THE THREE IDEOLOGIES IN AMERICAN POLITICAL LIFE

 Harry R. Targ

The idea of an “ideology” is a complicated one. For some, ideologies are mere rationalizations of interests and preferences. For others, ideologies are bundles of false, maybe dumb ideas. They can come from religion, popular culture, political parties, or simple principles that are used to explain the universe. 

Perhaps the most useful concept of “ideology” is one that refers to a body of interconnected ideas or a system of thought about how the world works. These ideas often explain the meaning of life, how and why society is organized the way it is, and also how it ought to be organized. However, ideas do not come from the ether. They come from class position and concrete interests, background, social status, and education by family, schools, peer groups, and popular culture. 

What is important about ideologies goes beyond which ones are more accurate than others but how ideological clashes might help explain political conflict. As the long and painful presidential election season unfolds, it is useful to analyze the three competing ideologies that dominate current debate. Each has its adherents. Each represents interests. Each explains how the world works in a different way. And each has a different vision of a better future.

The dominant ideology in the United States today, indeed much of the industrial capitalist world, is “neoliberalism.” Neoliberalism has a long history with roots in the founding of classical capitalist economic theory. “Neo” refers to the contemporary manifestation of the classic tradition. Neoliberalism assumes that humankind is comprised of value-maximizing individuals existing in a competitive, sometimes alien social world. Society is a constellation of competing economic actors, in our own day mostly huge corporations and banks. The ideology claims that corporations and banks engage in economic activity in a marketplace. Through competition some grow and contribute to society and others are unable to compete. It is through market competition of economic actors that individuals sustain themselves and improve their material conditions.

According to neoliberalism, the fundamental institutions and processes in society are markets that promote competition. Political institutions are constructed to protect and enhance market competition. Political institutions must be limited in power, neoliberalism suggests, such that they do not interfere with the workings of the market. Since the 1970s, proponents of neoliberal ideology have advocated downsizing government (except the military), privatizing public institutions, deregulating how markets work, and liberating the citizenry from controls, constraints, and safety nets. Neoliberal policies are usually called austerity policies.

In the end, society is comprised of atomized individuals and corporate economic actors who pursue their own gain and out of this pursuit, the collective good will emerge. Neoliberal ideology is shared by mainstream Democrats and Republicans, professional economists, most of the media, educational institutions, and popular culture.

A new ideology that has emerged from  recent electoral debates might be called the “virtues of wealth” ideology. This perspective suggests that individuals exist in competitive societies and markets reign supreme. And while this is an historical inevitability and as a practical matter a pretty good way to organize society, sometimes the accumulation of wealth fosters greed, avarice, and stupidity. The political system falls prey to the influence of those with large wealth who seek to buy elections, bribe politicians, and in other ways influence the political process by misusing their resources. The ideology about the virtues of wealth suggests that the corruption of accumulated wealth sometimes leads to the rise of incompetence in public policy. Unless there are appropriately wise guardians, accumulated wealth can lead to bad government. During times of extreme misuse of power, new guardians of the public must emerge to correct the errors of government and the economy. 

The best candidates to reconstruct the state come from those who are independently wealthy and who do not have to rely on a donor class to win elections. They are the disinterested wealthy. And in fact, they have the freedom by virtue of their wealth to challenge economic and political elites who rule because they secured financial support from others and gained wealth from participating in government. The virtues of wealth ideology allow its believers to challenge the economic ruling class and political elites in such a way as to appeal to the majority who have no wealth or power and who clearly recognize that they are being lied to by the ruling elite. Finally, deeply embedded in this ideology also is a sense of how wealth proves talent and virtue. Conversely those without wealth and privilege lack virtue. In this way, the virtue of wealth ideology is profoundly racist.   During recenr presidential races Donald Trump has emerged as the preeminent expression and promoter of the ideology of the virtuous wealthy.

A third ideology, twenty-first century socialism, emphasizes that the interconnection of global problems--from environmental devastation to class exploitation and growing economic inequality, to racism, sexism, and homophobia, to authoritarianism, and internal and international violence--are intimately connected to the development of the capitalist system. Twenty-first century socialism sees the concentration and centralization of economic power as the driving force in creating a world order dominated by finance capital, a few hundred multinational corporations, and imperial states. 

The ideology of twenty-first century socialism, while recognizing the historic rise to power of global capitalism also recognizes that capitalism generates growing resistance and creates demands for change. The magnitude of resistance varies from epoch to epoch, but the totality of what is called history is comprised of the drive to hegemony contradicted by resistance to it. Those who resist engage in education, organization, and agitation to create human unity. 

