 1893 in New York City. He attended school until the eighth grade, took one year of journalism courses at New York University (1912-1913), and spent one year as a special student at Harvard University in 1914. He published in the political magazine edited by Floyd Dell and Max Eastman, The Masses, and in the newspaper, The New York Call. Also he wrote three one-act plays that were performed by the Provincetown Players in 1916, 1917, and 1920. He spent time in Mexico during World War One to avoid the draft and upon return and in the atmosphere of the Red Scare of the early 1920s changed his name to Mike Gold. In 1920 he became the editor of The Liberator after The Masses was closed down by the government. In 1926 he became editor of the successor of The Liberator, The New Masses, (in the literary orbit of the Communist Party) which he edited for twenty years. In 1933 be began writing a column for the Daily Worker. His contributions to the Daily Worker continued until his death in 1967. Perhaps, most significant in Mike Gold's left literary career was the publication of his partially fictionalized account of growing up in the poverty of the Jewish tenements at the dawn of the twentieth century in his famous "proletarian novel," Jews Without Money. Mchael 

  Michael Folsum, a editor of one of three anthologies of his essays and columns wrote of his life, that Gold was a man who

   "... spent his literary life, as a Communist and a revolutionary, working to build socialism in America. There were lots of people who did that, once upon a time. But Gold stuck it out. He died a little tired after the ravages of the McCarthy period, and a little cynical after many a disappointment, like the truth about Stalin, the ‘Moscow trials,’ the defection of so many old comrades. But he died still holding to the dream of his youth."[1]

 On Proletarian Literature

   Mike Gold spent a career in class struggle and in contestation about what was "good art." In 1921 Mike Gold published an essay in The Liberator called "Towards Proletarian Art." In 1930, Gold published a series of remarks elaborating on the theme of the earlier article in The New Masses. This article in the Folsom anthology was given the title "Proletarian Realism.

   In the first essay, Gold presents a world in turmoil, one in which the demise of capitalism seems eminent. While this prediction in retrospect seems foolish, Gold reminds his readers of how pervasive the resistance to change is. "We have been bred in the old capitalist planet, and its stuff is in our very bones. Its ideals, mutilated and poor, were yet the precious stays of our lives. Its art, its science, its philosophy and metaphysics are deeper in us than logic or will....We cling to the old culture, and fight for it against ourselves." [2] Then, Gold offers a project for the artist to produce works that help people see the possibilities of the new in the bedrock of the old. And the old includes vivid renditions of the reality of human existence not some abstractions about "human nature," "good and evil," "the nature of beauty and love" or other images so common to artistic creation.

   For Gold, himself, it was most significant that "I was born in a tenement....It was in a tenement that I first heard the sad music of humanity rise to the stars...There, in suffering youth, I feverishly sought God and found Man....I saw him ,not as he has been pictured by the elder poets, groveling or sinful or romantic or falsely god-like, but one sunk in a welter of humble, realistic cares; responsible, instinctive, long-suffering and loyal; sad and beaten yet reaching out beautifully and irresistibly like a natural force for the mystic food and freedom that are Man's."

 Gold claims that all he knows comes from the tenements. He saw the compassion of mothers and fathers for their young, the courage of the sick factory worker, the children finding pleasure in the playing of fanciful games in the dark tenement hallways. Gold claims: "The tenement is in my blood. When I think it is the tenement thinking. When I hope it is the tenement hoping. I am not an individual; I am all that the tenement group poured into me during those early years of my spiritual travail."[3]

  Gold argues that artists born in tenements should not have to apologize for it or go beyond the experience and indeed should not forget it. For what is art but "...the tenement pouring out its soul through us, its most sensitive and articulate sons and daughters." Because life for us, he said, "...has been the tenement that bore and molded us through years of meaningful pain."[4]

  Gold contends that the artist has assumed the egoistic, solitary, and even competitive individual stance that comports with capitalism. As individual artist, she or he, combated with God, then Reason, then logic, so that now he wrote, "they have turned to the life of the moods..."Most critically "intellectuals have become contemptuous of the people..." "The people live, love, work, fight, pray, laugh; they accept all, they accept themselves, and the immortal urgings of Life within them. They know bread is necessary to them: they know love and hate. What do the intellectuals know?"[5] For Gold, the artist must root herself/himself in the life of the people.

