Posts by KofasJon:
- The APPLE issue reveals very clearly that the more technology dependent a society becomes, the more it slips down the road of a police state at home because it is pursuing militarism abroad. This does not mean that technology in and of itself is a bad thing – no Luddite thesis here – but that the use of technology by corporations and the state makes it easier to have a police state. Civil liberties are eroding very rapidly in the US and one reason the country ranks at about the same level as Turkey when it comes to social justice is because its practices are about as democratic. The “security hoax” which the government has been pursuing at home and abroad has actually helped to strengthen not just the military industrial complex but tech companies that receive multi-billion contracts from government agencies. The state-corporate nexus has been responsible for the evolution toward a police state that has become more necessary than ever as society is becoming increasingly polarized socioeconomically. Security is the last resort of the state to defend welfare capitalism that accounts for the downward social mobility in America and the increasing alienation of citizens who believe their government serves the top ten percent of the wealthiest people –
- 63% of Americans say money and wealth distribution is unfair
- These attitudes are substantially unchanged over past 30 years
- Slight majority of 52% favor heavy taxes on rich as fix http://www.gallup.com/poll/182987/americans-continue-say-wealth-distribution-unfair.aspx
- Is the Middle East more stable because of US-NATO interference and aggressive intervention in the late 20th and early 21st century?
- Are the people of the Middle East enjoying greater freedom and democracy and the benefits of the market-based economy as the US stated goal promises?
- With the exception of a handful of corporations, has US-NATO intervention helped to stimulate economic growth and development in the West?
- Has Iran, Russia and China, all rivals of the US and NATO, weakened or strengthened as a result of US-led interference and intervention?
- Has the US-led interference and intervention in the Arab Spring revolts engendered greater democracy or simply resulted in recycled dictatorships of various types, massive refugee problem, and economic hardships for the people involved?
- The lies on which the US invaded the country, namely, that it a) had weapons of mass destruction, and b) that there was a link to al-Qaeda, when it was well known that the al-Qaeda organization was made up primarily of Saudis with which the Bush family as well as a number of well-connected Republicans had multi-billion dollar interests. The real reasons were the oil reserves, the US obsession to counterbalance Iran, and strengthen the defense industry in which Republicans and Democrats had personal financial interests. It is interesting to note, that the US defense and intelligent budgets skyrocketed as a result of this war combined with Afghanistan, while the US economy continued losing ground to China.
- War and occupation that destroyed the country. During the occupation, US forces committed war crimes, but the International Court has not dared to charge any US official. Just as the US destroyed Vietnam where it committed war crimes, and just as Vietnam has taken many decades to rebuild and it is still in the process of doing so, similarly it will take many decades to rebuild Iraq that the US left in ruins. Yet, there is no talk about helping Iraq revive, only about dividing it and exploiting its oil reserves.
- 3. US tax payers paid for a war in order to advance the profits of Republican party-linked corporations in which Bush, Cheney, Baker, Rumsfeld and others were connected, corporations such as the Carlyle Group and Halliburton that defrauded the US government of millions of dollars in contract work in Iraq. This is the same Halliburton against which Nigeria filed corruption charges against Cheney as CEO, and the same company that was partly responsible for the Deep Horizon oil disaster in autumn 2010.
- 4. Iraq was not among the top 20 most corrupt countries in the world before the US invasion, but it advanced to the number #2 spot during the occupation! The US reduced the country into a concentration camp where corruption was the way of doing business. Focused only on oil and counterbalancing Iran, the US was unable to do anything with Iraq other than leave a devastated country that its people must rebuild.
- 5. The issue of federalism and/or breaking up Iraq was one that concerned American politicians, think tanks, journalists, and academics after the US invaded. The question is why? While the Kurdish population has historically wanted autonomy, the US has never been interested in this minority group, otherwise it would demand that Turkey also submit to some type of federalist system. The goal is to keep Iraq weak and dependent on the US so that it can exploit its oil and counterbalance Iran, while also determining the regional balance of power. Iraq and Afghanistan represent the twilight of Pax Americana, the last vestiges of an imperial democracy operating on a foreign policy based on a predominantly Protestant missionary pretext about the White Anglo-Saxon Christians ‘saving’ the weaker dark-skinned non-Christian brethren whose land just happens to have natural resources that the West needs, and it just happens to be located in a place of strategic interest.
An American-made crisis: Europe’s Muslim concentration camp in Greece
February 28th, 2016
By Jon Kofas.
The entire world is well aware of the humanitarian crisis arising from Muslim refugees fleeing war-torn countries that include Syria, Iraq, Libya, Pakistan and Afghanistan. The countries are all Muslim and the common trait they share is that the US and its European and Middle East allies engaged in military solutions to political crises that have not spilled over into a massive trans-continental refugee crisis. The refugee tragedy is a massive humanitarian one according to the United Nations, and it is becoming worse because the principal country, namely the US, causing the refugee crisis is absolving itself of any responsibility from this crisis and only focuses on where to create the next military intervention. This does not mean that Russia backing the Assad regime is free of culpability. However, the Russians are trying to weaken the jihadist elements in Syria that are forcing the mass displacement of people. http://www.thenation.com/article/europes-refugee-crisis-was-made-in-america/
In the official White House web site, the US states that 12 million people or half of Syria’s population has been displaced since 2011 and it is entirely the fault of the Assad regime.https://www.whitehouse.gov/blog/2015/09/15/what-you-need-know-about-syrian-refugee-crisis-and-what-us-doing-help\ The US position is that along with the Syrian government, Russia, Iran and to a lesser extent China are really responsible because they would not permit the US and its regional allies – Turkey, Saudi Arabia and the Gulf states – to remove Assad from power and place a regime of their liking. In other words do exactly what they did in Libya where things have worked so remarkably well since the US and its allies along with al-Qaeda removed Muammar Gaddafi from power.
Although by no mean the sole culprit, the US was the driving force behind military interventions that destabilized every one of these countries and caused the dislocation of four million refugees from Syria lone and millions more from the other Muslim war-torn nations that the US and its allies decided to destabilize for geopolitical and economic advantages in the last fifteen years. Although the West presents itself as humanitarian, developing countries host more than 80% of the world’s refugees. According to the United Nations, the world refugee population hit 60 million in 2014 and it surpassed that figure in 2015, largely because of conflicts invariably created not owing to local opposing groups – government vs. rebels – but foreign interventions of one type or the other. http://www.unric.org/en/world-refugee-day/26978-new-report-developing-countries-host-80-of-refugees- \http://www.unhcr.org/558193896.html
Those who read about the refugee crisis from a distance may see Greece as Europe’s warehouse. However, a closer examination of the refugees in Greece reveals that this tiny Balkan country could evolve into Europe’s concentration camp in many respects minus the “final solution”. This is not only because of the dreadful conditions that prevail for refugees everything from lack of food and medicine, but because the number one reason for the humanitarian crisis and the reaction of the entire Western World is racism. Non-white Muslims trying to enter the predominantly white European continent is an anathema to Europeans whether they are neo-Nazis, conservative or even liberal in many cases who do not want their way of life, social structure and culture contaminated with Muslim influences. Of course the European businesses love the cheap labor migrants provide, but they detest the people that provide cheap labor. http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-02-25/greece-warns-of-humanitarian-disaster-from-isolation-on-refugees
European racism and religious prejudice toward Muslims has deep roots that date back to the crusades. The Muslim refugee crisis has intensified such latent prejudices and it has made the Muslims the scapegoats for all calamities that have fallen on Europe amid contracting economies and slow job and income growth. People would much prefer to blame the Muslims running from their war-torn countries that the West ravaged than their governments and corporations responsible for the crisis in the first place. The US war on terror resurrected racism and xenophobia to new heights and the Muslims are now the new Jews of the Western World. (J.L. Thomas, Scapegoating Islam;http://socialistworker.org/2016/02/08/europes-rising-tide-of-refugee)
On 25 February 2016, the EU interior ministers meeting in Brussels centered on Austria’s proposal to lock out all refugees from entering Europe by essentially keeping them in Greece. This would mean that Greece, which has lost an estimate 30% of its GDP because of IMF-EU imposed austerity since 2010, would be saddled with the Muslim refugee crisis that many around the world predict would explode into a massive humanitarian crisis very shortly. Considering that one-third of Greece’s population is in effect below poverty and official unemployment is 25% with unofficial rate at closer to 35%, the country would revert to its 1950s status as one of the world’s poorest nations, if the refugee crisis is added as a permanent feature to the rest of the economic problems it is facing.
Greece simply lacks the physical facilities to accommodate refugees that need housing, hospitals and clinics, food and clothing until a permanent solution is found at the EU and/or United Nations level that seems to be doing very little to solve this crisis. Imagine one nurse per 25-30 patients in a hospital that frequently runs out of bed sheets and all kinds of basic medication. Imagine a country that can hardly feed its own people having to feed an additional one to two million refugees in the next few years.
The EU expects Greece, a country that is in complete shambles because of austerity, to stem the refugee flow to Europe. Dimitris Avramopoulos, Greek conservative politician and EU commissioner for migration warned earlier this month that the humanitarian crisis in very real amid a deadlock among the EU members on the issue and the US wiping its hands clean and arguing it is a European problem. The irony here is that the entire world knows the culprit is the US that caused the crisis by going to war in Iraq and Afghanistan and destabilizing the rest of the Middle East by backing various jihadist rebels from Libya to Syria that eventually turned against the West. http://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/feb/10/eu-gives-greece-one-month-to-improve-conditions-for-refugees
Even a number of Republicans have argued that the Obama and Bush administrations caused the crisis in Muslim countries that gave rise to the refugee problem. However, no Republican or Democrat is willing to provide the appropriate humanitarian assistance or accept refugees that the US created. No Republican or Democrat is willing to open the borders for Muslim refugees. On the contrary, there are those like Donald Trump who want to keep all Muslims out and screen them on a case by case basis because the assumption is they are terrorists, even if they are children. Of the 50 states I the US, 31 have declared they will not accept Syrian refugees. If the US refuses to accept its responsibility for the crisis it has created with its allies, and the Europeans are very divided on this issue with Germany playing the role of moderate, this leaves the problem for Greece. http://time.com/4126371/these-5-facts-explain-americas-shameful-reaction-to-syrian-refugees/
Since January 2015 Greece has been under the SYRIZA Party that calls itself leftist but whose policies are a mirror image of the neoliberal ones that the previous conservative government followed. Under the SYRIZA regime, the country deteriorated faster because the IMF and EU demanded even greater cuts in pensions and wages, even greater cuts in social programs, including health and education, and higher indirect taxes that fall on the masses. On top of impoverishing Greece by imposing austerity, the EU plan according to SYRIZA leader and Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras is to reduce the country into a refugee warehouse. On 24 February 2016, the prime minister stated: ” We will not accept the transformation of our country to a permanent warehouse for human beings, while at the same time we continue to operate in Europe and at summit meetings as if nothing is happening. We will not put up with a series of countries that not only erect fences on their borders but at the same time do not accept to put up a single refugee.” http://www.keeptalkinggreece.com/
Greece is a country that is in shambles politically, economically and socially, and Tsipras is partly to blame because he won election on the promise to end austerity and he has continued it to the detriment of the popular base that elected him. The austerity measures that the Greek government has accepted and the capital flight by the country’s few thousand wealthy people has resulted in the complete de-capitalization and utter dependence on the EU. Instead of leaving the EU and making a fresh start under a national currency, Greece opted to remain under the German-imposed patron-client model of integration. This integration model relegates them to a status not very different from that of the rest of northern Balkan countries. On top of the financial and economic crisis that essentially dismantled society as the Greeks knew it before austerity, the EU imposes a refugee problem on a country that is essentially not much better off than its northern Balkan neighbors.
As I stated above, most refugees in the world are in fact in developing countries. There are more than four million Syrians who are now refugees in Lebanon, Jordan, Turkey, and even Iraq a country from which people are leaving for the West. Although the EU struck a deal with Turkey not to allow refugees across the Aegean Sea into Greece, the Turkish government accepted the promise of $3.3 billion payment from Europe in exchange for cracking down on the refugee trafficking business that is very lucrative for human smugglers.
Turkey has allowed about one million refugees through the Aegean Sea and by land into Greece. It is estimated that more than 3000 have drowned and many thousands died along the way trying to reach Western Europe. For its part, Turkey argues that it cannot perform miracles and stop refugees from crossing over to Greece. There are stories of tragic proportion with children having lost track of their parents and continuing to walk across Greece trying to reach northwest Europe only to be stopped somewhere along the way in Eastern Europe because Hungary is adamant about taking any refugees in the country. http://www.aljazeera.com/news/2016/02/turkey-refugee-crisis-time-europe-action-160210115931274.html
Much of eastern and northwest Europe as well as the UK refuse to accept the slightly more generous German proposal for shared responsibility. If nothing else, the refugee crisis has fractured the otherwise weak EU solidarity threatened by the UK as well as Poland, Hungary, Czech Republic and of course the perennial Greek crisis. German Vice Chancellor Sigmar Gabriel has stated that his country could accept up to 500,000 refugees per year for several years, but he demands the rest of EU share the responsibility. Recognizing that Greece will simply become Europe’s concentration camp for Muslim refugees, the German government is asking for cooperation partly because the crisis has intensified nationalism at all levels and some countries are openly questioning the benefits of staying in the European Union. http://www.ecfr.eu/refugee_crisis
The tragedy of the US-made refugee crisis in the Middle East that has spilled over into Europe is that a) it will probably take a long time to be resolved and b) the US will continue creating such crises in the near future regardless of whether a Democrat or Republican is elected president in 2016. The EU has shown that at its core racism, xenophobia and anti-Muslim prejudice runs very deep and it is unlikely to change. Muslims are as much the new Jewish scapegoats of Europe as they are for the US. Although anti-Semitism is not exactly erased in the Western World, the new focus of white Christian prejudice is on Muslims whose lands the West has been ravaging since the era of European colonialism in the 19th century. No European leader could win political office advocating a more tolerant policy toward Muslims any more than an American politician can win office without advocating a tough position on the war on terror, a euphemism for the continued military-solution option to US-instigated political crises in the Middle East.
The US will probably start another military intervention and most certainly continue to destabilize the Middle East under its next president, whether Republican or Democrat. This will lead to a more intensified crisis that will mean more refugees and an even greater humanitarian crisis than we are seeing in 2016. The defense industry in the US is very powerful and the political and ideological orientation toward militarism is deeply ingrained in the culture of PAX AMERICANA. War, intervention and destabilizing governments are all part of a way of life for the imperial America that continues to see itself as the world’s policeman and the world’s preeminent superpower despite its rapidly eroding economic role against the reality of China’s global economic hegemony.
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Apple, surveillance technology and the police state
February 22nd, 2016
By Jon Kofas.