According to this third ideology, societies are constituted by communities and the presupposition that being human means being part of communities of activity. The belief in community is fundamentally opposed to the neoliberal conceptualization that the basic units of societies, atomized individuals, can only survive by acting independently of others. The vision of twenty-first century socialism is based on the proposition that work should be organized cooperatively and the wealth produced by society should be shared equitably by everyone who helps produce it. Class exploitation, racism, sexism, and homophobia are antithetical to the core of this ideology.

The twenty-first century socialist ideology assumes that building human solidarity, working together to create grassroots forms of production and distribution, and struggling for the political empowerment of the people offer the possibility for further human development. Paradoxically more people in the United States and around the world share the ideology of twenty-first century socialism than the other two but currently appear to be the weakest politically of the three ideologies. How to realize the vision embedded in this ideology is the human project of our time.

A Progressive Project for 2025: REVISITING THE PORT HURON STATEMENT: THE INSPIRATION FOR A GENERATION

Harry Targ

PB

Works

The ideas of community, empowerment, and social justice were articulated for the Sixties in the Port Huron Statement, written by founders of the Students for a Democratic Society, particularly Tom Hayden. While written by and for a relatively privileged sector of disenchanted youth in a period of booming economic growth and military expansion, the document spoke to the passion for justice, participation, and community, and an “…unrealized potential for self-cultivation, self-direction, self-understanding, and creativity.”

It called for the creation of “human interdependence,” replacing “…power rooted in possession, privilege, or circumstance…” by “power and uniqueness rooted in love, reflectiveness, reason and creativity.”

By the late Sixties many were identifying a new society based on the Port Huron vision built on core principles. These included:

local control and participatory democracy;

racial justice;

gender equality;

equitable distribution of resources and the collective product of human labor;

commitments to the satisfaction of minimal basic needs for all of humankind;

the development of an ethic that connects survival to human existence, not to specific jobs;

human control over technology; and

a new “land ethic” that conceives of humankind as part of nature, not in conflict with it.

The vision led to the exploration of the impediments to the construction of a society based on human scale that would celebrate both individual creativity and community. Growing familiarization with the critique of capitalism suggested that the capitalist mode of production, dominant over two-thirds of the world, was based upon the exploitation, oppression, dehumanization, and repression of the vast majority of humankind.

Incorporating an understanding of the workings of capitalism reinforced the vision that philosopher Martin Buber called the decentralized social principle embedded in Port Huron’s eloquent call for “community.” Building a new society entailed class struggle which would manifest itself in factories and fields, in rich and poor countries, and in political venues from the ballot box to the streets.

Bringing about positive change was a much more complicated affair than activists originally thought, but the sustained and sometimes brutal opposition to visions, like that reflected in The Port Huron Statement, validated the general correctness of them.

Today, new generations of activists, along with older ones, are reflecting and participating in diverse social movements in our cities and towns. They have hit the streets demanding a ceasefire in the Middle East and a humane future for the Palestinian people. And now masses of activists reject the military/industrial complex, racism, sexism, homophobia, Islamophobia, antisemitism, and the brutalization of the environment.

The efforts of Venezuelans, Bolivians, Colombians, and the Cubans who inspired us so much over the years are applauded. Now that energy is coming from all over the Global South. Important debates about social market economies, workers’ management of large enterprises, this or that candidate or political party particularly as modest forms of democracy are under threat, are occurring on the Internet and in the streets.

Although the times are so different from the 1960s, perhaps the vision of community that animated thinking then (which we in turn learned from those who preceded us) may still be relevant for today.

Tom Hayden and his comrades proclaimed that we must remain committed to the sanctity of human life, to equality, to popular control of all our institutions, to a reverence for the environment, and to the idea that the best of society comes from communal efforts to make living better for all. The Port Huron vision survives.

 

 

Special Issue of North Meridian Review on Politics and Culture

 https://drive.google.com/file/d/1DLXibvF97JFto2pty3FAUWClZHOlj_7k/view?pli=1

FOREIGN POLICY: STILL THE ELEPHANT IN THE ROOM

Harry Targ originally posted on Tuesday, October 1, 2019

As we enter the national election season we are gripped with a very complicated constellation of forces. The Republican Party, once a “respectable” advocate for “limited government,” benefits for the wealthy, and in general a celebrant of the “magic of the marketplace,” has been transformed into a party of racism, xenophobia, and a critic of whatever democracy exists in the US. They are opposed to women, people of color, and many endorse the establishment of the United States as a “Christian nation.”

While large percentages of the US population, including radicals and progressives, oppose the Republican agenda, the alternatives offered by much of the Democratic Party, while woefully inadequate, sometimes have begun to address the needs of the majority of people. In addition to criticisms that can be raised about domestic policies advocated by many Democratic spokespersons, “the elephant in the room,” that is foreign policy, remains the Achilles heel of Democratic Party platforms. Since this essay was written and rewritten, the US has escalated support for the war in Ukraine, dramatically increased its commitments to Israel, maintained military bases in over 170 countries, expanded NATO-type connections in Africa, and maintained sanctions in over 30 countries. It continues to engage in efforts to crush the Cuban and Bolivarian Revolutions and is launching a “New Cold War” against China.