 A Biography of Mike Gold

    Patrick Chura in Mike Gold: The People’s Writer, SUNY Press, 2020, does a wonderful job developing the life and times of Mike Gold. He highlights the context in which Gold lived and learned his radicalness; powerfully described in Gold’s under-appreciated novel, Jews Without Money. Not only does the novel help us understand the class and ethnic background that shaped Gold but it provides a window into Gold’s idea of proletarian literature, a concept he invented and promoted throughout his life in and around the left.

    Since older radicals were educated during the depths of the Cold War and anti-communism, their exposure to literature was framed by a “canon” which denied the value of  any fiction, poetry, drama or visual arts that which reflected upon the lived experiences of really existing working people and the exploited in general. Literature was judged by the interiority of the text, not the contexts in which fictional characters resided. To challenge this bourgeois conception of art, Gold spent a lifetime of activism.

    In addition to developing the centrality of Gold’s advocacy of proletarian literature, Chura provides us with a rich textured and sympathetic narrative of Gold’s life. Through it the reader is exposed to much of the literary left of the first half of the twentieth century: The New Masses, Floyd Dell, Max Eastman, Eugene O’Neil, John Reed, and others from The Masses. Later as a literary icon, editor of The New Masses, literary spokesperson for the Communist Party USA, and member of its John Reed Clubs, Gold was close to writers such as Richard Wright, John Dos Passos, and James T.Farrell. And, almost paradoxically, Chura touchingly describes Gold’s longstanding friendship with Dorothy Day even though their politics moved in different directions fro the end of World War One and the 1930s.

    Reading Chura is like reading a history of the literary left of the first half of the twentieth century and particularly giving rich examples of what Michael Denning called “The Cultural Front.”  And as the biographer points out, the lessons young Itzok Granich learns in the seamy tenements of New York city formed the basis of his politics and his lifes’ work as a writer.

    And Chura does not shy away from understanding, and probably embracing Gold’s advocacy of art forms that speak to and speak from the working class. The biography addresses the inextricable connections between the arts and the times in which they are produced: from the high tide of bourgeois art in the “roaring twenties,” to the art borne of economic misery in the 1930s, to the virulent anti-communism and the new criticism characteristic of  post-World War America. And throughout all this time and the varied political struggles of each generation Gold remained committed to artistic creations that spoke to and about the working class, the downtrodden, the victims of racism and sexism. And it is to this stance that the political culture of the 1960s and beyond makes sense. Perhaps the most important takeaway of this fine biography of Gold is that art and culture matter. The arts can give voice to human needs, can inspire political activism, and can speak truth to power.

    The only addition I would have preferred would have been a richer description of Gold’s relationship to the Communist Party, connections between party decisions and the content of The Masses, and Gold’s concrete role with the John Reed Clubs. Was Gold’s practice independent of the Party or a byproduct of Party decisions on matters of culture and the arts?

(For a rich grounding of Mike Gold’s work in the context of working class literature, politics, anti-racism, and immigrant experiences see Benjamin Balthaser, “Mike Gold, the Writer Who Believed Workers Could Speak for Themselves,” Jacobin, July 12, 2021. https://www.jacobinmag.com/2021/07/mike-gold-literature-jewish-american-proletariat-red-left)

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    [1]Michael Folsom ed., Mike Gold: A Literary Anthology, International Publishers, 1972, 7-8.

 

    [2] Folsom 62.

    [3]Folsom, 64-5.

    [4]Folsom 65.

    [5]Folsom, 66.

WAR AND PEACE | Reflections on the War in Ukraine

 

HARRY TARG 

from The Rag Blog

Posted on March 10, 2022 by Thorne Dreyer

Russian invasion of Ukraine / Viewsridge / Creative Commons.