In the battle between a giant multinational corporation known for its record of tax evasion around the world as well as its hypocrisy of manufacturing in Asia not because of low wages but “talent availability”, APPLE is not yielding to the FBI/Justice Department request for hacking into the cell phones because the big winner will be SAMSUNG and the other ten largest cell phone companies in the world. APPLE has argued that the US government wants to unlock the cell phone that the shooters in the San Bernardino killings used. However, the goal of the US government under Obama claiming to be the protector of civil liberties is to gain access to all cell phones and carry out surveillance for all users at will. This is not only a constitutional issue that essentially touches on the Fourth Amendment – right to privacy – but it also opens a Pandora’s box because other governments would demand same access as the US has. When it became known that the NSA was spying at home and abroad using the giant tech companies of Silicon Valley, the position of Obama administration officials was that foreigners were not protected under the Fourth Amendment, while US citizens needed to understand that national security is above their Constitutional rights.
On 16 February 2016, the US government convinced a California federal judge to have Apple reveal encryption security features in its cell phones. APPLE has been fighting back both with public opinion campaigns as well as using its lobbying efforts in Congress as a counterweight to the Justice Department. Because it is well known that APPLE along with GOOGLE and all major tech companies had secret agreements with the US government to conduct illegal surveillance at home and globally, it seems somewhat puzzling at this juncture why APPLE is fighting the Justice Department. Is APPLE so interested in protecting citizens for idealistic reasons, for the sake of furthering democracy, or is it simply a case of protecting its global market-share?
Thus far, no government in the world has made the kind of demands of APPLE that the US has made. However, the US of course invokes American Exceptionalism against the background of the “war on terror”, just as it invoked anti-Communism during the Cold War when civil liberties were readily trampled. However, that they are asking APPLE to provide code access to cell phones clearly indicates that the Department of Homeland Security, Justice Department and the FBI have not been doing their jobs as effectively as they claim. Moreover, the question is where does surveillance stop? If there is no privacy of any kind, as we have discovered after the Edward Snowden revelations regarding National Security Agency violations of the Fourth Amendment, then why not suspend the Constitution altogether and declare a State of Emergency? Why go through the motions and the thin faced of a democratic society at all?
For APPLE the argument is hardly the constitutional rights of citizens but global market share. I repeat that if APPLE yields on this issue, the other twelve major cell phone makers in the world will prevail in the global market, most notably SAMSUNG. It is a myth that APPLE or any cell phone maker is concerned about privacy when these dozen large phone companies around the world have been violating the privacy of consumers for many years by illegally collecting and commercializing information of their users without their knowledge. APPLE along with SAMSUNG is among the biggest violators when it comes to privacy, so it stretches one’s imagination to come up with reasons why it is fighting the FBI/Justice Department now. If there was a financial incentive for APPLE to give the FBI what it wanted, it would have done as secretly as it collects information and never discloses it to its users. However, there is no incentive, but there is massive potential harm from the competition.
The America people know very well that their government violates the constitution in the name of national security and it does so randomly and not just in extreme cases such as that involving the unique incident of the San Bernardino case. The surveillance state would not have been possible in the absence of the tech companies cooperating with government. This is not an issue of whether is the US is moving closer to a police state. By its own criteria as defined in the Constitution the US has been practicing police state methods that go back to the early Cold War when Communism was used as the justification. Today, it is terrorism, which ironically the US helps to strengthen by its own policies in Islamic countries, including Syria where ISIL has been operating with the considerable support of US allies in the last five years. After all, there was no ISIS before the US and its EU and regional Middle East allies decided to overthrow Assad in Syria. Even when the Russians were bombing ISIS targets, the US and its allies were critical, giving the impression to ISIS that the priority was removing Assad not ISIS.
(For more on how technology promotes police state methods see: http://thedailycoin.org/?p=63700;https://www.corbettreport.com/police-state-gadgets-and-the-technology-of-enslavement/;http://www.pbs.org/wnet/need-to-know/the-daily-need/are-we-becoming-a-police-state-five-things-that-have-civil-liberties-advocates-nervous/12563/)
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The futility of reformism in Spain and Greece
January 11th, 2016
By Jon Kofas.
Abstract
The thesis of this brief article is that reformism does not work and only leads to even greater sociopolitical conformity. This is as much the case today in Greece that has tried it, as in Spain endeavoring to try it under its new progressive PODEMOS party, as it has been throughout history. One reason that EU and US investors are bullish on Spanish securities, despite a temporary setback the day after the elections is because they know that the anti-austerity PODEMOS party will conform exactly as SYRIZA in Greece and neoliberal policies will prevail no matter who is in government.
Spain’s PODEMOS and Greece’s SYRIZA: Doomed Reformism
The general elections of Spain on 20 December 2015 sent mild shock waves across Spain’s markets, especially the banks that have benefited from government bailouts at the enormous expense of the general taxpayer. However, the rest of the European markets actually rose on the news, precisely because politicians and investors know it is highly unlikely that the anti-austerity party PODEMOS coming in with roughly 22% of the vote, third behind the Socialists and the ruling Conservative party, will not amount to any systemic change. The markets, politicians, and the world learned this lesson after the Greek anti-austerity party SYRIZA became even more pro-austerity than its conservative Socialist predecessor despite winning on an anti-austerity platform in January 2015. In short, the progressive reformist agenda of Greece’s SYRIZA which was very similar to PODEMOS quickly transformed into a neo-liberal pro-IMF monetarist one once in government.
Does PODEMOS have a different agenda than SYRIZA under Alexis Tsipras, and thus a different fate awaits it because its secretary-general Pablo Iglesias will stick to campaign promises of reform? Although the mainstream media focuses on the cult of personality in our age of celebrity politicians and businessmen, the reality is that even after Tsipras embraced austerity and neoliberal policies, Iglesias continued to support him. This is indicative that PODEMOS is more or less a party of petty bourgeois reformism that will quickly fold within the neoliberal mainstream, although it arose from the need to fill a political gap that the Socialists left when they embraced austerity and neo-liberalism.
The Socialist parties of Spain, Greece, Portugal and France that prevailed in the Reagan-Thatcher decade of the 1980s converted to neoliberal parties and were hardly different than their conservative counterparts in policy, despite the leftist rhetoric. Both Iglesias and Tsipras had roots in leftist (Euro-Communist – anti-Stalinist) politics in their youth, but both moved toward a more reformist social-democratic orientation that built careers against neoliberal policies and austerity. Just as in the 1980s when neoliberal policies prevailed against European Socialist parties advocating social-democracy, and just as the populist nationalist parties of Venezuela, Argentina, Peru, Ecuador, and Bolivia have caved under the pressures of globalization promoting neoliberalism, the fate awaiting Spain’s PODEMOS will be no different. The sooner their voters absolve themselves of such illusions and seek a genuine alternative to neoliberalism and austerity the better chance they will have to escape the fate of their counterparts in other countries that tried the road of bourgeois reformism.
The pro-neoliberal media in Spain and Greece and across the world have been labeling PODEMOS and SYRIZA as “far left”, “radical left”, “ultra-left wing” and anti-capitalist, which aspires to create a regime similar to that of the later Hugo Chavez in Venezuela. Although it is true that the rhetoric of both PODEMOS and SYRIZA, parties that have declared solidarity, share some ideological elements of Socialism, they are also committed to “enlightened capitalism”, Keynesian economics, and a return to the old EU integration model based on interdependence rather than German political and economic hegemony. If we set aside the ideological rhetoric intended to win the disgruntled voters, which is not so different than EU Socialist parties fully committed to austerity and neoliberalism, and if we focus on the reformist contradiction of promising to change the neoliberal model into a rational enlightened capitalist one that would have a broad middle class as its social base, the question is whether finance capital would voluntarily yield its privileges for the sake of social harmony under a democratic system.
PODEMOS arose from the ashes of the politically bankrupt and corrupt Socialist Party that had embraced neoliberal policies and austerity as have the Socialist parties of France, Greece and Portugal. Its appeal is the disgruntled middle class of Spain that sees its future in doubt and fears that the EU’s fourth largest economy is not so different than Greece. After all, Greece and Spain have the highest unemployment in the EU above 20 percent, they both have contracting economies, they both have rising debt-to-GDP levels despite five years of austerity, and they both have dim prospects for recovery that would improve living standards for the working class and middle class.
Above all, a segment of the population in Spain that backs PODEMOS knows that the EU of today is not the EU of pre-2008 that rested on an integration model of interdependence, with EU funds subsidizing the weaker economies to lift them closer to the levels of the northwest core in Europe. The PODEMOS voters know as do those in SYRIZA that the hard euro currency only helps to strengthen large capital in the EU and within it Germany that exerts financial control and through it determines fiscal policy, trade policy, labor policy and everything impacting society from health to education. In short, PODEMOS backers know very well as do their Greek counterparts that there is no such thing as national sovereignty, no such thing as popular mandate, no democracy because the new model of integration based on a patron (core sector)-client (periphery and semi-periphery) is now in effect and it is no different than the US model of regional integration that has kept US southern neighbors in a state of dependency since the Spanish-American War.
PEDEMOS appeals to young intellectuals for the most part who are still idealistic enough to believe in reformism, just as their Greek counterparts who are now thoroughly disillusioned that SYRIZA has turned out to be much worse than the Conservative and Socialist party in terms of caving to IMF-German austerity and neoliberal policy demands. The structure of the young-reformist appealing party will end up as SYRIZA in Greece because it has no commitment to grassroots organizing and to systemic change that will end the patron-client integration model and assert national sovereignty based on a social justice framework. If PODEMOS comes to power, its fate will be exactly as that of SYRIZA that served to co-opt the disgruntled anti-austerity, anti-neoliberal masses, de-radicalized them and served them on a silver platter to the neoliberal political and financial establishment of EU and international capitalism.
Like SYRIZA in Greece that has actually taken austerity and neoliberal policies even farther to the right than the previous right-wing government, PODEMOS will follow the same path, assuming it comes to power. As long as it is in the opposition, it will insist that it is against austerity and neoliberal policies, that it represents the middle class and workers, that it wants a new kind of integration model because it supports Spain’s place within the EU; in other words, arguments that the Greek SYRIZA voters heard many times until they faced the reality of a party that betrayed every single promise made and caved to domestic financial and global financial and political interests.
Not just the “austerity” countries of southern Europe but the entire continent is struggling for new leadership that breaks away from representing the finance capital. Some voters have drifted to the far right. However, as the election results demonstrated in France, the Marine Le Pen’s National Front came in third because the political pendulum has shifted so far to the right that the traditional conservatives have embraced a segment of the extreme right wing agenda. On the left, voters cannot go to the bankrupt Communist parties because the memory of a failed Soviet bloc remains too close and the majority of the people want to maintain the crumbs they have under the existing political economy rather than risk a new social order.
Despite its NAZI past revealing itself in financial, economic and political hegemony under a conservative-led coalition government, Germany has managed to dilute if not efface national sovereignty in the EU because capitalists of all countries see greater benefits accruing to them under the patron-client model than under national capitalism that Russia is pursuing. In short, the fear of isolation from the regional and global economy forces the established elites to embrace the devil they know. PODEMOS and SYRIZA come along to co-opt a segment of the population that wants reforms that include national capitalism and national sovereignty as part of the mix but not outside the framework of international capitalism. This blatant contradiction simply does not work because it is irreconcilable. The end result is that reformist parties like SYRIZA and PODEMOS opposed to neoliberal and austerity (monetarist) policies only wind up de-radicalizing the masses and marginalizing them by reinforcing the idea that the political, business and social representative of neoliberalism advocates, namely there is no choice other than what exists now because the quest for social justice is futile as it will lead to social, economic and political insecurity.
The result of SYRIZA’s betrayal of voters’ trust was that one-third of its elected parliamentary members left the party, arguing that Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras betrayed the goals of national sovereignty and national capitalism in exchange for political power and benefits that accrue to him and his political supporters under crony capitalism that has always worked to the detriment of the vast majority in Greece since the nation-state was founded in 1832. Assuming it comes to power, PODEMOS will face the same dilemma as SYRIZA and in the end it will follow a similar path because the neoliberal political, business and social establishment have the ability to crush any reformist opposition. Popular grassroots movement intent on systemic reform is the only fear of the neoliberal establishment, and this is not what PODEMOS and SYRIZA represent.
The fact that we have a capitalist international order in the last five centuries is indicative that reformism has never worked to bring about systemic change. Attempts at “reform from within the system” are actually a conservative concept first introduced by the conservative British MP Edmund Burke immediately after the French Revolution. In short, those backing the existing social order argue that if the social contract is not satisfactory to a segment of the population we can have a few changes but without altering the system in which the privileged elites retain their roles. Both SYRIZA and PODEMOS have accepted the conservative definition of reformism, deluding the voters that there is hope for change when in fact structural change does not come via reforms because it never has. Having the best of all possible worlds, capitalism that entails a hierarchical society where social justice is lacking, but at the same time achieving social democracy is a glaring contradiction.
In Greece there are just 12 families that own 80% of the wealth and enjoy dominant influence in the media and political arena, there is also the role of international capitalists whose interest public policy takes into account because of IMF-EU-imposed austerity policies since 2010. In the last five years, the wealthiest people in Greece have actually become wealthier because of austerity and neoliberal policies that transferred wealth from the public sector and lower income groups to the upper class and foreign financial interests. Is the situation so different in Spain than it is in Greece? Just ten billionaires own the vast majority of the wealth, headed by Amancio Ortega worth more than $80 billion, making him richer than Bill Gates.
The massive capital concentration in Spain as well as Greece is largely the result of fiscal policies that drain income from the bottom of the socioeconomic ladder and transfer it to the top and from the southern EU countries to Germany and the northwest. This is a prescription for: a) unsustainable GDP growth; b) chronic high unemployment; c) low living standards and downward socioeconomic mobility; d) high debt-to-GDP levels that rises as austerity and neoliberal policies continue; and e) the inevitability of political apathy, which is exactly what the political and financial elites want, and polarization in society. This means increasingly authoritarian policies disguised under neoliberalism as democratic because people have the right to vote. SYRIZA has proved that reformism is an illusion that causes more damage to the struggle for social justice than the traditional European conservatives and Socialists embracing austerity and neoliberal policies. If it ever comes to power, PODEMOS will prove the same thing.
Greece continues to have a rising debt-to-GDP ratio because its GDP has been shrinking owing to austerity policies that have slashed consumption by about 30%, or the equivalent of the drop in GDP. The patron-client model means that Greece will be reduced to a periphery dependent semi-colony with living standards roughly equal to its Balkan neighbors, exactly as Germany demanded. Because social security benefits have dropped dramatically and the new retirement age has been raised to 67, this means labor values have dropped as well along with all asset values. The reason that foreign investors are optimistic about Spain is precisely because they see asset values continuing to drop as they are in Greece, led by labor value declines.
The failure of reformism in Greece and Spain may not necessarily lead to a rise of a genuine grassroots anti-capitalist movement under a leftist political party. On the contrary, neo-Fascism lurking about throughout the Western World has been laying the groundwork as socioeconomic conditions deteriorate and more people lose confidence in the consensus around which the parliamentary system has been built. As the mainstream conservative parties incorporate aspects of neo-Fascism, using counter-terrorism as the pretext, people would not need to gravitate to the openly neo-Fascist and neo-Nazi parties, just as the case of France demonstrated in the recent elections. The crisis of parliamentary democracy is already apparent in a number of EU countries, merely by the fact that people lack trust in any of the existing political parties and in the constitutional system as representative of the broader masses. As capitalism continues to polarize social groups, and as reformism proves that it is not more than another broken promise to voters, a segment of the population will look to ultra-right wing populist leadership for solutions, and therein rests the danger of neo-Fascism in the 21st century.