Given this reality, thousands of protestors came to Milwaukee to protest the Republican convention, and similar numbers are expected to protest at the Democratic Convention in Chicago.

What the essay below argued in 2016 and 2020 is still relevant today; that is there is an inextricable connection between domestic and foreign policy. A deep dive into the history of the Cold War from 1945 on, the changing US economy, and the perpetual wars that have occurred from then to now make it clear that the tasks of progressives remain combatting rightwing dictatorship at home AND imperialism overseas. And foreign policy remains “the elephant in the room.”

An Empire in Decline

United States global hegemony is coming to an end. The United States was the country that collaborated with the Soviet Union to defeat fascism in Europe and with Great Britain to crush Japanese militarism in Asia in 1945. The Soviet Union, the first Socialist state, suffered 27 million dead in the war to defeat the Nazis. Great Britain, the last great imperial power, was near the end of its global reach because of war and the rise of anti-colonial movements in Asia and Africa.

As the beneficiary of war-driven industrial growth and the development of a military-industrial complex unparalleled in world history, the United States was in a position in 1945 to construct a post-war international political and economic order based on huge banks and corporations. The United States created the international financial and trading system, imposed the dollar as the global currency, built military alliances to challenge the Socialist Bloc, and used its massive military might and capacity for economic penetration to infiltrate, subvert, and dominate most of the economic and political regimes across the globe.

The United States always faced resistance and was by virtue of its economic system and ideology drawn into perpetual wars, leading to trillions of dollars in military spending, the loss of hundreds of thousands of American lives, and the deaths of literally millions of people, mostly people of color, to maintain its empire.

As was the case of prior empires, the United States empire is coming to an end. A multipolar world is reemerging with challenges to traditional hegemony coming from China, India, Russia, and the larger less developed countries such as Brazil, Argentina, South Africa, South Korea, and Thailand. By the 1970s, traditional allies in Europe and Japan had become economic competitors of the United States.

The United States throughout this period of change has remained the overwhelming military power, however, spending more on defense than the next seven countries combined. It remains the world’s economic giant even though growth in domestic product between 1980 and 2000 has been a third of its GDP growth from 1960 to 1980. Confronted with economic stagnation and declining profit rates the United States economy began in the 1970s to transition from a vibrant industrial base to financial speculation and the globalization of production.

The latest phase of capitalism, the era of neoliberal globalization, has required massive shifts of surplus value from workers to bankers and the top 200 hundred corporations which by the 1980s controlled about one-third of all production. The instruments of consciousness, a handful of media conglomerates, have consolidated their control of most of what people read, see, hear, and learn about the world.

A policy centerpiece of the new era, roughly spanning the rise to power of Ronald Reagan to today, including the eight years of the Obama Administration, has been a massive shift of wealth from the many to the few. A series of graphs published by the Economic Policy Institute in December, 2016 showed that productivity, profits, and economic concentration had risen while real wages declined, inequality increased, gaps between the earnings of people of color and women and white men grew, and persistent poverty remained for twenty percent of the population. The austerity policies, the centerpiece of neoliberalism, spread across the globe. That is what globalization has been about.

Paralleling the shifts toward a transnational capitalist system and the concentration of wealth and power on a global level, the decline of U.S power, relative to other nation-states in the twenty-first century, has increased.  The wars in Afghanistan, Iraq, and the spreading violence throughout the Middle East have overwhelmed US efforts to control events. Russia, Iran, China, and even weaker nations in the United Nations Security Council have begun to challenge its power and authority. Mass movements increasingly mobilize against vial regimes supported by the United States virtually everywhere (including within the U.S. as well).

However, most U.S. politicians still articulate the mantra of “the United States as the indispensable nation.” The articulation of the myth of American Exceptionalism represents an effort to maintain a global hegemony that no longer exists and a rationale to justify the massive military-industrial complex which fuels much of the United States economy.

Imperial Decline and Domestic Politics

The narrative above is of necessity brief and oversimplified but provides a back drop for reflecting on the substantial shifts in American politics. The argument here is that foreign policy and international political economy are “the elephants in the room” as we reflect on the outcomes of recent elections and their ongoing consequences. It does not replace other explanations or “causes” of United States politics today but supplements them.

First, the pursuit of austerity policies, particularly in other countries (the cornerstone of neoliberal globalization) has been a central feature of international economics since the late 1970s. From the establishment of the debt system in the Global South, to “shock therapy” in countries as varied as Bolivia and the former Socialist Bloc, to European bank demands on Greece, Spain, Portugal, and Ireland, to Reaganomics and the promotion of Clinton’s “market democracies,” the wealth of the world has been shifting from the poor and working classes to the rich.