By Harry Targ | The Rag Blog | March 10, 2022

Many of us in the peace movement have had useful conversations (and debates) stimulated by the war on Ukraine. We are discussing the causes of the invasion of Ukraine by Russia, both immediate and historical, and how the peace movement should respond to this important crisis.

I commend the Oliver Stone documentary to all as one detailed and informed narrative of a very complicated Ukrainian history. An important element of Stone’s narrative is the role of Ukrainian neo-fascists who were prominently active in the 2014 coup against the elected Ukraine government. These descendants of World War II neo-Nazis, Stone claims, now serve in the Ukraine army.

Also, most accounts of the Ukraine crisis today ignore the extraordinary expansion of NATO in the 1990s and the 2014 coup against the elected government of Ukraine carried out with the covert support of the United States. Including this in the accounts today adds important context, not for determining good guys and bad guys, but for figuring out what should be done and where peace forces should stand. And to be clear reflection on this context does not deny the immoral and inhumane Russian invasion of Ukraine.

My takeaways so far are the following:

1.Russia has fallen into a trap that will significantly and negatively impact on its economy. It also reduces Russian influence around the world and undermines Russia’s renewed economic ties with countries in the Western Hemisphere.

2.The invasion gives fuel to the emerging anti-China Cold War rhetoric for politicians of both parties and the corporate media who suggest that Taiwan will be next, presumably after a Chinese invasion.

3.The Ukraine war is an enormous plus for military/industrial complexes in the US and in Russia as well.

4.The Ukraine story transforms the global narrative from the critical discussion of exploitation by the Global North of the Global South to the Biden narrative of “authoritarians” vs. “democracies.” For example, see the powerful presentation by V J Prashad of the essential nature of the North/South struggle.

5.The impacts of the debate on progressive forces in the US and elsewhere are potentially devastating. In the US, our discourse is shifting from a progressive agenda including President Biden’s Build Back Better program for example to stories about the relationships between Putin and former President Trump and so-called “national security.”

Biden’s State of the Union address reflects his “shift to the center.” Now we have a cause all Americans can get behind: opposing the Russians. (I am reminded how the Soviet menace in the 1940s was used to defang CIO militancy, the drive for free health care, Henry Wallace’s call for US/Soviet dialogue and, of course, civil rights for all).

I think the Russian invasion and the incomplete and war-oriented narrative of the Ukraine crisis dominating the news from such sources as the Washington Post, The New York Times, National Public Radio, and CNN/MSNBC constitute a real setback for us. Media news is a commodity. War and portraits of American exceptionalism are profitable commodities for the increasingly concentrated corporate media.

For these reasons and more, I endorse the Code Pink demands that Russia withdraw its troops from Ukraine and the United States and its allies pull back NATO forces from their presence in Eastern Europe. In addition, diplomatic efforts should ensue to replace NATO with an organization that can provide security for Europe and the Global South. The Code Pink frame gives appropriate recognition to both the immorality of the Russian action and the context, including NATO expansion and the events in Ukraine since 2014.

Finally, I want to reintroduce the concept of “historical memory.” These memories are important for people and they are legitimate ways to think about what needs to change. The historical memory for many Russians probably includes the 27 million of their ancestors killed during World War II largely from invading German armies crossing through Ukraine. I assume that if I were a Russian such a memory would affect how I think about the world. I know from experience how deeply the Holocaust still affects Jewish people even today.

So peace activists will continue to debate root causes of this senseless war and what to do about it. But for now as Cold Pink and others demand: Stop the War, Withdraw Russian Troops From Ukraine, Reverse the Extension of NATO.