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Exporting inequality: American wealth concentration
January 7th, 2016By Jon Kofas.
According to the latest statistics, including the CIA, the US suffers the worst level of inequality of any advanced nation and ranks among some of the most unequal societies on the planet, while its politicians, business leaders, media and pundits proudly promote it as “democratic” rather than a plutocratic which in reality reflects reality. If the CIA publicly states in its reports that the US is more unequal than Nicaragua and Venezuela, both countries that the US has covertly tried to undermine in the past because they were “less democratic”, what does this say about the US and its ‘democracy’?
Has the US in fact become a “banana Republic” as the statistics of the CIA and every other agency compiling such statistics? Given that this is the case, what political or moral authority does the US have to lecture other nations about democracy and equality? Is the US exporting democracy, freedom and equality as it claims when intervening in the Middle East, Ukraine and around the world militarily and economically, or is it actually exporting inequality to reflect what is happening at home?
It is no secret that the US has been heading toward wealth concentration since the end of WWII, a trend that rapidly accelerated after Reagan’s tax cuts to the wealthiest Americans in the 1980s, combined with massive government subsidies to corporations that account for the phenomenon of the corporate welfare state we have today. For example, in 1970 the worker to corporate CEO wage gap was $45 (for the CEO) to $1 for the worker. In 2014 the CEO-worker wage gap is $830 to $1, thanks to the fiscal policy that both Republicans and Democrats have been pursuing.
According to the latest statistics by the Institute for Policy Studies, a mere 20 individuals own $732 billion or more than 152 million people own combined. If we consider that the 400 wealthiest people control $2.34 trillion in an economy totaling $17 trillion, it hardly takes a genius to figure out that this kind of wealth concentration is the result of a fiscal policy that transfers wealth from the bottom income earners and shifts it to the top.
According to The Guardian: “The top 0.1% of families now own roughly the same share of wealth as the bottom 90%. The picture actually improved in the aftermath of the 1930s Great Depression, with wealth inequality falling through to the late 1970s. It then started to rise again, with the share of total household wealth owned by the top 0.1% rising to 22% in 2012 from 7% in the late 1970s.” (http://www.theguardian.com/business/2014/nov/13/us-wealth-inequality-top-01-worth-as-much-as-the-bottom-90)
The result has been an anemic economy and a social fabric breaking apart with very dim prospects for the future, considering that both Republican and Democrat politicians favor the top 1% of the richest Americans who are the ones able to buy influence through various means, including lobbying and direct campaign contributions. It is estimated that 62% of the American people have savings of under $1000, while 21% have zero in their savings. This at a time of a ticking time bomb with regard to college loans amounting to about $1.2 trillion, with the bottom one-third finding it difficult to ever repay them because the economy of wealth concentration is not producing new jobs and certainly not high paying ones to allow college graduates the opportunity to meet their obligations. Of the 62% Americans with under $1000 in savings, the reality is that they would be unable to meet any kind of emergency – medical, large home or car repair, etc. The interest fact here is that 62% with under $1000 in savings is the highest since the Great Depression, a number that rose sharply after the deep recession of 2008 when the percentage was 57.
In one survey after the other, the majority of Americans expect their children to be worse off than they were. One third of Generation X (35 to 55 years old) have zero savings, while about 28% of the baby boomers (55-65) and millennials (18-34) surveyed have zero savings. In short, the problem is not generational but class based. Apologists for the existing political economy based on corporate welfare where the state transfers income through various means but essentially the fiscal structure from the bottom income earners to the top, argue that this is needed to help investment and make the economy more competitive.
Considering that the US economy is an integral part of a world capitalist system, the US through various international institutions, especially the IMF, spreads its neoliberal policies on a world scale. Therefore, inequality has been rising not just in the US in the last four decades, but also in Europe, although the Scandinavian countries remain the most equal in the world. When US-based multinational corporations, such as Pfizer refuse to pay taxes at home and take their profits overseas using non-US based companies to shield profits from taxes, this impacts the host country’s fiscal structure overseas that must provide safe haven for Pfizer, thus burdening its genera taxpayer as much as the US does.
Has the US become more or less competitive as wealth concentration rose from the 1980s to the present? The reality is that we have witnessed rapid deindustrialization and along with that phenomenon there has been downward socioeconomic mobility owing to steady income drop in working class and middle class incomes. In other words, the exact opposite of what Nobel Prize winning economists, politicians and the media has argued is what is taking place. People know all of this not by looking at the real economy, but examining their own situation and the prospects for their children.
Apologists of the grossly unequal system, which compares with Third World countries instead of Western Europe, Canada and Australia, further argue that the whole thing is just cyclical and eventually there will be upward mobility. Again, when we look at statistics from 1970 to the present, the trend is very clear that this is systemic and has absolutely nothing to do with cycles. In short, the neoliberal policies of using the state as a vehicle to strengthen the private sector at the expense of the public sector, the working class and the middle class is one that has deep roots and it is here to stay because the top 10% of income earners, and especially the top 1% who actually decide the course of policies, are adamant about not changing course toward any policy mix that would redistribute wealth from the top down to stimulate economic expansion in an economy dependent on consumer spending at the rate of three-fourths of GDP.
The International Monetary Fund has now inducted China’s currency – yuan – into the basket of reserve currencies, putting pressure on the euro and the dollar, and reflecting the reality that China is indeed well on its way to forging ahead as the world’s number one economy – already there if we measure it in terms of PPP index. Both Republican and Democrat parties have every intention of strengthening the already super-wealthy one percent of Americans to the detriment of the 99%, thus sinking the economy into more frequent and deeper recessions that would in turn create even greater wealth gaps than already exist.
Whether Hillary Clinton or any Republican candidate wins control of the White House in 2016, they will pursue the same fiscal policies that have brought America to the present situation where 20 individuals own more wealth than 50% of the population. They will continue with corporate welfare that redistributes wealth from the workers and the middle class and they will most certainly continue to pour money into the parasitic defense sector, hoping that the US can retain its global competitive edge when in fact all empire of the past 2000 years have declined and fallen because of excessive defense spending and reckless militarist adventures. While people may feel good that NATO is string and keep adding new members that surround Russia, this only adds to socioeconomic inequality at home because more money is devoted to the parasitic defense sector and does absolutely nothing about creating new and high paying jobs to allow young college graduates to repay their student loans.
Contrary to what the media and pundits argue that the destiny of the country rests on the people, the reality is that the media and the entire institutional structure determine what people think about public policy, everything from corporate welfare to black youth unemployment and the war on terror that has been used to engender sociopolitical conformity and distract from socioeconomic inequality comparable to Third World country. The political reaction to take the country even more toward a rightwing orientation with underlying racist and overtly xenophobic messages finds an audience among a segment of the population that wants someone to blame, other than the Democratic and Republican party conducting policy to strengthen even more the very rich and weaken even more the workers and the middle class.
This is a prescription for sociopolitical polarization. Already using the war on terror to forge a police state, the future of America with banana Republic socioeconomic inequality as the CIA describes it entails erosion of democracy and even more authoritarian policies while continuing to hold on to claims of defending democracy that no longer has any meaning in the lives of the bottom 90% of the population. Exporting inequality is inherent in any imperialist system and not unique to the US in the contemporary period. What makes it unique is the public campaign of the US that its mandate from God is to spread democracy, equality and freedom when in fact its only goal is to export inequality that mirrors the domestic socioeconomic structure.
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Paris bombing and ‘western terrorism’ policy
November 16th, 2015By Jon Kofas.
The bombing that took place in Paris with many casualties was a human tragedy and a political disaster for Western anti-terrorism policy. A day before ISIS suicide bombers in Paris, the bombing in Beirut, Lebanon demonstrated the ease with which jihadists fighting against the Assad regime are able to operate. In both cases the jihadist group ISIS operating in Syria and Iraq claimed responsibility and celebrated its success in retaliation for those trying to strike at ISIS targets. It is also likely that an ISIS affiliate in Egypt bombed a Russian passenger plane killing 224 people on 31 October 2015.
Three bombings within a remarkably short span of time demonstrate the reach of an organization that was once backed by US allies in the Middle East, and possibly by the US indirectly in the war that the US started to bring down the Assad regime, all in the name of freedom and democracy, just as the US has been delivering freedom and democracy in Libya. The quest to destabilize and ultimately overthrow Assad has failed in the last couple of years and made matters worse for everyone, above all the people of Syria. The US and its European and regional allies have managed to create a new force that has some appeal at least with the radicalized Sunni Muslims not just in Syria and Iraq but across the Middle East and beyond. Now that US secretary of State John Kerry has been in talks with Russia about how to stabilize Syria, perhaps agree on limited spheres of influence as imperialists, so that the greater threat of ISIS is contained.
Based on the results alone, one could conclude that the US policy of destabilization that helped to create the conditions for ISIS to operate is a miserable failure with horrible consequences. Of course, if one advocates a policy of redrawing the map of Syria and Iraq, as many Westerners and Zionists do, then the policy has been a resounding success. After all, both countries are already badly divided along sectarian and ethnic lines, and what could be a better way of limiting the influence of Iran in Iran and Syria and Russia in Syria other than redrawing the map just as Western imperialists almost did a century ago?
One would think that the lessons learned from the US policy of supporting jihadists in the 1980s in Afghanistan against the pro-USSR regime had become a lesson for policy change that would actually yield the desired results. On the contrary, as a status quo power immersed in Cold War ideology, the US does not change policy just because it backfires with dire consequences for itself and its allies. The military solution option is the only one on the table for the US for a combination of reasons. This means that cycle of jihadist attacks will continue as will the response with conventional militarist solutions that would in fact produce more unconventional warfare. Looking beyond the military solution to the root causes – social, economic and politic injustice – is out of the question during the era when neoliberal thinking prevails across the Western World.
1. The obsession of projecting strength through raw military power in the world as a way of retaining Pax American alive.
No matter the failures of the military solution, and unintended benefits to US rivals Russia, China and Iran that do not want the US to have exclusive role in determining the balance of power in the Middle East, policymakers in Washington, backed by the corporate world and media do not deviate from the failed military solution option until there is no choice as was the case with Iran and the nuclear deal. The empirical evidence suggests that while military solutions as a means of maintaining Pax Americana began to show weaknesses as far back as the 1960s during the Vietnam War. Yet, the US will not abandon a policy that has failed to deliver. Pax American was dead and buried during Vietnam, and President Johnson implied as much when he announced on TV that he would not seek reelection, knowing the failure of Vietnam was a resounding failure for Pax American he was supposed to guard and expand. However, the lessons of Vietnam included everything but political solutions to crises. Instead, a commitment to go deeper into debt as a nation – currently $17 trillion or about equal to GDP – so that Pax Americana’s glory could live on if not in the real world, at least in the minds of delusional politicians while defense contractors made huge profits.
2. Ideological commitment to militarism and imperialism, despite the evolution of new multi-polar world in which China plays a determining role.
The diehard ideologues to right-wing solutions have been around from the early days of the Truman administration advocating unilateral action in a world where the US defined its national security interests not just within its sovereign territory, not just in the Western Hemisphere as part of the long-standing Pan-Americanism perspective that dates back to the Monroe Doctrine, but across the world as the reckless and dysfunctional world’s policeman. Unable to exist as a society that is content with playing a role commensurate to its actual economic, political and economic power in the world, the ideologues advocating unilateralism, militarism and imperialism (intervention via over military action or covert operations) have proved detrimental to the security of the nation and to the destabilization of all places where there is intervention.
The US invaded and occupied Iraq under Saddam Hussein on a series of blatant lies, created chaos and divisions with an otherwise unified country, and above all it is responsible for millions of refugees that are a huge problem for neighboring nations. Similarly, the US goal to bring down Syria’s Assad and make that country a US satellite instead of one where Russia and Iran enjoy influence has entailed the creation of millions of refugees for which the right-wing American ideologues want harsh punishment instead of amnesty by EU nations. Blinded by the notion of an invincible America pursuing its destiny to exert preeminent influence if not dominate the world, these ideologues making money as consultants, politicians, media analysts and above all defense contractors thrive on destabilization and what they call crisis management; ironically for crises they create but then propose to “manage”.
3. Tangible interests of profits by defense contractors who hire former politicians and high level defense and intelligence officers to work and lobby for them.
President Eisenhower’s warning to the American people about the military industrial complex that was actually forged during the Wilson administration to manage World War I may have come too late. To this day, no one takes seriously the Eisenhower warning, partly because he was then advised by the IMF that the dollar as a reserve currency was becoming weak and would ultimately become even weaker owing to balance of payments deficits. Although the US could hardly afford both guns and butter, Johnson pursued such a reckless policy by escalating the Vietnam War to the delight of defense companies.
Because there is instability, jihadist terrorism, regional conflicts, and neglect of diplomacy as the first rather than the last option to resolve conflict, the profits of defense contractors rise as their stock market price indicates, and indeed the profits of every company from food and soft drink suppliers to defense to makers of drones. One cannot possibly ignore the power of the defense contractors and all industries feeding off the defense and intelligence budgets that simply drive up the public debt and weaken the civilian economy.
These people thrive on events that drive governments raise defense spending just at the time they should be cutting it and considering political solutions that may actually work against the reality of unending military solution failures that only generate more “unconventional warfare” or terrorism. As cynical as it may sound, all those making a living from the defense and intelligence domain delight in events such as that of Paris on 13 November 2015. These people know that peace and stability means cuts in their business, so they have no interest in political solutions to conflict.
4. The media is always there to pump up militarism as the sole solution.
The Western media had no problem with ISIS striking down the Russian plane and Beirut where Hezbollah was the target. In fact, the western media was criticizing Russian president Putin for striking at ISIS targets, prompting the US to indirectly assist ISIS by sending air cover to protect certain pro-West assets in Syria along the Turkish border. The media, reflecting US official position, sent the message to the world that the problem at hand was really Putin and Assad, rather than the barbaric ISIS that Russian planes were targeting; that is until the Paris bombing that had some arguing drive the idea into peoples’ heads that it is possible to wipe out unconventional type of war, or terrorism by simply striking hard at the enemy.
While the media does not create terrorism, it celebrates militarism by selecting news analysts and by reporting on stories of military solutions to conflict. It may be argued that the media must reflect the status quo and mirror what governments are pursuing. Editorial decisions are made on what stories to cover, how to cover them, and what spin to put on them, not just on FOX NEWS that has been called out by a number of organizations for extreme right wing coverage, but the New York Times that many regard as liberal newspaper, yet it hardly differs in goals from FOX.