Second, to promote neoliberal globalization, the United States has constructed by far the world’s largest war machine. With growing opposition to U.S. militarism around the world, policy has shifted in recent years from “boots on the ground,” (although there still are many), to special ops, private contractors, drones, cyberwar, spying, and “quiet coups,” such as in Brazil and Venezuela, to achieve neoliberal advances.

One group of foreign policy insiders, the humanitarian interventionists, has lobbied for varied forms of intervention to promote “human rights, democratization, and markets.” 2016 presidential candidate Hillary Clinton and a host of “deep state” insiders advocated for support of the military coup in Honduras, a NATO coalition effort to topple the regime in Libya, the expansion of troops in Afghanistan, even stronger support of Israel, funding and training antigovernmental rebels in Syria, and the overthrow of the elected government of Ukraine. Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton was a major advocate for humanitarian interventionist policies in the Obama administration, as was Vice President Joe Biden. These policies continued since 2020. In addition, this perspective has been broadly accepted by Democrats and Republicans alike.

Humanitarian interventionists have joined forces with “neoconservatives” in the new century to advocate policies that, they believe, would reverse the declining relative power of the United States. This coalition of foreign policy influentials has promoted a New Cold War against Russia and an Asian pivot to challenge the emerging multipolar world, largely a result of the rising economic and diplomatic influence of China. The growing turmoil in the Middle East and the new rising powers in Eurasia also provide rationale for qualitative increases in military spending, enormous increases in research and development of new military technologies, and the reintroduction of ideologies that were current during the last century about mortal enemies and the inevitability of war.

The “elephant in the room” that pertained to the 2016 election and still does in 2024 is growing opposition to an activist United States economic/political/military role in the world. Many center/left Americans, to the extent that they were motivated by international issues, saw the Clinton foreign policy record in 2016 and the incumbent administration today as emblematic of the long history of United States imperialism.  Further, given the fact that U.S. interventionism and support for neoliberalism have generated growing global opposition, many voters fear a Democratic Party victory presidency in November, 2024 would extend foreign policies that have already created chaos and anger, particularly in the Middle East and the Persian Gulf.

Finally, to the extent that economics affect electoral outcomes, the neoliberal global agenda that has been enshrined in United States international economic policy since the 1970s, has had much to do with rising austerity, growing disparities of wealth and power, wage and income stagnation, and declining social safety nets at home as well. And more and more Americans see the connections between burgeoning military expenditures and inadequate resources for healthcare, protecting the environment, ending homelessness, and generally providing for the economic needs of the population (rather than the major military contractors).

In sum, foreign policy continues to be an “elephant in the room” as millions of Americans struggle with the   devastatingly inhumane policies at home and abroad.

JUDGING THE JULY 28, 2024 ELECTION IN VENEZUELA FROM A PEACE MOVEMENT PERSPECTIVE

Harry Targ

“And so, on election day, just after polls closed and before any official results had been released, Machado and Washington, as if in concert, began to bleat about fraud, building on a line of attack that they had been establishing for months. Machado’s followers immediately took to the streets and attacked symbols of Chavismo…” (*from V J Prashad).

https://thetricontinental.org/newsletterissue/venezuela-elections-2024/

PRESS RELEASE: National Lawyers Guild electoral observers praise fairness, transparency of Venezuelan election process; condemn the U.S. backed opposition’s refusal to accept the outcome of democratic election

https://nlginternational.org/2024/07/press-release-national-lawyers-guild-electoral-observers-praise-fairness-transparency-of-venezuelan-election-process-condemn-the-u-s-backed-oppositions-refusal-to-accept-the-outcome-of-de/

“The US secretary of state has said there was "overwhelming evidence" Venezuela's opposition won the recent presidential election.”

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cd1d10453zno

Since the Venezuelan elections many pundits and politicians have spoken about the outcome of the Venezuelan elections. The US statement by Secretary of State Blinken sounds like the scripts that he and others have trotted out before. These scripts have paralleled embarrassing US efforts to identify and support candidates running against the Venezuelan revolutionary governments,  unsuccessful economic embargoes designed to starve the workers and peasants into surrender, and US policies designed to serve the rich minorities of Latin Americans, at home or in Florida.

In V J Prashad’s essay he suggests that supporters of the founders of the Bolivarian Revolution, particularly deceased Hugo Chavez and later Nicholas Maduro, built masses of organized support through workplace communes, community political organizations, and programs designed to reduce poverty. And it is these people who have rallied in defense of the Maduro victory in the recent elections. Prashad wrote:  “During the massive marches to defend the government in the week following the elections, people openly described the two choices that faced them: to try and advance the Bolivarian process through Maduro’s government or to return to February 1989 when Carlos Andrés Pérez imposed the IMF-crafted economic agenda known as the paquetazo (packet) on the country.”