SOCIAL MOVEMENTS: FIGHTBACKS AND VISIONS: A Decade Ago

Harry Targ

February 20, 2012

“Of course, Big Labor's coercion of employees into paying union dues to subsidize its political agenda isn't new, since this practice is as old as the 1935 National Labor Relations Act (NLRA). But with AFL-CIO president John Sweeney beating his chest about the Federation's political spending, the coercion of workers to fund the AFL-CIO's political operations became news.” (National Right to Work Legal Defense Foundation, Inc, September 9, 1997)

“A source with direct knowledge of decision-making at Komen's headquarters in Dallas said the grant-making criteria were adopted with the deliberate intention of targeting Planned Parenthood. The criteria's impact on Planned Parenthood and its status as the focus of government investigations were highlighted in a memo distributed to Komen affiliates in December.” (Associated Press, February 7, 2012)

WHEREAS, the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now (ACORN) was founded in 1970 with the mission of increasing voter participation, delivering services to inner-city neighborhoods, community organizing, and carrying out issue campaigns; (followed by a list of financial and other transgressions)

THEREFORE BE IT FURTHER RESOLVED, that ALEC calls on all states to immediately end support for ACORN and groups linked to ACORN. (From the website of the American Legislative Executive Council)

Academics define social movements in different ways and believe they arise for a variety of reasons. They can come from groups that already exist, a growing availability of resources, the rise of crises of one sort or another, and/or from specific issues. Such movements may take a long time to gestate and grow, or emerge in moments of spontaneity, sometimes rising from inspirational examples. Often they have their roots in the need to react to powerful and negative initiatives by opposing political or economic groups.

The forces of reaction may have as their project immediate efforts to destroy existing rights or prerogatives embedded in public policies. In addition they may see in the policies and groups they oppose the seeds of new ideas that could lead to fundamental social changes that must be challenged.

While reactionary forces may arise to oppose specific changes in policy, their most important legacy is the long-term efforts they employ to crush organizations of people that could see the need for fundamental social change. Therefore, as in the cases of labor, women’s rights, and people’s movements, reactionary forces are fundamentally committed to long-term organizing, rolling back the very forces that have provided some services to those not part of the ruling class.

We can see examples of the rise of social movements out of reactionary programs in the recent battles over “Right-to-Work for less” legislation in the state of Indiana and the spreading campaigns to bring similar legislation to states throughout the industrial heartland. Right-to-Work campaigns have followed on efforts to diminish worker power to destroy rights of public employees to organize and to make difficult worker organizing in any venue.

The data comparing the conditions of workers in Right-to-Work states with others clearly shows that the former experience lower wages, health benefits, shop-floor safety and their families fewer rights to health care and retirement security.

More generally, in a thorough recent report on the role of unions in American life, the authors of a Center for American Progress Action Fund study (David Madland and Nick Bunker) point out that virtually every positive social change in the United States has received strong support from organized labor. Historically, during periods of high union density (high percentages of workers in unions), all American workers have benefited in terms of wages, benefits, and workplace rights.

In addition, organized labor has been among the strongest institutional supporters of the Democratic Party, and on occasion, some trade unionists have supported progressive third party campaigns (from the Henry Wallace campaign for president in 1948 to Green Party campaigns by candidate Ralph Nader).

Further, the existence of a vibrant labor movement is vital for workers everywhere. Those who oppose organized labor, such as the National Right to Work Legal Defense Foundation quoted above, do so for reasons of short-term gain. Right-to-Work laws may weaken unions, lead to declining wages, and create larger profits.

But more importantly, destroying the labor movement and the very idea that workers have rights and those rights have the potential of being realized in strong organizations of their making seems vital to economic and political elites who are always striving to create a society dominated even more by industrial and finance capital. Trade unions, while driven by the defense of basic interests today, imply the possibility of creating a society that privilege worker rights and democracy. This remains the ultimate danger from the standpoint of big capital that must be stamped out.

Just as trade unions embody the possibility of real democracy for workers, women’s rights to make choices about their own bodies constitute the same kind of immediate and long-term reality. The signature target of the reactionary right is Planned Parenthood of America. Planned Parenthood provides a broad array of reproductive health services for women, particularly poor women. Only a small percentage of their resources are allocated for abortions.

In addition, the mission of Planned Parenthood is to create the conditions in which each individual can manage his/her own fertility, what they refer to as “reproductive self-determination.” To achieve this goal Planned Parenthood works to provide reproductive and comprehensive health care, including advocating public policies to achieve the mission.