5. Will Terrorism Subside or proliferate.
Contrary to what many politicians including the French President announced about closing the border and adopting other such “security measures” to preempt any strikes on French soil, and contrary to what British PM announced about striking down and ending jihadist activities, terrorism will continue and proliferate. This is because the underlying causes of terrorism are not addressed, and they include Western militarism and economic imperialism, complemented by racism and religious prejudice.
In 2015, we have much greater and wider forms of terrorism than we did when the US announced its war on terror after 9/11. The public relations exercises intended for mass consumption project the idea that government has the solution at hand and it is in position of protecting its citizens. However, jihadists already reside within the nations they wish to strike and history has demonstrated that unconventional war has never been won by conventional military means. One could argue that the Russian Tsars in the 19th century lacked the sophisticated science and technology available to the West in 2015.
Fair enough, but how do then explain the Paris bombings taking place when France is well known for its sophisticated intelligence and technology available? This does not mean that measures cannot be taken for greater security of citizens, but it does mean that there will never be a full proof method of combating unconventional warfare (terrorism) because of its nature unless the underlying causes are addressed. The political solution remains the only option to eradicate terrorism which is simply a publicity stunt that never brings about systemic change toward greater social justice because it lacks grassroots support and alienates people that would otherwise sympathize with the cause of social justice.
In the aftermath of the Paris bombings, the response I expect from the Western countries is one similar to the US in 9/11, although Russia will take advantage of the situation and once again propose a multilateral approach for a conventional strike against ISIS. One would think that if ISIS was able to bring down the Russia plane over Egypt, hit at the heart of Hezbollah in Beirut and hit Paris within a few days, there must be a wide network of support behind it with significant links.
There are still questions about which governments, corporations and varieties of businessmen still maintain indirect ties to this group that needs such cooperation to manage its considerable economic and strategic affairs. Similarly, there are questions about the US policy toward Syria that one the one hand, claims to be fighting to undermine ISIS, but on the other hand, it wants to bring Assad down and undermines Russia efforts to fight ISIS. Clearly, a coordinated policy between US-NATO with Russia, China and Iran could go a very long way to contain ISIS. However, this is not how US ideologues see the matter resolved; this is not what the defense contractors want, and this is not what the populist Republicans and rightwing media advocate. It makes sense that they keep citizens living in a state of perpetual fear as a means of imposing sociopolitical conformity amid a period when the socioeconomic gap has been widening on the US despite a modest economic recovery. Unless systemic problems of the Muslims – social justice issues – and the relationship of Muslim nations with the West are addressed, terrorism is a reality that will become more prominent in the next decade.
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Africa in the 21st Century: Legacy of Imperialism and Development Prospects
November 9th, 2015By Jon Kofas.
Abstract
This essay argues that Africa is undergoing changes in its economies in the 21st century, not only because of the role that China is playing but owing to intense competition from other Western countries and the Middle East. China’s role is within the capitalist world economy and within the patron-client model of integration that the Europeans followed after African countries achieved their formal independence from colonization. During the second half of the 20th century, northwest Europe remained the conduit for African integration into the US-centered global economy, despite the role of US-based multinational corporations. According to Pew Research Center polls of African nations, the issue concerning the vast majority of the people remains the gap between rich and poor. This is directly related to the international competition for market share in Africa as well as the security issue intertwined with local rebels groups and what the US labels Islamic-inspired “terrorism”, or another form of guerrilla warfare. This essay examines many of these issues for a deep understanding of Africa today and its future prospects.
Part I: Structural Obstacles to Development and Social Justice
Decades after the decolonization of Africa and after Frantz Fanon (Wretched of the Earth) depicted the social, economic, political and cultural problems associated with the legacy of colonialism there has been no structural change in the political economy of the 54 African nation-states any more than in ending endemic poverty as the UN and other organizations have been promising for decades or closing the rich-poor gap. It is misleading and a remnant of imperialist political labeling to lump all African countries under one category, just as it is misleading to place all of Latin American countries in a single category, although they do have common characteristic and a common legacy of colonialism and current reality of foreign control of resources and market share.
There is a huge difference between South Africa now part of the BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, and China) economy, and Somalia ranking as one of the world’s poorest nations with political instability and dim prospects for economic growth. It is just as difficult to make comparisons between Islamic North Africa with sub-Sahara Africa, despite political instability that is a common characteristic in most as the continuation of foreign economic dependence after the end of colonial rule. With this caveat in mind, for purposes of this very short essay I will address some common features and note differences as well in development models.
Apologists of capitalism argue that Africa’s current problems are strictly cyclical because the prices of metals, oil and other commodities, especially coffee and cocoa that have been declining amid a deflationary international climate. While it is true that the slowdown in commodities demand in China has obviously impacted Africa, the majority of the people were not better off when prices were rising. Regardless of capitalism’s expansion and contraction cycles, from the 1950s to the present, living standards for the African people have not improved, no matter the lofty claims from Western governments, NGO’s and other organizations about helping Africa become self-sufficient.
In the second half of the 20th century, Africa’s division of labor and national institutions – everything from military to banking and foreign trade – was largely determined by the core countries – US and northwest Europe – with the considerable assistance from the International Monetary Fund (IMF), World Bank and its affiliates, African Development Bank and a number of United Nations agencies, and of course, the explosion of NGO’s some of which are fully funded by governments trying to peddle political and economic influence. In short, the external mechanisms of Africa’s dependence became stronger and more solidified in the last six decades than they were during the era of colonial rule.
In fact, there has been a downward trend in living standards for the vast majority of Africans from 1990 to 2015, despite the remarkable uptrend cycle in commodity prices and massive new investment from China. This is evident by examining all indicators from life expectancy to access to clean water and sanitation. There are those who point to periodic drought primarily in Ethiopia, Kenya, and Somalia; local wars and rebel conflicts in the drought-stricken countries as well as others especially where Muslims have influence such as Sudan, Nigeria, and Libya.
Besides endemic poverty that creates fertile grounds for Islamic or tribal inspired rebel movements throughout many part of the continent, the population explosion, corrupt politicians, contraband and informal economy, absence of infrastructural development, and modern technology to help the continent achieve capitalist development comparable to that of the West are obstacles to progress. It is noteworthy that some of the arguments made today on why Africa cannot catch up with its Western counterparts were also made one hundred years ago when Africa was under European colonization, with the colonizers blaming everything but imperialism as the root cause of underdevelopment.
One cause for the systemic underdevelopment of Africa has been and remains that more capital flows out than comes in, invariably foreign loans having the role as catalysts to the process of de-capitalization. The cycle of public foreign debt and de-capitalization continues across the continent under the watchful eye of the International Monetary Fund and foreign financial institutions that represent big banks in the US and Europe and large corporate interests.
It is indeed a monumental step forward that Africans have served as heads of the United Nations and in key positions of international organization. From a symbolic perspective, it was great to see Kofi Annan as the UN secretary-general, but was Africa better off when he left the UN than when he came in; or was there any structural change in the political economy of the entire continent from Egypt to South Africa, from Nigeria to Kenya? Inordinate dependence on the foreign–dominated and outward-oriented primary sector of production owing to failure to diversify the economy remains the major obstacles to raising living standards.
Many observers of the African political economy argue that there have been success stories, among them, South Africa freeing itself from white majority political rule though keeping white majority economic hegemony. With the exception of Israel and rightwing elements in the US, the entire world celebrated the end of South Africa’s apartheid a generation ago. Nelson Mandela became a symbol of freedom and self-determination for Africans. However, high unemployment, low living standards among blacks, lack of upward mobility, and the rich-poor persisted, with the country occupying the world’s last place for life expectancy.
Although South Africa was on its way to catching up with Brazil, India and Russia, enjoying 38% GDP growth in the last decade, this was not indicative of social mobility but rather capital concentration. In 2015, South Africa suffers unemployment at the same level as Greece that has been under IMF-EU austerity since 2010. Socioeconomic and political conditions are worse in the rest of Africa, and this includes Muslim northern Africa that has suffered US-NATO direct and indirect military interference in its social uprisings during the Arab Spring revolts that once represented the promise of a democratic Africa free of dictators linked to large domestic and foreign capitalists.
Judging from the unemployment statistics in Africa’s two largest economies, Nigeria and South Africa, both dependent on extractive industries exports, there is not much difference between them with all of those natural resources, and Greece suffering five consecutive years of IMF-EU-imposed austerity and downward socioeconomic mobility. One could argue that 26.4% unemployment for South Africa and 24% for Nigeria are understandable owing to the cyclical nature of the commodities market – both gold and crude oil are sharply down from their highs, along with all commodities. However, the core issue is not capitalism’s cyclical contraction, but the high levels of structural unemployment and underemployment in the continent’s richest countries, as well as the vast income gap between the very few wealthy individuals and the vast majority of the masses.
Obstacles to development account for a division of labor that has remained about the same in the last half century. This is despite reductions in extreme poverty (under two dollar a day category) in the last two decades. By all indications, globalization has accounted for the downward mobility of most Africans, although this may not be as clear when looking at GDP statistics of certain countries, including South Africa and Nigeria. The world economic structure has not changed, no matter the rhetoric about globalization and neoliberal policies uplifting all economies across the world. Just the opposite, the overall economic picture of Africa is one of steady decline since the 1980s. The continent’s share of global trade was 3.1% in 1955 in 1990 it was a mere 1.2%.
Largely because of China as a major new player in the region’s trade, there was a rise after the recession of the early 1990s, but this too was limited to the primary sector of production. The China factor did not help the continent lift its GDP amounting to under $300 billion in 1997 while the debt was $315 billion. This allowed the IMF to impose austerity and neoliberal measures of privatization, corporate tax reductions, and trade barrier removals that further weakened the national economies. The austerity measures not only prevented upward socioeconomic mobility, but actually drove more people into lower living standards.
In December 1993,UN secretary-general Boutros-Boutrros Ghali argued that the solution for Africa’s socioeconomic problems rested with greater integration. In an essay on this issue, Robert J. Cummings noted that: “From the 1950sto the present, more than 200 organizations have been founded on the continent of Africa for the purpose of fostering regional and sub-regional integration and economic cooperation. The performance record of these myriad organizations historically have not been sterling.” R. J. Cummings “Africa’s Case for Economic Integration” (www.HU Archives.net )
The efforts on the part of the UN, World Bank and other Western institutions and governments to forge African integration have not lifted altered the dependent structure of the economy based on the primary sector of production nor have such efforts resulted in higher living standards and upward social mobility despite some reduction in poverty in the last two decades. Integration on the patron-client model is at the core of neo-colonialism in Africa and favors the multinational corporations, thus perpetuating external dependence and underdevelopment.
The most significant challenge of Africa in the next few decades will be to transform itself from a largely “dependent outward-oriented” economy (primary sector production exports) providing cheap raw materials for the advanced capitalist countries to an inward-looking (producing to meet domestic demand through import substitution industrialization) integrated via an intra-continental model and develops more equitable terms of trade with developed countries. The uneven terms of trade, the inherent lower value of African exports vs. its imports from the developed countries has been and remains a core problem in development.
To achieve the goal of self-sufficiency Africa would need more than NGOs and UN intervention that only target emergency areas during war and famine. Africa would need more than China funding infrastructural development intended to accommodate extractive mining and agricultural regions, and more than regional integration that the World Bank has been advocating and without success by its own admission, and only intended to strengthen the role of multinational corporations trying to dominate key sectors of the raw materials economy.
In the absence of a systemic political change, just as took place in England (1689) and France (1789) that paved the way for economic modernization, Africa cannot achieve its goal of self-sufficiency no matter the rhetoric by politicians on the continent or Western organizations like the World Bank and corporations employing the self-sufficiency rhetoric but operating as imperialists not much different in results than the colonialists of the 19th century.
PART II: CHINA’S ECONOMIC ROLE IN AFRICA
Is China threatening to displace the Europeans from Africa at some point in the second half of the 21st century, as the mass media in the US has been hinting since the global recession 0f 2008? Or is EU-Chinese capital so intertwined that what may be counted as China’s market share in Africa could very well be yielding profits for French, British and German multinational corporations? If capitalist China is such a threat to the West, why has the very Western World Bank been collaborating with China on a number of fronts? Is it merely the fear of the US that China as the inevitable number one economic power in the world will corner the most abundant and cheapest markets in Africa?
In 2010, the Wikileaks organization published the US concern about China helping to develop the infrastructure strategically in those countries in Africa where it plans to do business. Two things alarmed the US: a) no strings attached to infrastructural development, at least no direct strings as the US and EU always impose on the recipient country; and b) the clever way the Chinese are including the World Bank and European governments and EU-based multinational corporations. In short, China’s multilateralism as a strategy of secur5ing market share has been upsetting to American unilateralists who see a fiendish plan that would entail Africa transferring its historical dependence from the West to East.
Another issue regarding China is the scope of its role in Africa in 2015, considering that the Western media present it as hegemonic and potentially threatening to “US and Western interests”, thus invoking national and trade bloc capitalism as a populist tactic. In reality, as we will see below, China currently has a small role while the Europeans, US and wealthier Gulf Arab states enjoying the lion’s share of the market.
What has alarmed the Western capitalists and politicians is the reality that African exports to China went from a mere 1% of world share in 2000 to 15% in 2012, and likely to continue rising for the indefinite future. Despite the inevitable cyclical economic slowdown in China, it is just as inevitable that by the 2030s we can safely predict much closer trade, investment and overall economic dependency of Africa on China. This in itself poses not just a threat to Western capitalism but to Western geopolitical designs on a continent with very rich in natural resources. Because the US does not compete with China in Africa using the same tools of economic integration, about the only response the US has is to flex its military muscle and secure as much as it can for US-based multinational corporations.
Before we assume China’s role is benign, the issue of China as the panacea for Africa is one that many have emphasized, given that European and US economic, military and political roles throughout Africa have not resulted in improvements as judged by standards the West has been proclaiming – democracy, freedom, economic development and higher living standards. Some in and outside of Africa believe that China’s integration model which starts with infrastructural development that would help the domestic economy as well as forge greater regional integration while stimulating the export sector is promising. After all, the European imperialists had done nothing but pillage Africa from the start of the trans-Atlantic slave trade in the 15th century when the Portuguese landed until the more subtle late 20th century policies of assisting corporate exploitation of natural resources. Moreover, if China is so well integrated into the global economy and it is helping to forge a new integration model in Africa, this presents new opportunities for African counties, at least for those rich in natural resources.
The bottom line is whether China will help Africa develop or merely perpetuate underdevelopment as did the Europeans and the US. Underdevelopment is a process just as development that takes place amid domestic and international political and economy dynamics. Development is not a matter of a country having a surplus labor force, or having near self-sufficiency in minerals and raw materials, or enjoying an infrastructure that can accommodate rapid development to buttress the capital-intensive export sector mostly of extractive industries. Africa is one of the richest continents on the planet in natural resources and it certainly has a surplus labor force at the lowest cost on the planet in comparison with the other continents. Can Chinese investment do something with these cheap assets to help itself while also help Africa?
In order to secure a segment of Africa’s natural resources for its own growth and development at the lowest possible cost, China has been investing in the continent and counting on it for rapid export growth in the 21st century. Despite its rich resources and new investment from China as well as Gulf Arab countries, Europe and US, the persistence of underdevelopment in Africa defies logic at least on the surface beyond the GDP growth numbers and marginal decline in extreme poverty. Why is there reason to believe the Chinese will change a history of five centuries of colonialism and neo-colonialism?