And as Prashad suggests, the rallies protesting the election outcome are largely representatives of the wealthy classes, inspired and supported by the United States.

In sum, before we pass judgement on the Venezuelan elections, we need to remind ourselves that United States policy ever since the Monroe Doctrine of 200 years ago has been committed to crushing popular movements in the Western Hemisphere and returning wealth to the minority of the rich.

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

Originally posted on Thursday, January 24, 2019

US IMPERIALISM IN LATIN AMERICA CONTINUES: Now it is Venezuela

 Harry Targ

The world again enters an economic, political, and military crisis in the Western Hemisphere. It remains important to historicize and contextualize this week’s call by the United States and 10 hemisphere countries for President Nicholas Maduro to step down as President of Venezuela. The sub-text of statements from the United States, the Organization of American States, and numerous right-leaning governments in Latin America is “or else” or “all options are on the table;” meaning that there might be a military intervention to overthrow the government of Venezuela. For many who are learning about US imperialism for the first time, it is important to revisit the history of the Western Hemisphere and to contextualize a regional crisis which is misrepresented throughout the mainstream media.

A Brief History

As Greg Grandin argues in “Empire’s Workshop,” the rise of the United States as a global empire begins in the Western Hemisphere. For example, the Spanish/Cuban/American war provided the occasion for the United States to develop a two-ocean navy, fulfilling Assistant Secretary of the Navy Theodore Roosevelt’s dreams. After interfering in the Cuban Revolution in 1898 defeating Spain, the United States attacked the Spanish outpost in the Philippines, thus becoming a global power. Latin American interventionism throughout the Western Hemisphere, sending troops into Central American and Caribbean countries thirty times between the 1890s and 1933, “tested” what would become after World War II a pattern of covert interventions and wars in Asia, Africa, and the Middle East.

The Western Hemisphere was colonized by Spain, Portugal, Great Britain, and France from the fifteenth to the twentieth centuries. The main source of accumulated wealth that funded the rise of capitalism as a world system came from raw material and slave labor in the Western Hemisphere: gold, silver, sugar, coffee, tea, cocoa, and later oil. What Marx called the stage of “primitive accumulation,” was a period in world history governed by land grabs, mass slaughter of indigenous peoples, expropriation of natural resources, and the capture, transport, and enslavement of millions of African people. Conquest, land occupation, and dispossession was coupled with the institutionalization of a Church that would convince the survivors of this stage of capitalism’s development that all was “God’s plan.”

Imperial expansion generated resistance throughout this history.  In the nineteenth century countries and peoples achieved their formal independence from colonial rule. Simon Bolivar, the nineteenth century leader of resistance, spoke for national sovereignty in Latin America.

But from 1898 until the present, the Western Hemisphere has been shaped by US efforts to replace the traditional colonial powers with neo-colonial regimes. Economic institutions, class systems, militaries, and religious institutions were influenced by United States domination of the region. (Already in the 1840s, a large part of Mexico had been appropriated by the United States).

In the period of the Cold War, 1945-1991, the United States played the leading role in overthrowing the reformist government of Jacob Arbenz in Guatemala (1954), Salvador Allende in Chile (1973), and gave support to brutal military dictatorships in the 1970s in Brazil, Argentina, Chile, and Uruguay. Also the United States supported dictatorship in Haiti from 1957 until 1986. The Reagan administration engaged in a decade-long war on Central America in the 1980s.  In 1989 the United States sent 23,000 marines to overthrow the government of Manuel Noriega in Panama. (This was a prelude to Gulf War I against Iraq).

From 1959 until today the United States has sought through attempted military intervention, economic blockade, cultural intrusion, and international pressures to undermine, weaken, and destroy the Cuban Revolution.

Often during this dark history US policymakers have sought to mask interventionism in the warm glow of economic development. President Kennedy called for an economic development program in Latin America, called the Alliance for Progress and Operation Bootstrap for Puerto Rico. Even the harsh “shock therapy” of neoliberalism imposed on Bolivia in the 1980s was based upon the promise of rapid economic development in that country.

The Bolivarian Revolution

The 21st century has witnessed a variety of forms of resistance to the drive for global hegemony and the perpetuation of neoliberal globalization. First, the two largest economies in the world, China and India, have experienced economic growth rates well in excess of the industrial capitalist countries. China has developed a global export and investment program in Latin America and Africa that exceeds that of the United States and Europe.

On the Latin American continent, under the leadership and inspiration of former President Hugo Chavez Venezuela launched the latest round of state resistance to the colossus of the north, with his Bolivarian Revolution. He planted the seeds of socialism at home and encouraged Latin Americans to participate in the construction of financial institutions and economic assistance programs to challenge the traditional hegemony of the International Monetary Fund, the World Bank, and the World Trade Organization.