Reactionary forces, from the American Legislative Executive Council (ALEC) to various national anti-abortion groups, and most recently Susan Komen for the Cure (ostensibly apolitical) have mobilized not only to shrink Planned Parenthood services to women but to eliminate the organization itself. For some, abortion is an anathema for theological reasons. But for most, Planned Parenthood represents institutionally the basic rights of women to control their own bodies and by implication the provision of accessible and comprehensive health care.

The rising of the poor, women and men, black and white, employed and unemployed, the young and old, constitute another fundamental challenge to the economic and political power of reactionary forces in America. Organizations such as the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now (ACORN), until it was destroyed by an orchestrated campaign of lies in 2010, received public funding to support programs for low and moderate income families. It promoted voter registration in communities, and advocated for health care reform, public housing, and living wage legislation.

From the vantage point of economic and political elites, power and privilege could be challenged in cities and towns across America if community organizations such as ACORN developed programs of action and service.

These three organizations together represent labor, women, and grassroots poor people’s campaigns. They are the embodiment of popular forces which seek to end exploitation, sexism, and racism. Implicitly they stand for the construction of a different kind of society in which these pathologies do not exist. That is why all three—organized labor, Planned Parenthood, and ACORN--have been and continue to be under assault. And that is why progressive campaigns need to be organized around the  fundamental connections between class, gender, and race and to defend labor, women’s, and community organizations.

EMPIRE DECLINES: PROBABILITY OF WAR INCREASES: A Book Review

A provocative 2025 addition by Professor Richard Wolff

https://youtu.be/m9Ls3IxNlsM?si=qpP3H1iKWL3A1sZg

Harry Targ

A Repost from April 7, 2018

Alfred McCoy, In the Shadows of the American Century: The Rise and Decline of US Global Power, Haymarket Books, 2017.

In a background call attended by American Military News, a senior administration official said, “President Biden made clear the implication and consequences of China providing material support — if China were to provide material support — to Russia as it prosecutes its brutal war in Ukraine, not just for China’s relationship with the United States but for the wider world.”  Laura Widener, American Military News, March 19, 2022. 

https://americanmilitarynews.com/2022/03/biden-threatens-xi-with-consequences-if-china-helps-russias-war-in-ukraine/

Rachel Bronson, Ph.D., President and CEO of the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists wrote that “in 2017 we saw reckless language in the nuclear realm heat up already dangerous situations and re-learned that minimizing evidence-based assessments regarding climate and other global challenges does not lead to better public policies.”

In fact, the distinguished team of researchers affiliated with the Bulletin who regularly assess the danger of nuclear war declared that the probability of nuclear war has increased over the last year. Using their “doomsday clock” as a metaphor the dial was moved to two minutes to midnight; midnight signifying the onset of nuclear war. This warning moves the clock one minute closer to possible nuclear apocalypse than the prior several years. The scientists believe that the danger of nuclear destruction and devastating climate disaster is greater now than at any time since the early 1980s.

The context for this grim prediction is well-reflected in a new book by University of Wisconsin historian Alfred McCoy, In the Shadows of the American Century.  The author reviews the rise of the American empire since the 1890s. He describes the twentieth century emergence of the US as the hegemonic power in the international system based upon economic superiority and overwhelming military power. He suggests, however, that this economic and military dominance is being challenged today. US relative economic power is declining. Participation in global wars has become a military quagmire. And global resistance to imperialism is spreading.

Perhaps the most critical challenge to the American empire, he suggests, is the rise of China, particularly as an economic successor to US control of the global political economy. He reviews data concerning Chinese domestic development indicating that the country has emerged as the second largest world economy. In addition, the Chinese have developed trade with every continent, invested broadly everywhere, and established an Asian financial and trading system that challenges the historic US presence in the region. Finally, China has expanded transportation, trade, investment, and corporate ties with Europe.  In sum, the author makes a compelling case for the economic rise of China and the relative decline of the United States in the global economy. In economic terms the global system is changing from unipolarity to multipolarity.