One could argue that the structural causes have everything to do with the corrupt and incompetent political regimes combined with the uneven development complicated by the periodic famines and droughts in a number of sub-Saharan regions. Another argument that the apologists of globalization and neoliberal politicians make is that Africa has not fully integrated into the world capitalist economy, leaving much of its productive capacities underutilized or outside the domain of international trade owing to persistence of tribalism. Is Africa’s problem underutilization of natural resources or uneven terms of trade, chronic exploitation of low labor values, massive capital concentration in the hand of very few comprador bourgeoisie linked to foreign capital, and of course corrupt politicians that foreign corporations bribe to secure contracts.
Another issue that Western analysts are constantly making is that there is instability owing to civil conflicts in a number of countries, from Sudan and Nigeria to Central and East Africa where rebels are an obstacle to stability and development. In the Islamic countries north of the Sahara, there is the instability caused by jihadist elements as there is in the East; activities which also impact Africa more broadly. However, Jihadist conditions, as we will see below, are of fairly recent origin and even so a reaction to neo-colonial conditions, among other causes related to tribal and religious differences. If we were to sum up, the Western analysts conclude that the fault for the absence of development in Africa rests squarely with internal dynamics and has absolutely nothing to do with Western imperialism as a chronic presence.
When we examine the lofty promises of growth and development by the UN, World Bank and Western governments whose only interest is to assist corporate control of Africa’s resources and market share the result is that by 1995 25% of the people in the sub-Sahara region had no job and were homeless. Even more alarming, Africa’s agricultural growth rates have been declining since 1965. From an annual average of 2.2% (1965-1973), to 0.6% (1981-85), per capita food production continued to decline throughout the 1980s and 1990s, necessitating four times as much food aid. Why is anyone surprised that there is the level of rebel activity, including Jihadist as of late, when the question really ought to be why is there not more such activity given these conditions that people in the West would not tolerate and demand change?
There are those who argue that China’s presence actually helps to tame the sociopolitical mood throughout the continent. China is investing in everything – Hydro-power, dams, water and sanitation, ports, railroads, roads, mining, timber, fisheries and agriculture. At the same time, France and the rest of Europe as well as the US and the rich Arab countries have been competing with China and want to maintain market share. What exactly this entails for the people of Africa and the development model that would eventually lift the majority of the people from abject poverty is another story.
The Chinese are not in Africa to lift living standards for the population but to strengthen their global competitive position. China will need Africa’s raw materials, everything from foodstuffs to minerals in order to remain a global economic power in the 21st century. China accounts for about one-fifth of the planet’s population, but it only has 6 percent of the planet’s water and 9 percent arable land, forcing its government to look outside its borders to sustain its growth and development. Just as Africa provided cheap raw materials and cheap labor for Europe and the US from the era of colonialism until the rise of China as a global economic power, in the 21st century it will play a similar role with China competing for Africa’s cheap raw materials and labor. Investment has risen from a mere 210 million in 2000 to 3.17 billion 2011 and it is expected to skyrocket.
Africa is the world’s fastest growing continent for Foreign Direct Investment (FDI), but it starts out at such low levels that it can only go higher. While historically FDI went primarily to the extractive industries, there is new emphasis on manufacturing with energy as a key industry where revolutionary methods could make a difference in bringing electricity to more people than ever and make manufacturing even cheaper. The continent’s global share of FDI rose from around 3% in 2007 to 5% in 2012, a period of global recession. Among the top 25 countries in the world with the highest incoming FDI, Africa is nowhere to be found; and if it were not for South Africa, the continent as a whole would be at the very bottom along with some of the Eurasian countries. As miraculous as it may appear, China’s share of overseas direct investment in Africa is a mere $26 billion, while France and UK continue to lead in this category. On the other hand, few would argue that China is poised to impose economic hegemony of some type over Africa under an integration model presumably better than what the French and the British had imposed after decolonization.
By extending concessional loans – more generous terms and longer term – to the tune of $10 billion amid the global recession of 2009 to 2012, China bought itself enormous influence without literally dictating terms down to the minute detail as do the IMF and World Bank. Chinese President Xi Jinping doubled the concessional loan commitment to Africa from $10 billion to $20 billion in the 2013-2015 period, and the Chinese EXPORT-Import Bank announced an ambitious financing program of one trillion dollars by 2025; something that could be scaled back owing to the slowing Chinese economy in 2015.
Although Africa accounts for such a small percentage of Chinese global investment, Africa has been a top foreign aid recipient. Aid donors have always used it as a policy instrument and leverage in every respect to influence not only investment and trade policy of the aid recipient but defense and foreign policy as well. In providing various types of aid to Africa, from medical and humanitarian to debt relief and development, China is investing in fact investing in good will diplomatically as well as economically for the future market share that it wants in Africa.
Can we expect from China what we have seen on the part of the European and US companies in Africa since the 1960s? From the early 1960s to the present, large foreign companies secure public financing for privately-operated projects that have been uneconomic across Africa. However, the foreign firms risk no capital of their own because their loans to finance their operation are guaranteed by their governments or developments banks, as are interest and profits. Because most of the investment is invariably in mining and commercial agriculture, involving multinational companies like Monsanto, the Carlyle Group, Shell, and other Wall Street and EU giants, the goal is to strengthen the export sector by taking advantage of cheap labor without much benefit for the broader economic diversification in a continent desperate for greater self-sufficiency.
Although China has followed this pattern, its focus on developing the infrastructure in a number of African countries has the potential of laying the foundations for a sustainable diversified inward oriented economy. After all, China has provided assistance for schools and some textile factories, but it often labels loans as “aid”, and most of its investments go to those countries rich in natural resources.
Foreign investment in Africa, under terms no developed country would permit is virtually unregulated, thus constituting a drain of natural resource wealth. Suffering the lowest labor values on the planet, Africa attracts foreign capital investment because it is the next frontier to realize high profits. Moreover, foreign capital flows because foreign businesses demand that African countries provide local financing under government-guaranteed loans and very generous terms that include profit repatriation, liberal terms on the environment, and minimal labor protection.
According to the World Bank that has partnered with China on many projects, the goals in Africa include (i) accelerating industrialization and manufacturing; (ii) making special economic zones (SEZs) and industrial parks work; (iii) infrastructure and trade logistics, including regional integration; (iv) creating the conditions to accelerate responsible private sector investment, (v) skills development for competitiveness and job creation, and vi) improving agricultural productivity and expanding agribusiness opportunities.
These are indeed lofty goals, and one could argue that all countries undergoing industrialization had to suffer, so must Africa, despite its unique relationship with industrialized nations. If we analyze each of the above points that the World Bank has outlined, we conclude that the goal in Africa is to create a climate conducive to foreign corporate investment under the best possible terms. There is nothing about protecting workers rights, collective bargaining, livable wages, appropriate affordable housing, hospitals and schools, and above all under a political regime that respects human rights and civil rights pursuant to principles of social justice. The only concern of the investors, governments, and international organizations assisting them in Africa is the investment itself not the social, cultural, economic and political welfare of the people.
PART III: The New Scramble for Africa, Narcotics and Human Trafficking
There is a 21st century version of “the scramble for Africa”, a continuation of what started in the 19th century (1880-1914) by the Europeans who pillaged the continent’s resources, systematically exploited its people, caused tribal and regional wars, destroying its culture; and all of it by invoking social Darwinism and other Eurocentric theories, including ethnocentrism and ‘Exceptionalism’, to justify white hegemony. The new round of neo-colonial race to carve up Africa’s lucrative agricultural lands, mineral wealth, fishing rights within its territorial waters also extends to its geographical location that makes it so convenient for South American cocaine trade through West Africa and heroin-cannabis trade through East Africa.
According to the World Bank (September 2010), more than 110 million acres of farmland (the size of California and West Virginia combined) were sold during the first 11 months of 2009. This was all in a mad rush of foreign private and government investors to secure cheap land (and labor to work the land), and all during the most serious economic recession in the postwar period. Between 1998 and 2008, the World Bank provided $23.7 billion for agribusiness around the world, much of it in Africa promoting what it calls ‘efficient and sustainable’ agriculture. Along with the erosion of subsistence farming that sustained families, there is the corresponding erosion of subsistence fishing owing to competition from European and Asian commercial fishing operations in coastal Africa. All of this is an integral part of the corporate control of Africa with the support of governments in the advanced capitalist countries and with the backing of the IMF and World Bank Group’s subsidiary agencies like the International Finance Corporation (IFC).
In 2010 the IFC has invested an estimated $100 million for agribusiness in sub-Saharan Africa, compared with merely $18 million per year in the previous decade. Naturally, IFC and World Bank investment which runs into the billions focuses solely on corporate agriculture that displaces the small farmer. This despite the advice from experts in sub-Saharan countries who argued that the best use of farmland is to distribute it to villagers (about 12 hectares per family) and give them the means to cultivate it to end hunger while also generating a potential surplus for trade. Foreign-owned agribusiness backed by their governments and international financial organizations such as the IFC produce commercial crops for export, while the native population remains poverty-stricken. It should be noted that foreign aid for Africa’s agriculture dropped by 75% since 1980, thus creating the need for private foreign investment in the sector. This is all in the name of furthering the goals of privatization that Western neo-liberal push across the world with devastating consequences for workers and peasants.
In the last one hundred years, agriculture in the industrialized countries has undergone a revolution that has resulted in just a small segment of the labor force earning its living from farming, animal husbandry and fishing. Technology and science applied to the sector has raised production and made agriculture less labor intensive just as specialization and concentration has resulted in higher productivity. Modernization of the primary sector of production entails that large commercial operations in the primary sector of production, backed by favorable government policies, have taken over the sector that requires expensive agrochemicals and machinery, and a distribution network to secure steady profits. In Africa’s case, only large invariably foreign-owned commercial enterprises are able to operate under this model of development, forcing the small farmers and peasants into poverty.
With each recessionary cycle more small farmers in Africa and around the world are squeezed out of the business, while neo-liberal apologists not just in the corporate board rooms and the media, but in government and UN continue to sing the praises of large scale commercial operations as the panacea for capitalism. The transition from subsistence to commercial agriculture in first in Western Europe and then in US freed the surplus labor force for the manufacturing and service sectors of production. In the case of Africa, however, there is no manufacturing or service sector large enough to absorb the surplus labor force that is uprooted from subsistence farming and animal husbandry.
The assumption by governments, banks, and mainstream economists is that commercial agriculture in the form of agribusiness is a necessary development of modernization. Another assumption is that only large-scale agribusiness, which is subsidized by government and international organizations like the World Bank and IFFC among others, can meet the rising demand the world’s rising food demand while keeping costs low. After all, manufacturing is just around the corner for Africa, although it promises to be the kind of manufacturing we have seen in Bangladesh and other south Asian countries where living standards are very low and working conditions very poor.
Given the trend toward corporate agriculture, in the last fifteen years, governments and private firms from around the world have been investing in sub-Sahara Africa because corporations chase the highest return for the lowest possible investment under the most favorable conditions to capital possible. Besides agribusinesses acquiring more land, banks, hedge and pension funds, commodity traders, foundations and individual investors have been buying land as part of portfolio investments for an average of $1 per hectare. This is in an attempt to cash in on low-cost land and labor amid a growing demand for raw food products and bio-fuels.
The EU is hoping to reduce carbon emissions by using at least 10% bio-fuel of all fuel products by 2020. The US is aiming to reduce its foreign dependence on oil by 70% in the next 15 years. With the help of the World Bank and IFC, the EU and the US have been looking to Africa – more than 700 million hectares appropriated for agribusiness – as the continent to invest in bio-fuels; this at a time that the Europeans have also been eyeing Africa as the next frontier for solar energy. Latin America is also a target for bio-fuel and other agrarian investment, but Africa offers even more attractive prospects in part because of the Arab and Chinese interest as well.
In the past decade, India, China, Japan, and Arab countries have joined the 21st century scramble for Africa, in some cases because governments are concerned about soil, water, and natural resources conservation in their own countries. Private investors and governments are aggressively seeking to partition Africa’s rich agricultural land as the cost of agricultural commodities is expected to rise once the current recession ends. Saudi Arabia has set aside $5 billion in low-interest loans to Saudi agribusinesses to invest in agriculturally attractive countries. Another reason for the new scramble for Africa is because of what the UN Food and Agricultural Organization calls ‘spare land’, areas not under cultivation, or underutilized.
Developed countries have used Africa for its raw materials and as a consumer of imported manufactured products and foreign business services, but not as roughly equal trading partners as is France and Germany. Rather, Africa has been the victim of unequal terms of trade, and external control of its key extractive sectors. In short, Africa remains semi-colonial and continues to become increasingly dependent on developed countries for overvalued manufactured products and services while exporting raw materials at prices commodities markets in the West determine based on speculative interest.
One is favorably impressed by the rhetoric regarding “sustainable development” that the media, governments, the World Bank, and even corporations promise as though such development translates into social justice. After all, the hypocrisy of corporate responsibility regarding the eco-system has been exposed repeatedly not just by oil companies operating in Nigeria, but even by Volkswagen as its flagrant scandal regarding emissions manipulation proved in October 2015. The EU and US quest for bio-fuel development in Africa, and for that matter in Latin America, has nothing to do with ‘sustainable development’ or engendering greater ‘self-sufficiency’ or helping to ‘develop’ Africa – rhetoric that the UN, World Bank, western governments and multinational corporations are using to make ‘the new scramble for Africa’ more palatable to the world. The rhetoric is obligatory to placate the masses to retain their trust in the corporate world.
Will the people of Africa solve the chronic problems of poverty and disease as a result of the exploitation of land and labor to satisfy the demand for food and bio-fuels in Western nations? Africa’s food requirements will double in the next two to three decades, a point that foreign agribusinesses, governments and IFC and World Bank are using to justify the commercialization of agriculture under foreign ownership. In the process of the neo-colonial land-grab, evictions of peasants and small farmers, entire villages uprooted, civil unrest, and citizens’ complaints of ‘land grabbing’ have been common. Protests owing to social injustice do not stop governments from approving agribusiness deals backed by powerful forces. One common justification used for the new scramble for Africa is that the acquired territories are not utilized or ‘wasteland’. Governments often do not charge agribusiness for the water they use. Just a single agribusiness belonging to an Arab investor in Ethiopia, for example, uses as much water as 100,000 people – water of course is the most precious commodity in many parts of Africa. This is the reality of agribusiness and its role in drought-ridden East Africa.
One reason for the rise of the informal economy that includes everything from hand-carved wood statues to cocaine from Colombia and heroin from Afghanistan using West and East Africa as hubs before sending the product to Europe is that the neo-liberal model of development has failed. In fact, it has failed so miserably that young impoverished Africans join rebel groups inspired by radical Islam or tribal loyalty. At the same time the combination of rebel activity, and violence linked to narcotics as well as human trafficking and weapons, also linked to radical Islam and tribal allegiances in some cases, is a reflection of a neo-colonial system, no matter the lofty claims by Western governments, NGOs, media, the UN and World Bank that they are looking after the interests of African people.