The Bolivarian Revolution stimulated political change based on varying degrees of grassroots democratization, the construction of workers’ cooperatives, and a shift from neoliberal economic policies to economic populism. A Bolivarian Revolution was being constructed with a growing web of participants: Bolivia, Ecuador, Brazil, Argentina, Uruguay, Nicaragua, El Salvador, and, of course, Cuba.

It was hoped that after the premature death of Chavez in 2013, the Bolivarian Revolution would continue in Venezuela and throughout the region. But the economic ties and political solidarity of progressive regimes, hemisphere regional institutions, and grassroots movements have been challenged by declining oil prices and economic errors by Maduro; increasing covert intervention in Venezuelan affairs by the United States; a US-encouraged shift to the right in the prior decade by “soft coups” in Brazil, Argentina, Chile, and Ecuador; and a more aggressive United States foreign policy toward Latin America. Governments supportive of Latin American solidarity with Venezuela were undermined and/or defeated in past elections in Honduras, Paraguay, Brazil, Argentina, and now attacks have escalated against what former Trump National Security Advisor John Bolton called “the troika of tyranny;” Venezuela, Nicaragua, and Cuba.  As Vijay Prashad puts it: “Far right leaders in the hemisphere (Bolsonaro, Márquez, and Trump) salivate at the prospect of regime change in each of these countries. They want to eviscerate the “pink tide” from the region” (Vijay Prashad, thetricontinental.org, January 20, 2019).

Special Dilemmas Latin Americans Face

Historically all Western Hemisphere countries have been shaped and distorted in their economies, polities, and cultures by colonialism and neo-colonialism. They have also been shaped by their long histories of resistance to outside forces seeking to develop imperial hegemony. Latin American history is both a history of oppression, exploitation, and violence, and confrontation with mass movements of various kinds. The Bolivarian Revolution of the twenty-first century is the most recent exemplar of grassroots resistance against neo-colonial domination. Armed with this historical understanding several historical realities bear on the current threats to the Venezuelan government.

First, every country, with the exception of Cuba, experiences deep class divisions. Workers, peasants, the new precariat, people of color, youth, and women face off against very wealthy financiers, entrepreneurs, and industrialists, often with family ties, as well as corporate ties, with the United States. Whether one is trying to understand the soft coup of recent years in Brazil, the instability in Nicaragua, or the deep divisions in Venezuela, class struggle is a central feature of whatever conflicts are occurring.

Second, United States policy in the administrations of both political parties is fundamentally driven by opposition to the full independence of Latin America. US policy throughout the new century has been inalterably opposed to the Bolivarian Revolution. Consequently, a centerpiece of United States policy is to support by whatever means the wealthy classes in each country.

Third, as a byproduct of the colonial and neo-colonial stages in the region, local ruling classes and their North American allies have supported the creation of sizable militaries. Consequently, in political and economic life, the military remains a key actor in each country in the region. Most often, the military serves the interests of the wealthy class (or is part of it), and works overtly or covertly to resist democracy, majority rule, and the grassroots. Consequently, each progressive government in the region has had to figure out how to relate to the military. In the case of Chile, President Allende assumed the military would stay neutral in growing political disputes among competing class forces. But the Nixon Administration was able to identify and work with generals who ultimately carried out a military coup against the popular elected socialist government of Chile. So far in the Venezuelan case, the military seems to be siding with the government. Chavez himself was a military officer.

Fourth, given the rise of grassroots movements, the Bolivarian Revolution in Venezuela began to support “dual power,” particularly at the local level. Along with political institutions that traditionally were controlled by the rich and powerful, new local institutions of popular power were created. The establishment of popular power has been a key feature of many governments ever since the Cuban Revolution. Popular power, to varying degrees, is replicated in economic institutions, in culture, and in community life such that in Venezuela and elsewhere workers and peasants see their own empowerment as tied to the survival of revolutionary governments. In short, defense of the Maduro government, depends on the continuing support of the grassroots and the military.

Fifth, the governments of the Bolivarian Revolution face many obstacles. Small but powerful capitalist classes is one. Persistent United States covert operations and military bases throughout the region is another. And, perhaps most importantly, given the hundreds of years of colonial and neo-colonial rule, Latin American economies remain distorted by over-reliance on small numbers of raw materials and, as a result of pressure from international financial institutions, on export of selected products such as agricultural crops. In other words, historically Latin American economies have been distorted by the pressure on them to create one-crop economies to serve the interests of powerful capitalist countries, not diversified economies to serve the people.