In reference to the United States, McCoy draws a portrait of an empire in decline, particularly in terms of relative economic competitiveness. In response to this decline McCoy provides detailed information to suggest that the United States has embarked on a program to expand militarily programs around the globe and in outer space. This latest phase of militarism includes preparing for cyber space war, occupying space (in parallel ways in which the United States occupied land in the twentieth century), developing biometrics to identify potential enemies, and increasing drone warfare capabilities. These projects involve the creation of a whole panoply of weapons that exceed the imagination of science fiction. In sum, therefore, the new militarism is designed to forestall and overcome declining empire.

This book is a must read for the peace movement because it indicates the dangerous world in which we live and the increased probability of global destruction. It suggests the need for a two-pronged response to the United States empire in decline. First, peace activists must continue to oppose militarism in all its forms--spending, fighting, and non-transparent interventions across the globe.

Second, peace activists need to develop a public discourse that celebrates the emergence of a multi-polar world, a world in which more countries can participate in global policy-making. The alternative to an energized peace movement could be, as the atomic scientists warn, a nuclear apocalypse.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

CONNECTING FOREIGN POLICY TO DOMESTIC NEEDS

Harry Targ

As the tragedy of the Russian invasion and the devastation of Ukraine unfold, the war machines (policymakers, arms manufacturers, educators, media propagandists) of various countries-Russian, NATO alliance partners, and the US-ramp up their calls for more war. These advocates for more violence, more nuclear threats, and more great power chauvinisms increasingly take center stage. Rumors of “back channel” negotiations are demeaned. Feelers for negotiation articulated by key leaders are ignored.  And hints of negotiations and compromises and concessions are ridiculed. Finally, any suggestions that China, an “authoritarian state” could play a role in deescalating the crisis are condemned.

And, in the midst of the escalating tensions and finally the Russian invasion of Ukraine, the significant Biden program of substantial social, economic, and environmental changes have been allowed to flounder and die. Now Congress and the Administration eagerly legislate more  money for the military, more money for our beleaguered Ukrainian ally, and increasingly remind the population that China, the real enemy, is lurking in the global background. Health care, debt relief for students, shifts to a Green Jobs Agenda, tax reform, raising the minimum wage all need to put off for another day.

Last year the New Poor Peoples Campaign showed in an informative flyer how money projected for the military could be used for human needs.  https://ips-dc.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/12/PPC-BBB-fact-sheet.pdf

And elsewhere the NPPC pointed out that:

“Since Vietnam, the United States has waged an ongoing war against diffuse enemies, siphoning massive resources away from social needs. Out of every dollar in federal discretionary spending, 53 cents [go] towards the military, with just 15 cents on anti-poverty programs.”

 

Many of us remember the dramatic policies proposed, some implemented, of the Great Society. And twenty-five years earlier, during World War and before “the Great Society,” Henry Wallace, spoke of the the prospect of creating the “Century of the Common Man,” the absence of war, social and economic justice, and freedom. President Roosevelt called for a “New Economic Bill of Rights,” in 1944 embodying economic security and justice for all, and even Harry Truman advocated for a national health care system.

And what happened every time, the 1940s, the 1960s, the 1990s, and now-threats of war, demands for preparations for war, escalating military expenditures. The tragedy of how war and the mythology of its inevitability is vividly reflected in the defeat of the Great Society programs. The old essay below, see particularly the italicized words, suggests in one moment the tragic loss of human development to war and violence.

One takeaway from this reflection is that there is an inextricable connection between war-making abroad and human suffering at home. Now is the time for peace and justice movements to act on these connections.

 

From: "Remembering the Great Society"

September 28, 2011

 

On Monday, September 26, 2011,  the Reverend Jesse Jackson visited Ohio University, located at the northern edge of Appalachia. President Lyndon Johnson had introduced his vision of a “Great Society” in 1964 at this site and Jackson was returning 47 years later to call for the establishment of a White House commission to address poverty and hunger in America.

Jackson pointed out that Athens County, Ohio, where he spoke, represented “ground zero” as to poverty in America today. Thirty-two percent of county residents live in poverty.