NARCOTICS TRADE IN AFRICA
Africa’s structural problems have contributed to a thriving narcotics trade through the Western and Eastern areas because of geographical considerations. Given that in sub-Saharan countries the percentage of labor force involved in agriculture, animal husbandry and fisheries ranges from 50 to 75, the result of agribusiness is to create a larger percentage of wage laborers instead of engaged in the subsistence economy. A percentage of this population will choose to make a living in illegal activities – human trafficking, weapons, and narcotics trade; others in piracy, still others in the thriving teenage prostitution business that has a ready market around the world.
All of this is an integral part of an informal economy that according to the African Development Bank contributes 55% of GDP in the sub-Sahara region and accounts for 80% of the labor force. “Nine in 10 rural and urban workers have informal jobs in Africa and most employees are women and youth. The prominence of the informal sector in most African economies stems from the opportunities it offers to the most vulnerable populations such as the poorest, women and youth.” http://www.afdb.org/en/blogs/afdb-championing-inclusive-growth-across-africa/post/recognizing-africas-informal-sector-11645/
The UN Office on Drugs and Crime has been warning for many years that a number of West and East African countries are now immersed in the international drug trade, a reality that has consequences for criminal activity and the overall subterranean economy and politics of Africa. Because the drug trade is so lucrative, the income it generates is often larger than the entire GDP of some African countries. This is the case with Guinea-Bissau where the cocaine trade amounts to more than $2 billion and where violent crime in this former Portuguese colony has been rising steadily. The situation is not very different in Senegal where the airport at Dakar has been used to transport cocaine from Latin America to Europe.
While West Africa is a hub for cocaine from Colombia and Peru, East Africa is a hub for heroin and cannabis coming to the region from South-East and Southwest Asia by air and sea, often onboard vessels that transport legitimate commodities, and often owned and operated by European shipping tycoons and of course European banks to launder drug money. A number of Greek shipping tycoons have been linked to the illegal narcotics trade in Africa, but they invariably enjoy European connections for distribution and laundering of enormous amounts of money considering the street value is 20 times higher than its original value when the products land in Africa.
While the drug trade may appear that it is outside the mainstream of economic activity, it actually operates under the same laws of capitalism and in practice under similar routines. The laws of supply and demand apply as does the cooperation of government, albeit at a sub-level of illegality through bribery no different than when a multinational corporation bribes officials. Moreover, just as the extractive industries drain Africa of capital so does the narcotics trade. People involved in this business are in fact businessmen running operations of an illegal product but observing all other rules of the market within which they operate and which makes no distinction between drug money and corporate money. The bottom line for Africa is that both the corporate and drug business result in taking capital out of the area and leaving behind all the social and political problems.
The process of de-capitalization, especially amid recessionary cycles in the world economy as in the current case of depressed commodity prices, only increases the problems with the informal economy that is a mere extension of the overall outward-oriented dependent economy and a colonial remnant that gives rise to illegal activities. East Africa around the Gulf of Aden is already the pirate center of the world, and this in addition to the weapons and human trafficking trade. Everything from illegal handicraft items to diamonds and gold are illegally traded. West Africa is slowly transforming itself into the new world center for South American narco-traffickers. Guinea, Mauritania, Guinea Bissau, Ghana, Benin, Sierra Leone, and Senegal are among the most significant intermediary narco-traffic countries linked to the Colombia-Venezuela coca trade.
In the absence of official cooperation, everyone from custom officials, port authority, police, army and navy, all the way up to cabinet officials, the drug trade would not be possible. In short, the drug trade in Africa is an integral part of the political system and informal economy that enjoys protection from a wide variety of players. This makes transport low-risk in comparison with the Caribbean. With Russia as a new player in the international drug trade and oligarchs behind the regime, the activity has increased in the last decade.
During the “just say No!” campaign of the Reagan era the US had the highest per capita use–US population was around 4% but consumed 25 to 40% of the world’s illegal drugs–and this is not to say that a legal pill-for-everything panacea in the US is not at its root a cultural trait. Today, however, both UK and Spain surpass the US in per capita use of cocaine, and both countries along with Portugal and France are the major destinations for coca that comes from Latin America through West Africa.
Anecdotal evidence suggests that Somalia, currently in the process of establishing a central authority, is host to widespread illegal transactions, including drug and arms trafficking. There are two important international airports in the region, servicing the capitals’ of Ethiopia and Kenya, which are used as transit points for drugs. Both airports have connections between West Africa and the heroin producing countries in South West and South East Asia. There is also an increasing use of postal and courier services for cocaine, heroin and hashish.
Heroin trafficking from Pakistan, Thailand and India to East Africa has been rising in the last two decades. Some of this heroin finds its way to West Africa that also exports to Uganda, Tanzania and Kenya through Ethiopia. Increasing number of Tanzanians and Mozambicans are involved in the trafficking of heroin from Pakistan and Iran, given that there the limited options in the formal economy. West African and East African drug syndicates are inter-connected as they are to smugglers from Latin America and South Asia, reflecting high level of organization.
Considering that multinational corporations from Shell Oil to Siemens have a long history of bribing African officials as they do non-Africans, narcotics traffickers’ mode of operation is no different than that of “legitimate” businesses. And if the opportunity presents itself to make a living why is “dirty money” any less valuable than “clean money,” the latter of which seems to be less than $500 a year for most Africans? Judging on the basis of postwar recessions when per capita income has dropped as much as 50%, this means that in this current crisis Africa will not only suffer greater impoverishment than the rest of the world, but its economic problems will cause more ethnic and tribal conflict, more epidemics, more intra- and inter-continental emigration, and more political turmoil than any developed nation can expect.
Such a climate is ideal for more piracy, more weapons and narcotics transfer, more human trafficking, and all of it part of the colonial and neo-colonial legacy of outward oriented economy benefiting the developed countries. Though the continent is in need of debt-relief and development assistance for the short-term, the solution for a small segment of unemployed and destitute young Africans is drugs, guns, and human trafficking that generates money, although most of that money does not stay in the region and creates violence that disrupts legitimate economic activity.
CONCLUSIONS
The social fabric disrupted yet again by ‘the new scramble for Africa’, continued political instability is a guarantee as much as a rise in crime and social unrest. Amazingly, the same institutions that contribute to Africa’s devastation claim that they are acting in the name of ‘progress, sustainable development and efficiency, helping to raise productivity and exports, to create jobs by bringing foreign investment,’ etc.; the modern versions of “The White Man’s Burden”.
The ‘politically palatable’ rhetoric of ‘efficiency and sustainability’ has resulted in an outward-oriented agrarian sector catering to foreign markets instead of inward-oriented economy designed to meet the rapidly rising population’s food needs. In 16th century England, farmers switched to animal husbandry owing to rising demand for wool textiles. Peasants starved as the cost of grain increased, thus “sheep ate people”. In this century, ‘agribusinesses will be eating Africans’.
Apologists of agribusiness justify their support by various arguments including ‘no country has developed’ with two-thirds of its labor force living off the land and dependent on extractive industries. It is an interesting coincidence that just as sub-Sahara Africa has been targeted by drug lords in the last few years, it is also targeted by corporate farm investors whose mode of operation is to use the low-valued land and labor and corrupt public officials in order to serve foreign market demands. Rural poverty will rise as a result of foreign corporate investment in African agriculture. Will the ‘new scramble for Africa’ by corporate investors and drug lords result in the elimination of famine and disease; will it result in higher rising living standards for the native population, or will it be another form of neo-colonialism in the name of progress?
Using the pretext of “terrorism”, a guerrilla movement under the flag of jihadists in recent years, the West and pro-West regimes default all problems on such fanatics in Nigeria, Chad, Sudan, Somalia, Kenya, Niger, Cameroon, Mali, Uganda and Mauritania. In other words, the US and its European partners would have the public believe that for decades when there were no Islamic jihadists, sub-Sahara Africa under colonial and neo-colonial rule enjoyed social justice and upward social mobility under democratic regimes. Even more insulting is the implication that the Islamic militants are the cause and not the symptom of Western exploitation of Africa and that if they are eliminated the continent would have no problems. As counterproductive as jihadist warfare has been, and as futile in achieving its goals, it is not the cause but one more symptom of the neo-imperialist structure in the continent from Libya to South Africa, from Nigeria to Kenya.
Besides defaulting Africa’s problems on Islamic ‘terrorism’, there are also the advocates of the neo-Malthusian theory – too many people too few resources, rather than unequal income distribution. It is true that drought is a cyclical natural disaster in parts of Eastern and Southern Africa and generally a problem in a few other parts as well. However, does drought justify Malthusianism and does it explain structural impediments to African development? This is not say that a form of managed population control is not desirable, but this is a matter of resources and education for the general population.
Uniting and organizing at the grassroots to end racist neo-colonial exploitation whether in the form of the formal economy based on mineral and agricultural exports or in the informal economy that includes narcotics is the only solution for Africans. Working toward sustainable development can only come from indigenous movements that first change the externally-dependent political regimes and then undertake to change the social order that would engender economic growth under an inward-oriented model. Given the deep historical tribal and ethnic antagonisms in Africa for which westerners are partly to blame, and the even stronger western neo-colonial foundation the prospects of any of this taking place in the forthcoming decades is highly unlikely. Africa will remain the continent of contradictions with the world’s poorest people, but some of the world’s richest natural resources.
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Global division and revolution: National vs. Comprador Bourgoise
October 17th, 2015By Jon Kofas.
There are very clear signs that structurally the world is moving increasingly toward further consolidation of the polarizing model that divides the world geographically – rich or developed, semi-developed, and poor or underdeveloped countries – and socioeconomically. This polarizing model, in existence since the evolution of the market economy in the 16th century, rests today on the massive influence of financial institutions – banks, brokerage firms, and insurance companies – over the state. However, the model also rests on large corporate influences and the phenomenon of comprador bourgeois political and socioeconomic class. The race to forge new trade blocs on the part of the US, EU and China only reflects the rising intensity of global competition as wealth is concentrated in the core capitalist countries. These regional blocs help to expand the role of the “comprador” middle class that is often in conflict with the national capitalists, labor organizations, environmental, cultural and religious groups all dreading the preponderate influence of globalization.
What is the “comprador bourgeois” class? This class of middlemen emerged during the era of European colonialism when the colonizers needed local operatives as middlemen to function, whether in Africa, India, China, or Latin America. The fortunes of the comprador socioeconomic class were totally dependent on the colonial economic system that also gave rise to a comprador political class when decolonization took place in the 20th century, especially after WWII. Through the formation of such a class, the Great Powers were able to reduce the dependent country’s economic system into an extension of the mother country under the imperial system, as we can see by examining the global operations of the European colonial powers since the 16th century as well as US after the Spanish-American War of1898.
This is not to suggest that the market economy has not rested since its inception on uneven development, uneven terms of trade, and preponderate influence of market forces on state policy. Nor is this to suggest that both the national and comprador bourgeoisie did not co-exist within a complex system where individual capitalists engaged in competition for profits and an ever larger share of the market. The state of course facilitates and advances capitalist accumulation for both national and comprador bourgeoisie, although not always evenhandedly. Clearly, in the weak state structures of developing countries the comprador capitalists dominate because international capital dominates, while national capital plays a dominant role in core countries.
It would not be possible for England to operate in 19th century China without comprador bourgeoisie any more than it would be for the US to operate in Latin America after the Spanish-American War. Both puppet bourgeois class and puppet regimes were and are necessary for the operation of the polarizing global system. Comprador economics necessarily created a comprador political class. Without the political class advancing policies intended to promote thorough economic integration of the national economy with the international economic system where the large corporations enjoy clear dominance integration would not be possible. In fact, where there is no colonial structure, the comprador political class is a precondition to the creation of comprador socioeconomic class. This means that while capitalism operates under a more representative model in the advanced countries, there is considerably less representation and less sovereignty in the countries under the comprador political and socioeconomic class. This is evident not just in underdeveloped nations, but in much of Southern and Eastern Europe.
In the early 21st century, we have many examples of this process not just in Africa, but also in Latin America and Europe as well. This became evident when Hungarian Premier Viktor Orban blatantly stated in a Budapest rally that: “We will not be a colony. We will not be second class citizens”. Orban made these comments to more than 100,000 cheering Hungarians on the anniversary of the Revolution of 1848, a revolution that swept across Europe and marked the publication of the Communist Manifesto by Marx and Engels. Similar speeches have been made by politicians in Spain, Portugal, Greece, Ireland, and East European countries that are under the economic hegemony of northwest Europe; a northwest Europe dominated by Germany operating as a patron over client member EU states. While Southern and Eastern Europe underwent austerity measures after 2010, which in essence entailed weakening the middle class and national bourgeoisie along with the working class, the beneficiaries short and longer-term are international capital concentrated in Germany Northwest Europe that imposed austerity as a means of transferring massive capital from the periphery to the core, as all empirical studies indicate.
In the early 21st century, governments of the Great Powers (G-7) struggle to strengthen the national capitalist class by providing varieties of assistance, ranging from diplomatic and other ministerial services such as Commerce and Trade departments provide, to pouring money in the national capitalist class through the fiscal system – everything from direct subsidies to tax breaks. The same holds true for nations pursuing quasi-statist policies, including China, India, Russia and Brazil; all nations that endeavor to escape the fate of having the Great Powers impose their hegemony by using the integrative market system, namely, globalization under neoliberalism.
Within the Great Powers there is global competition for market share and the way to achieve the goal is by having a strong state structure while endeavoring to weaken the state structure of ‘dependent societies’. Whether it is the UK, US, or Germany, the goal is the same, given that the state – mainstream political parties in power – is the pillar of the economic system whose backbone is banking and the ultimate goal is capital accumulation concentrated in core nations where there is a strong national bourgeoisie. Naturally, without the state behind it, the national bourgeoisie would be unable to survive, just as the comprador bourgeoisie would be equally unable to survive in the absence of the state supporting it.
In the case of the weaker countries, the bottom 180 nations that collectively own 20% of the world’s assets owing to the economic system rooted in grossly uneven distribution of wealth, the struggle is to opt for development by following the rules of dependent capitalism – comprador politics and economics – that the Great Powers impose, or to deviate from those rules by trying to strengthen national capitalism.
In mid-April 2012, Argentina announced nationalization of YPF, the oil and gas company that was part of Spanish energy giant REPSOL Company since 1999 when Argentina was undergoing very serious financial and economic problems operating under IMF austerity. Considering that US-led sanctions on Iran have meant that the Islamic Republic recently decided to cut off oil supplies to Spain’s REPSOL, the YPF expropriation is more bad news for debt-ridden Spain, which has replaced some of the lost Iranian supply with Saudi oil. Since then, oil prices have dropped, partly because of market conditions, such as slowing demand, but also because Saudi Arabia and its allies decided to use it as a weapon against Iran and Russia.