Finally, and more speculatively, United States policy toward the region from time to time is affected by the exigencies of domestic politics. For example, during the Trump Administration verbal threats against Venezuela were articulated as the president’s domestic fortunes were challenged by the threat of impeachment and confrontations with the new Congressional leadership. War often masks domestic troubles. In the Biden years, foreign policy spokespersons warn of the spread of Chinese influence in the Western Hemisphere. US policies toward Lating American become features of the New Cold War with China.

Where do Progressives Stand

First, and foremost, progressives should prioritize an understanding of imperialism, colonialism, neocolonialism, and the role of Latin American as the “laboratory” for testing United States interventionist foreign policies. This means that critics of US imperialism can be most effective by avoiding “purity tests” when contemplating political activism around US foreign policy. One cannot forget the connections between current patterns of policy toward Venezuela, with the rhetoric, the threats, the claims, and US policies toward Guatemala, Cuba, Brazil, Argentina, Chile, Nicaragua, El Salvador, Panama, and in the new century, Bolivia, Venezuela, Paraguay, Brazil, and Argentina.

Second, progressives need to show solidarity with grassroots movements in the region, support human rights, oppose military interventions, and demand the closure of the myriad of United States military bases in the region and end training military personnel from the region. (When citizens raise concerns about other countries interfering in the US political system, it is hypocritical for the United States to interfere in the political and economic lives of other countries in Latin America.)

And finally, as tensions rise again in the hemisphere there are two growing dangers of violence spreading throughout Latin America. By attacking “the troika of tyranny,” the United States is increasing the likelihood of class war throughout the region. And, given growing Chinese and Russian economic and political involvement in the Western Hemisphere, it is not inconceivable for regional war to escalate to global war.

The time has come to stand up against United States imperialism in the Western Hemisphere.

(A useful history of United States interventionism can be found in Stephen Kinzer, Overthrow: America’s Century of Regime Change from Hawaii to Iraq, Henry Holt, 2006).

 

STILL: THE MEANINGS OF FERGUSON AND MILWAUKEE IN 2024

(Portions of this essay, “The Meanings of Ferguson,” appeared on August 20, 2014 in Diary of a Heartland Radical).

Harry Targ

 

Collection of the Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture, Gift of T. Rasul Murray

In addressing violence, researchers, educators, journalists and religious leaders have usually concentrated on its most visible forms: murder and war. The central features of such violence include physical assault and killing. In our own day terrorism has joined war as the most popular common subject for study.

Over the years, peace educators have developed intellectual tools to uncover more diverse meanings of violence, their differences and their connections. Structural violence has been distinguished from direct violence. Researchers continue to analyze direct violence, physical assault and killing, but also study structural violence, the various forms of human suffering that take more time; impose pain, sickness, depression, and death on populations; and are perpetuated by leading institutions and relationships in society. Structural violence includes economic inequality, low wages and poverty, inadequate access to health care and education, and the psychological damage that economic suffering causes. These injustices, the concept of structural violence suggests, are embedded in economic, social, and political institutions.

It is possible to disaggregate further the structural violence that is embedded in institutions. Institutional violence refers to unequal distribution of power and influence in major societal institutions: political, criminal justice, and educational, for example.

Finally, cultural violence refers to the images, symbols, and educational materials that value some population groups over others. Culture refers to the public consciousness of history, traditions, and popular narratives that describe people. Stereotypes are short-hand representations of a culture.

In total then violence is direct, structural, institutional, and cultural. These kinds of violence may occur separately but in most cases are inextricably connected. It is this fourfold conception of violence that is relevant to the crisis that unfolded in Ferguson, Missouri.

Ferguson, Missouri 2014      

The tragedy of Ferguson, Missouri came to national attention because of direct violence. A Ferguson policeman shot and killed an unarmed young African American male. In response to the collective expression of community outrage that followed, the local police initiated a multi-day barrage of tear gas, strong-arm arrests, and threatening street protestors with military vehicles and loaded rifles. The images on television screens nationwide were of a people under assault, parallel to Israeli bombings in Gaza and United States targeted air strikes in Iraq. The fear that young African American males in Ferguson have historically felt every time they stepped into the streets of their city escalated since the killing of Michael Brown.

Beyond the threat of direct violence in Ferguson is structural violence, less visible but as important. Brookings Institute researcher Elizabeth Kneebone (“Ferguson, Mo. Emblematic of Growing Suburban Poverty,” brookings.edu, August 15, 2014) reported that the community of Ferguson experienced a qualitative economic decline over the decade before the shooting. The city’s unemployment rate increased from 5 percent in 2000 to 13 percent by 2010. Earnings of community members declined by one-third. One-fourth of the population was living in poverty. 