The fact that increased poverty is a national problem was underscored in a September 13 press release from the United States Census Bureau. The Census Bureau reported that 46.2 million people lived below the poverty line in 2010, the highest number in 52 years that is 15.1 percent of Americans lived in poverty, the highest percent since 1993. The poverty line for a family of four was $22,314. The New York Times (September 14, 2011) quoted Professor Lawrence Katz, economist, who said that “this is truly a lost decade. We think of America as a place where every generation is doing better, but we’re looking at a period when the median family is in worse shape than it was in the late 1990s.”

In a press release, the Census Bureau identified some additional data which reflects the economic status of large numbers of Americans:

-The number of Americans below the poverty line in 2010 increased by 900,000 over 2009.
-Proportions of Black and Hispanic citizens living in poverty increased from 2009 to 2010. Black poverty rose to 27 percent from 25 percent; Hispanic poverty 26 percent from 25 percent.
-48 million Americans, 18 to 64 years of age, did not work at all in 2010, up from 45 million in 2009.
-Median income declines were greatest among the young, ages 15 to 24, who experienced a 9 percent decline between 2009 and 2010.
-Childhood poverty rates rose from 20.7 percent in 2009 to 22 percent in 2010.

Timothy Smeeding, Director, Institute for Research and Poverty at the University of Wisconsin, was quoted in the New York Times article: “We’re risking a new underclass. Young, less-educated adults, mainly men, can’t support their children and form stable families because they are jobless.”

Arloc Sherman, from the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, reminded readers that the level of poverty was higher and median income was lower in 2007 than 2001.

The Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights has pointed out in an interesting essay entitled “Race, Class and Economic Justice” that the Johnson programs, the “Great Society,” and its “War on Poverty,” were grounded in the civil rights struggle for jobs and justice. When LBJ’s program got mired in the escalating war in Vietnam, Dr. Martin Luther King launched the “Poor People’s Campaign.”

Reverend Jackson reminded students and citizens of Athens County on September 13, 2011 that LBJ’s program was a comprehensive one linking government and community groups. Among its major achievements the following needed to be celebrated he suggested:

-The Food Stamp Act (1964) provided low income families with access to adequate food.
-The Economic Opportunity Act (1964) created the Job Corps, VISTA, and other community-based programs.
-The Tax Reduction Act (1964) cut income tax rates for low-income families.
-The Civil Rights Act (1964) outlawed discrimination in housing, employment, and public accommodations.
-The Wilderness Preservation Act (1964) protected over 9 million acres of national forests from developers.
-The Elementary and Secondary School Act (1965) provided federal aid to schools with low-income students, including the establishment of the Head Start program.
-Amendments to the Social Security Act (1965) established Medicare for retirees and Medicaid for low-income health care recipients.
-The Voting Rights Act (1965) ended racial discrimination in voting.
-The Water Quality Act (1965) required states to clean up polluted rivers and lakes.
-The Omnibus Housing Act (1965) provided for low income housing.
-The Clean Air Act (1965) amended legislation to add requirements for auto emissions standards.
-The Higher Education Act (1965) created scholarships for college students.
-The School Lunch and Child Nutrition Act (1968) was expanded to provide food to low-income children in schools and day care facilities.

Between 1964 and 1968 the United States Congress passed 226 of 252 bills into law. Federal funds transferred to the poor increased from $9.9 billion in 1960 to $30 billion in 1968. One million workers received job training from these programs and two million children experienced pre-school Head Start programs by 1968.

Progressives should revisit this history and tell the story of the successes and failures of the 1960s vision and programs and work for the fulfillment of the dream articulated by Dr. King and LBJ. Both visions presupposed the connection between government, communities, and activists. And, it should be made clear that the Great Society floundered, not because of errors in the vision or programs, or because of “government bureaucrats,” or because the “free market” could serve human needs better, but because of a disastrous imperial war that sapped the support for vibrant and needed domestic programs. Slogans about Money for Jobs and Justice, Not for War, constitute the lessons for today.