Not just Spain, but the entire EU argued that Argentina’s move signals a violation of the rules of international free enterprise economic system; a system that has always worked to keep dependent capitalist countries like Argentina from having a strong national economy that caters to internal needs of society. By making the bold move to nationalize a privately-owned oil company under foreign ownership, Argentina asserted state-supported economic nationalism, a long-standing tradition in Latin America, and one that is not associated with Mexico in the 1930s or Cuba in the 1960s, but more recently with Venezuela, Bolivia and other republics.
Argentina has been on the path of national capitalism for about a decade when it decided to throw out the IMF and try its fate with a different policy mix that would afford it greater control over the economy and society. National capitalism is antithetical to the neo-liberal ideology and to globalization that helps to strengthen multinational corporations and international finance capitalism intended to transfer wealth from the bottom 180 nations of the world to the top 20 nations. This does not mean that national capitalism is “ethical”, “good”, etc. in comparison with comprador capitalism. Nor does this mean that national capitalism deviates sharply from the integration models that exist at the regional and global levels. Argentina is a capitalist country operating within a framework that favors capital accumulation and the same is true for other Latin American countries, including Venezuela, Ecuador, and Bolivia.
The Argentinean example is the one that the Great Powers, along with the WTO, IMF and World Bank do not want other countries to follow, for it would mean the undermining of international capitalism benefiting the core nations. While the Great Powers and the IMF encourage privatizing public enterprises and deregulating the economy while making assets cheaper for foreign ownership, Argentina is trying to go the opposite direction as a means to gain control of its assets in favor of national capitalists; a long-standing tradition that dates back to the 1930s. Note that one reason for the expropriation of YPF is that new oil and natural gas reserves would fall under national control instead of going to foreign-owned REPSOL.
Comprador politics and economics is not merely a question of economic and political dependency as we see in the case of hegemonic US over some Latin American countries or northwest Europe (mainly Germany) over Southern and Eastern Europe, but it is also a question of national sovereignty. The issue of national sovereignty was partly at the root of Arab uprisings, although the US and northwest Europe made sure that they were involved in the opposition so they can integrated those economies into the international market system once the dust settled. The global division between strong national sovereign countries limited to the G-20 and within those the G-8, on the one hand, and the weak comprador nations as represented by the bottom 180 poses a major question of whether democracy can exist in societies whose destiny rests in the hands of the Great Powers.
The most significant question is whether the model of a divided world between national and comprador bourgeoisie, strong national state structures confined mainly to the G-8 vs. weak ones for all others can yield global economic development, and social harmony that is essential to political stability. The signs we have so far from the situations in the Arab Spring uprisings, in the European grassroots movements and other popular protests from Russia to Chile is that the global model of concentrated capitalism that divides the world geographically and politically results in lack of development and lack of stability. One solution on the part of the Great Powers to impose the polarizing world order is to wage war and use military means combined with or independently of economic sanctions.
There are of course limits to military solutions – judging by results in Iraq and Afghanistan – and the question still remains whether growth and development on a sustainable basis can be achieved under the polarizing model of national vs. comprador bourgeoisie. Now that China has opted for an imperial expansionist economic model so it can compete with Japan, EU and US, the global division becomes even more intense. How long will the waning middle and lower classes endure exploitation before they take to the streets to overthrow a system of socioeconomic and political inequality?
Revolution may be inevitable in the 21st century, and as was the case in the 20th century. It will come from countries where the state is weak and dependent and society operates under a comprador political economic model. The comprador societal model was the root cause of revolutions in Russia, China, Vietnam, Cuba, and it will be so again in this century. More than Communist revolutions, these were anti-imperialist-nationalist revolts intended to take back the national sovereignty from the Great Powers.
This is not to suggest that early 20th century Communist regimes would be making a comeback in the 21st century. On the contrary, history does not repeat itself in such manner because dynamics in society are in a constant state of change. Nor is this to suggest that in the absence of policies and institutions based on social justice, national sovereignty by itself is just fine for society. Nor is this to say that national capitalists are any less exploitative than international ones supported by comprador bourgeoisie and politicians. However, given that the nation-state structure remains strong, no matter the efforts of the globalized market economy to erase it, national sovereignty remains at the core of the social contract as many people in pluralistic societies understand it; and its absence entails not only surrendering the right to have a society that caters to its own population first, but it means surrendering rights that are fundamental to any concept of democracy. We are at the beginning of a new era of revolution in the early 21st century, a revolution that can be prevented if the global polarizing model is somehow modified to permit for the social contract to accommodate the majority of the people.
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Capitalist ethics and myths
October 3rd, 2015By Jon Kofas.
The Question:
Does the value system and Western-centered ethics that exists under the political economy of free enterprise best serve all of humanity, or merely a very tiny percentage of it? If indeed all of humanity is best served under the system, why do we have the following deteriorating conditions throughout the world?
1. Why do so many believe that there is a great moral decline under the market system and why does mass cruelty at the institutional (public and private) level persist and grow as we become more advanced in science and technology?
2. Why do we have high structural unemployment and underemployment, especially among the youth, regardless of educational training both in the Western and non-Western societies?
3. Why a gradual drop in incomes among labor and middle class in the last three decades, without prospects of upward socioeconomic mobility?
4. Why pervasive public-sector and private sector corruption that undermines all institutions from political to educational?
5. Why increased sociopolitical protests/demonstrations against a system that claims to be ‘democratic’, but in essence serves a small percentage of wealthy people whose interests the political economy serves?
6. Why growing gap between poor and rich not just in underdeveloped nations, but in the developed as well, without any prospects for improvement? a similar growing gap also exists geographically between urban and rural populations as well as between the top 20 richest nations and the bottom 180.
The Existing Ethical System
With the decline and fall of Communism, apologists of the free market argued that:
a) capitalism is the only system that respects producers and consumers;
b) a capitalist society represents the only hope for the individual to optimize his/her creative potential through the profit motive;
c) capitalism offers the opportunity to all for prosperity and the greatest chance for economic growth and
d) that the poor-rich gap will close between classes and geographic regions owing to the growing economy;
e) that the lives of people would improve because no other system engenders the values of product/services quality geared to customer satisfaction. Therefore, ‘happiness’ is inevitable for people only under a system that encourages freedom of opportunity to producers (capitalists).
If all five points as cornerstones of capitalist goals are true, then why do we have the six major problems on a global scale that I have delineated above? Perhaps it is too soon, given that the system has existed for about five hundred years, so we must wait another five years for capitalism to mature before it achieves those goals? Meanwhile, human suffering persists under a system that claims to be the only one under which humanity’s condition can exist and make progress.
If by ‘progress’ we mean more and better technical gadgets, more and better medical equipment, but fewer people having access to health care and basic consumer products, then we need to rethink the concept of progress as based on social classes. But can society move forward toward in the absence of the profit motive, given that human beings are atomistic and irrational, unconcerned about the whole of society and only about themselves? Adam Smith argued that God is concerned about all humans and universal happiness, while the individual is concerned about his own happiness. If this so, then it stands to reason that capitalist ethics reflects human nature. Therefore, let us just accept it and forget about widespread global poverty and countless others domains of injustice, ranging from human rights to socioeconomic, ethnic, race, and gender inequality.
GREED, rooted in atomism at the expense of the community, is at the core of capitalist ethics. By contrast, SOCIAL JUSTICE does not appear anywhere in the value system and body of ethics under the capitalist system that places the individual (those individual that own capital) at the core rather than the community as a whole. Of course, there are elements pointing to aspects of social justice, such as human rights, volunteerism, and civil rights. However, in every instance and upon closer examination, those are subject to political considerations and only selectively are they applied.
Ethics in the age of globalization
The age of globalization means that capital that transcends national borders has created an international ruling class made up of financial and political elites that have mutual interests in preserving the existing system. Lesser elites, from academics to journalists are essentially in the business of disseminating information and analysis based on the ethical system of capitalism, while castigating anything that is critical of it. For example, when the issue of massive banking and corporate scandals arises, the answer is that it is the fault of individual and not the system that produced them and under which they operated. Moreover, there is no alternative to the existing system that is ‘the best of all possible worlds’. If there are problems, they can only be fixed within the existing system that created them.
The issue of “rulers and hierarchies manage to subjugate the masses by imposing ‘false ethical systems’ is an interesting one, just as is the reality that people believe in myths. For those arguing that there are ‘false’ vs. ‘true’ ethical systems, let are consider that there are no absolutes, even in ethics where there is relativism and ambiguity. In Ethics of Ambiguity, Simone de Beauvoir argues that “ambiguity is that each of us is both subject and object, freedom and facticity.”
Exactly what constitutes ‘false’ vs. true ethical systems may be a subject of considerable philosophical debate. Let us make it clear that the domain of meta-ethics, the question of what ought we do as ethical people, is different from the domain of normative ethics that asks what is the difference between good and bad. Both meta-ethics and normative ethics raise the question of ethical relativism, that brings into the picture the field of applied ethics – professional, business, organizational, clinical, and social ethics.
While ethical systems are invariably superimposed by elites and always have been in all societies, regardless of the nuances in ethical systems, it is also true that in the domain of normative ethics the individual exercises free will, to the degree that institutional constraints permit. As an advocate of existentialist ethics, as the most sound analytical system to explain the field, I believe that free will must be given some weight, and we must not surrender entirely to fatalism, assuming that ‘superimposed ethical systems’ is an absolute.
MYTH and SOCIETY
French philosopher Georges Sorel (1847-1922) argued that myth has inordinate power of influence in the lives of people. Long before Sorel, the power of myth in determining people’s lives was evident in societies from the beginning of civilization when organized religion emerged as an integral part of the social, economic and political power structure that had a stake in maintaining the status quo and passing it onto posterity. From ancient times to the present, myth has a very powerful place in the consciousness of the masses and plays a catalytic role in preserving the status quo under the existing social contract.
Human beings live by myths because they are an integral part of a belief system that helps them cope with life, while also providing a cohesive worldview. It is also the case, that human beings need myths, good and bad not only in an existential sense because they are so fulfilling, but also because the intellectual and spiritual life of a person is shrouded by myth that contributes to shaping the individual’s identity.
Myths too are superimposed by the elites of any society, but become universally accepted if people recognize in certain myths, which includes religion, a sense of purpose and utility, such as serving psychological (spiritual) needs. There are dangerous myths – destroy the enemy that the state or group has identified for now – and there are commercial myths – buy our products to make you look young – and there are innocuous ‘feel-good’ myths linked to commerce and political goals.
Conclusions
If we accept the relativist argument of ethics, then we cannot argue, as some have, that there is no such thing as ‘ethical capitalism’ because by nature the system entails exploitation of the many for the private gain of the few. Of course, one could rely on John Calvin’s version of Christianity and Capitalism, as developed by Max Weber in the Protestant Ethic. Therefore, there can be a theoretical correlation between religion and the market system, given that prosperity of the individual is a manifestation of that person’s faith, thus reward from God. The assumption here is that the capitalist is doing something ‘good’ for himself thus for society of which the individual is a part.
How humane is the ethical system which
1. argues that ‘property is sacred’, but does not extend the same privilege to human beings’ right to social justice?
2. places the individual’s welfare above that of the community?
3. has greed as a core value?
4. is rooted in uneven distribution of wealth and perpetuates poverty?
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US destabilization policy toward the Middle East: A Historical perspective
September 14th, 2015
By Jon Kofas.
Introduction
The current crisis convergence in the Ukraine and the Middle East poses challenges for US foreign policy. However, it also demonstrates glaring contradictions and credibility gap not just today, but as a historical phenomenon that has been evident since the early Cold War. This is not to suggest there is no logic to the Truman Doctrine for the time it was promulgated, or to the strategy of “Keynesian Militarism” as part of a containment strategy of the Communist bloc. However, there is a price to be paid for remaining the world’s number one military power and pursuing interventionist foreign policy. The result is the relative economic decline of the US in relationship to East Asia and Europe, even when considering the fall of the Communist bloc that is integrated into global capitalism. Today, US foreign policy is all over the map, sailing in turbulent ocean without any sense of direction or realism of where it wishes to go and for what purpose. The situation in the Ukraine clearly poses challenges for Russia’s regional strategic interests that the US and its EU partners have been working to undermine. Although there is no military solution for the situation in the Ukraine, just as there was none for Syria that Russia supported, the US and its EU partners, especially Germany and Poland, pursued covert military means to bring down a corrupt pro-Russian government only to have it replaced by a pro-West billionaire totally dependent on the West for everything from advice to military and economic assistance, but with no hope of surviving in the absence of reaching an agreement with Moscow on natural gas supply and a host of other economic and strategic issues.
As the power behind the client regime in Kiev, the US will not back down from a reckless confrontational course destructive to Ukrainians until there is no choice other than pursuing a political solution. Similarly, the US is not backing down on the reckless military solution it has been pursuing in Syria, a crisis that in June 2014 spilled over to Iraq and threatened regional stability. The question is why pursue reckless destabilizing policies toward the Middle East as well as Ukraine. I do not subscribe to theories that the people conducting US foreign policy are asleep at the wheel, dumb, uncreative, and lack the experience. Nor are the policymakers and professional diplomats implementing policy reckless for no apparent reason. This is a pretext for many right wing politicians to resort to military solutions no matter what the crisis and the cost. On the contrary, the people conducting and implementing policy are professionals following certain perimeters and conforming to guidelines. There are ideological reasons behind US policy but there are also military/strategic considerations that play a role. Above all, the driving force behind US foreign policy is to maintain the economic, political and social status quo at home by maintaining a hegemonic role in the world, a foreign policy logic the US inherited from the mother country – the sort of Empire as a Way of Life, as William Appleman Williams argued trying to explain the historical continuity in US foreign affairs. Destabilization policy is in essence serving a purpose as we will see below.
CAUSES OF DESTABILIZATION OF THE MIDDLE EAST
There are many forces that account for instability in the contemporary nation-states of the Middle East. One such cause stems from the fact that the European colonial powers drew the regional map arbitrarily to serve their interests rather than permit any sort of self-determination for the people affected in artificially-created nation-states. Despite the wish of many Arabs for unity that the European, Israeli, and American governments are constantly undermining, the main sectarian divisions that predate the Imperialist Western interventions remain a major internal cause of regional instability. Religious fanaticism does extraordinary things to the human mind, including driving people to sacrifice themselves while taking down their brothers and sisters in suicide bombings. Added to religious sectarianism that has fanatics on all sides, there are tribal and ethnic identity issues intertwined with alliances based on personalities. Finally, there is the ambition of Sunni-dominated Saudi Arabia and the Gulf States behind which is the US to prevail over Shia-dominated Iran.