Kneebone indicated that poverty rates have doubled in suburban neighborhoods surrounding the 100 largest cities in the United States. “By 2008-2012, 38 percent of poor residents lived in the neighborhoods with poverty rates of 20 percent or higher. For poor black residents in those communities, the figure was 53 percent.” Of course, poverty is highly related to declining schools, inadequate access to health care, lessened prospects for jobs, and large-scale youth unemployment.

Institutional violence is reflected in a 300-year history of slavery and racism. Professor Clarissa Hayward, Washington University, said: “The St. Louis metropolitan area has been an extreme example of racial segregation for 100 years.” She pointed out that St. Louis geographically was at the nexus of the South, the Midwest, and the West and added: “The practices and politics of St. Louis created the problems that underlie the tension that boiled out in Ferguson this week.” (Puneet Kollipara, “Wonkbook: The Social and Economic Story Behind the Unrest in Ferguson,” Wonkblog, The Washington Post, August 18, 2014). 

In terms of the Ferguson political system, two-thirds of the community is Black and the local government has been almost all white. At the time of the shooting of Michael Brown, five of six city council members were white, the Mayor was white, and six of seven school board members were white. And fifty of 53 police officers were white.

Finally, cultural violence addresses the issue of ideology, consciousness, images of the other, and additional ways in which whites see African-Americans. Racist culture socializes the dominant class and race to reflect its superiority. For example, Missouri Lt. Governor Peter Kinder said shortly after the shooting: “That’s one of the great advances of Anglo-American civilization, that we do not have politicized trials. We let the justice system work it out.” The mayor of Ferguson declared that his community was free of racism.

Since the killing of Michael Brown in Ferguson, police and politicians organized a campaign to demonize the victim of the police killing. The tall young man, an African-American, was a robber, a drug consumer, and violence-prone. Also, the days of protest in Ferguson were framed to privilege the peaceful, religious, mourning adults and to explain night-time violence not as police violence but violence perpetrated by outside agitators from New York, Chicago, and California. The fact that young African Americans left their houses at their own risk could not, the frame implies, engender outrage.

Milwaukee, Wisconsin 2016

And in August, 2016 Milwaukee, by many measures the most segregated and racist big city in the United States, experienced the police shooting of Sylville K. Smith followed by two days of frustrated rebellion by some residents of the Sherman Park neighborhood. State violence, poverty, and racial segregation have created a tinderbox of frustration and anger in that city. According to a 2015 NPR report, the state of Wisconsin invests more in prisons than education, incarcerating a higher percentage of Black men than anywhere in the country. “…in Milwaukee County more than half of all Black men in their 30s and 40s have served time.” In one zip code alone 62 percent of Black men have been incarcerated for some time by the age of 34. The prison population of the state has tripled since 1990.

NPR also quoted a study finding that Milwaukee has the second highest black poverty rate in the country with an unemployment rate four times higher than whites (Kenay Downs, “Why is Milwaukee So Bad for Black People?” NPR, March 5, 2015). A Madison, Wisconsin group, the Young, Gifted, and Black Coalition, after defining the idea of a “neighborhood,” found that 31 of Wisconsin’s 56 Black neighborhoods are jails and an additional 21 neighborhoods are apartment complexes or section 8 housing or both. Prisons and poverty dominate the life of Black communities (YGB, “31 of Wisconsin’s 56 Black Neighborhoods are Jails,” ).

Summing up the situation in Milwaukee, Alderman Khalif Rainey said: “The Black people of Milwaukee are tired. They’re tired of living under this oppression. This is their life.” (Tanzina Vega, “Milwaukee’s Staggering Black-White Economic Divide,” CNN Money, August 17, 2016, money cnn.com).

So from police violence--killing, gassing, beating--to economic despair, to lack of political representation to cultural rationales for state violence, the basic characteristics of American society are uncovered. And once again, the victimization of people of color, as well as workers, and women, suggest the following conclusions:

--the root cause of exploitation, racism, and sexism is structural violence (capitalism).

 --physical violence is used to crush rebellion against class exploitation and racism.

 --unrepresentative political institutions are dominated by the wealthy and powerful.

 --dominant cultural stereotypes and specific narratives about society reinforce the economic system, the political system, and justify the police violence in the St. Louis area, Milwaukee and all around the United States.

Black Lives Matter

But between Ferguson and Milwaukee a new social movement emerged, Black Lives Matter, led by young women and men represented over 60 organizations around the country. They issued a powerful programmatic statement “A Vision for Black Lives: Policy Demands for Black Power, Freedom, and Justice, The Movement for Black Lives." It presented six demands, each with detailed recommendations:

 -End the War on Black People

 -Reparations

 -Divest-Invest

 -Economic Justice

 -Community Control

 -Political Power

These demands represent African Americans, Women, Workers, and all oppressed peoples. They address direct violence—Stop the Killing—and structural violence—Redistribute Wealth and Income, Political Power, and Opportunity for Human Development for All. The struggles continue.