Another source of division is the gap that exists between the Muslim-based culture, values system and way of life struggling against the forces of modernity identified with the Christian West. Those forces of modernity encompass everything from modern science and technology to a consumerist culture and hedonistic value system that help to buttress capitalism. It is difficult to adjust to the modern economic system that creates a middle class and materialistic values while also trying to cling on to traditional values rooted in religion as a way of life. This clash was clearly seen in popular uprisings in the last four years and it continues to manifest itself in Mulsim countries, including Turkey. A third factor of internal division is the perpetual foreign inference and in some cases military intervention by the US and its junior NATO partners. Although under a corrupt dictatorship, Libya had been relatively stable. Muammar Qaddafi with his considerable shortcomings as a leader had managed to forge a popular consensus over the last four decades and kept the country unified. This is not to say that Libya’s population was enjoying social justice and its human rights, but neither did Saudi Arabia and the Gulf States that the US has been supporting. After the US-NATO intervention, Libya has a marked absence of any rights, its national sovereignty surrendered to the West, its prospects for economic development that would help its population looks much worse than they did under Qaddafi, and the country is in a semi-civil war condition with regional-tribal divisions and political violence raging on.
Like Libya, Egypt is now under a façade of a democratic regime. The BBC is correct to label the military regime something of a giant company running the country on the basis of a corrupt and decadent clientist system with ties to foreign corporations. How is this different than what existed under the previous regime? Like Libya, Egypt has surrendered its sovereignty along with any trace of human rights and social justice, merely because this is what suits the US and its allies that refused to accept the Islamic Morsi regime. In addition, the Islamic Brotherhood, which Morsi represented, has been devastated. Therefore, we have in Egypt as much a suppressed minority situation as we do in Libya. Both Libya and Egypt are in this current state of affairs because of covert US-EU interference that adamantly opposed the Islamic Morsi regime and wanted one they could manipulate. In both cases, however, the end result is that the people are much worse off today than they were before Arab Spring that the West manipulated to make sure a pro-West regime secures power, and North Africa is far less stable than it was five years ago. This is not to suggest a Western conspiracy theory operating in the Middle East, but rather a systematic policy intended to keep the region politically, economically and strategically linked to the West, something that precludes any attempt at national sovereignty Nasser-style of the 1960s, or pro-1979 Iranian style that resists integration with the West. In short, destabilization makes perfect sense if one considers that its goal is to keep the region dependent on the West.
US Divide and Conquer Policy in Syria and Iraq
To demonstrate the logic of US destabilization policy, we need to focus on the US-led interference and intervention, not to demonize the US and the West, or deflect focus from internal political problems and regional conflicts, or to imply that the US and its allies are solely responsible for all the divisions among Muslims who are no different than Christians when it comes to sources of divisions. Having engaged in many wars since the founding of Islam, Muslims are hardly strangers to conflict; not much different in this respect than the Western Christians. In so far as wars go, it is Christians have been responsible for some of the bloodiest conflicts from the era of the Crusades to the present, mostly against each other over land, ethnicity, spheres of influence, military, and political hegemony. Therefore, Muslims hardly have monopoly on divisions, considering that the bloody history of the West, wars between nations as well as civil wars.
Having said this, it is hypocritical for Western politicians and the media and analysts that reflect mainstream view to argue that Muslims create political problems entirely on their own, or to even argue that the whole Middle East-West conflict is rooted in a clash of civilizations owing to religious/cultural issues. There were no Muslims during the Vietnam War when the US became involved in a covert war (CIA operations via AIR AMERICA) in Laos and Cambodia and backed the Khmer Rouge because Washington was losing the military conflict with Vietnam. Just as the US created a catastrophic situation in Cambodia because of its covert operations intended to win the unwinnable Vietnam War, similarly, almost half a century later the US has created another monstrous mess in the Middle East because it has been trying unsuccessfully to bring down Syria’s regime and determine the regional balance of power where Iran is at the core.
One result is the Jihadist offshoot of al-Qaeda known as ISIS, Islamic State in Iraq and Syria. Part of the blame for the people failing to unite behind their governments must go to the regimes in Damascus and Baghdad for pursuing clientist and policies that are divisive and neglect to serve the broader public interest, especially failing to give hope to their citizens. In this sense, Western critics are correct to argue that the governments in question ultimately have the responsibility for their policies that only feed secterianism. At the same time, however, it is reprehensible and tragic that Washington, London and apologists of Western imperialism without any sense of self-criticism insist that the ongoing civil war and rebel activity is a problem solely created by the Arab political leadership.
Perhaps I should not be amazed at the arrogance of Western politicians and analysts when it comes to the Middle East. After all, the Nixon administration that created the tragedies of Laos and Cambodia in the 1960s and early 1970s, turned around and condemned the very monstrosity it had created, blaming the very people it had been supporting against Vietnam. Even more hypocritical, the US covertly cooperated with the Khmer Rouge remnants during the Reagan administration at a time that the US decried terrorist activity by Iran, a country with it also collaborated in order to undermine Nicaragua’s duly-elected regime.
In November 1986, the world discovered that the US had made an arms sales deal to Iran to finance the Nicaraguan Contra rebels and in exchange for release of US hostages held by Lebanese-based Hezbollah. Despite the numerous legal violations, including the Boland Amendment prohibiting arms sales to the contras, as well as failure of congressional oversight in this Watergate-style scandal involving a number of top Reagan administration officials, the bottom line is that the US accomplished nothing other than to destabilize both Central America and the Middle East through its double-dealing that violated US laws.
In mid-June 2014, I am amazed that the US as well as European governments publicly announced that they have done all they can to “help Iraq”, just as they “helped” Afghanistan. Therefore, it is time for the government in Baghdad to defend itself if it is under attack by ISIS Jihadists, instead of asking for outside assistance. Never mind that that these same ISIS Jihadists were doing the bidding of the US and its EU partners in Syria and are now on a campaign to carve out a larger Islamic fundamentalist state in the Levant. Never mind that the US has been on the side of Jihadists when it serves its purpose and labeling them terrorists otherwise, a story that has been dragging since the 1980s with the US-backed Mujahedin in Afghanistan fighting against the secular regime backed by the Soviets.
It seems that the history of US double-dealing is repeating itself in Iraq where there was a secular regime under Saddam Hussein, albeit a dictatorship sometime aided by the US in the 1980s against the war with Iran. When Saddam became too independent of US policy, the latter decided to topple him because of the possession of non existing weapons of mass destruction and ties to al-Qaeda. In June 2014, President Obama claimed: “We can’t fix Iraq”. This is indeed ironic coming from the US that is responsible for destroying Iraq during the first decade of the 21st century at a cost of close to one trillion dollars to the US taxpayer and a catastrophic cost to the people and country of Iraq.
Contradictions of US Goals in the MIDDLE EAST
From the Iranian Revolution to the present, the US and its junior strategic partners have been trying to determine the balance of power in the Middle East based on the early Cold War model that divided spheres of influence, a model itself based on 19th century European and American Imperialism in Asia. The contention of the US and its partners has been that the goals of interference at the very least and military intervention at worst is to help the region economically by integrating it into the Western-based market economy, promote “freedom and democracy” and secular institutions accordingly, and securing strategic alliances that help stabilize the region as part of the Western zone. Public statements notwithstanding, we must judge policy based on its results rather than rhetoric.
The question if the US and its partners have achieved any of their publicly-stated goals, including stabilizing the Middle East can only be judged by the empirical results on the ground.
At first glance, one may be convinced that the US wants to destroy Islamic fanaticism and engender stability in the Middle East as part of the well-publicized anti-terrorism campaign. That is only at first glance and if one does not analyze the events of the last three decades to determine if the US and its allies have achieved their goals or actually strengthened Islamic fanaticism and destabilized the Muslim areas from Pakistan to the Middle East and North Africa to parts of sub-Sahara Africa. The question is why destabilize these areas that are increasingly integrated under Chinese economic influence and to some degree Indian? Is the answer:
1) to help strengthen Israel that sees Iran as a rival?
2) to weaken these countries so the US can feel free to determine the balance of power and exert influence against its rivals Iran, Russia and China?
3) to help spread freedom and democracy and the principles of “American-style” free market economic principles as part of the ongoing globalization process?
4) to have a presence there because China and to a lesser extent India, Russia and Iran will continue to play an influential role in the 21st century?
There is something seriously wrong when the Islamic Republic of Iran is trying to maintain Middle East stability by respecting the status quo, while the US and its allies that accuse Iran of destabilizing the region is the major cause of instability today and in the past. There is also something seriously wrong that the US is in the odd position of having no choice but to selectively go along with Iran’s goal of stabilizing Iraq from ISIS jihadists, something that is an admission of US policy failure in Syria. On 16 June 2014, the US accepted Iran’s proposal for collaboration to stabilize Iraq by working together against ISIS. On 29 January 2002, President George W. Bush made the following statement in his “State of the Union Address”: “Iran aggressively pursues these weapons [of mass destruction] and exports terror, while an unelected few repress the Iranian people’s hope for freedom. … States like these, and their terrorist allies, constitute an axis of evil, arming to threaten the peace of the world.”
If Iran was the Axis of Evil and the core of world terrorism 12 years ago, why collaborate with that country to stabilize Iraq today? If Bush was uttering war propaganda in order to secure public support for US military solutions to manufactured crises of Islamic terrorism, how does the current ISIS issue reveal the degree of US policy failures? In response to US journalists and other apologists of neo-colonialism promoting Iraq’s breakup into several zones, I wrote in 2012 that the assumption that governments outside of Iraq have the arrogance to decide the kind of regime in Iraq, Afghanistan, and other Muslim nations constitutes indisputable proof of imperialist thinking. What I could not possibly predict in 2012 was that the fiendish scheme to divide Iraq would actually backfire on the US and its allies, resulting in the situation of summer 2014 when Jihadists more extreme that al-Qaeda are threatening to draw the map of the Middle East. The assumption that the US reserves the right to determine regimes and deny national sovereignty to countries around the world is an integral part of Pax Americana legacy and demonstrates that there is a total absence of democratic thinking and a double-standard when treating European countries versus Muslim and/or Third World.
At the same time, there is a certain degree of simplemindedness about this approach because the evolution of events has proved that backing Jihadists in Syria not only causes enormous problems with Russia and China, but it places in jeopardy the map of the Middle East that the US and its partners, including Israel wanted to draw. Just as the US created al-Qaeda when the USSR invaded Afghanistan in order to sustain in power a pro-Soviet regime in the 1980s, similarly it has now created an offshoot of al-Qaeda threatening the Middle East. If the goal of the US was to determine the balance of power in the Middle East and exploit its resources, then it has failed miserably toward that goal and it has only created more problems for itself. ISIS Sources of Financing and Western Media Coverage
One key question that mainstream organizations are now asking about ISIS sources of financing is why the US tolerated its closest allies – Kuwait, Saudi Arabia and the Gulf States, all Sunni and all under a form of dictatorship – to have millions of dollars flowing from wealthy individuals into ISIS. One reason that the US refused to listen to Iraqi premier Nouri al-Maliki about ISIS financing sources is because the enemies of the Jihadist offshoot of al-Qaeda are Iran and Syria that the US and its junior partners also deem enemies. Therefore, it was not until very recently that the issue of financing sources for ISIS began to concern the US because it realized the imminent break up of Iraq and the consolidation of Jihadists who are greater enemies than Iran or Syria. Just as the US had turned a blind eye to ISIS financing until very recently, the Western media hardly covered ISIS, and even today with the world-wide publicity it only focuses on the organization’s role in Iraq and not the devastation it has caused in Syria. The Jihadist “foreign legion” in Syria that included ISIS was not a problem for the Western media because Western governments advocated Assad’s overthrow and the weakening of Iran.
There are reports that ISIS, mainly backed by Saudi Salafi-Wahabi elements have been spreading terror mot just among Shias, but anyone standing in their way, including Sunnis. Yet, the media has not revealed anything about the Saudi-ISIS connection and the US indirect links to ISIS. Now that the destabilization problem seems to be affecting US interests, the Western mainstream media has changed its tune and following the main line of their governments. One of the most blatant lies to come out of Washington and repeated by the media as truth is that the US intelligence agenies were taken by surprise when Jihadists moved in so aggressively against Iraq, coming so closely to the capital. This is a blatant lie because the Pentagon and CIA, among other agencies had tons of information not just about the movements of the Jihadists, but also their sources of financing and their ambitions to establish an autonomous state. In other words, the media is now continuing its distraction campaign, blaming lack or faulty intelligence, misrepresentations of analysts’ reports, and other such details intended to cover up the obvious role of the government to keep silent about the Jihadists until they became a serious threat to Iraq – against remaining still silent about Syria.
Credibility Deficit in US Foreign Policy
In June 2014, the US and its NATO partners have found themselves in the unusual position of pondering to send military assistance to the Shiite Iraqi regime in order to stabilize it and protect the oil fields that Jihadists coming in from northwest Syria are threatening. Just a few days before the ISIS crisis in Iraq erupted, Obama candidly admitted that it would be naïve to assume that the US can fight global terrorism on its own, proposing instead a partnership and putting $5 billion on the table toward that end. Although the new “terrorism” assistance program is in addition to others, it is extraordinarily naïve to believe that these programs mostly aiming at police/military solutions would be any more effective than spending one trillion dollars in Iraq and Afghanistan chasing ghosts that have returned with real guns and threaten the very regimes the US set up through military means.
An offshoot of al-Qaeda, the ISIS (Sunni Muslim) insurgents are threatening to take control major parts of Iraq and disrupt oil flows. ISIS – Islamic State of Iraq and Syria – has already seized Nineveh that includes Mosul, disrupting cities and villages and planning to head south to complete their conquest of more territory. ISIS Jihadists that the US and its allies, including Turkey assisted against the Syrian government have now turned against their former supporters. This is something that many analysts, including Turks, had been warning would take place, but the US-EU-Turkey agenda was to bring down Assad at any cost when such a prospect was extremely difficult because Russia, Iran and China were behind Assad.
Although Iran’s Revolutionary Guard and the semi-autonomous Kurdistan Peshmerga have been helping Iraq against Sunni Jihadists, preventing them from taking over the strategic city of Kirkuk, the government in Baghdad has appealed for broader assistance to preserve the country’s territorial integrity. The approach from the EU and US is not to repeat the mistakes of the past by becoming involved. Iran has suggested helping in cooperation with the US, a prospect that entails the US would now have to be with its arch-enemy in the region, and it would mean that the US finally recognizes Iran has been and will continue to determine the regional balance of power.
The Jihadists that the US helped to create in the Syrian civil war have seized major towns and oil refineries are roughly 60 miles from the Iraqi capital, prompting the US and its NATO allies to consider yet another form of intervention. This in itself is an admission of policy failure, as they are scrambling to justify why ‘limited intervention’ is the only option and it is up to Iraq to solve the problem that the US created. The irony of all this is the US intervention this time resembles the manner that the US helped to create al-Qaeda in its nascent stage in the 1980s when the Soviets were helping the secular regime in Afghanistan that the US wanted destroyed and replaced by a pro-Western one. Meanwhile, the government in Afghanistan among other governments in the area are seriously concerned that what has taken place in Syria and Iraq can easily take place in their own countries.
There are several things to consider about the US invasion of Iraq and its consequences until the ISIS crisis.
The larger issue here is the credibility gap in US foreign policy, considering that ISI would not exist if it were not for the US and its allies trying to remove Assad from power. ISIS was made possible by the US and its allies, including Sunni-dominated Turkey, Qatar and Saudi Arabia. The core of the issue here is what journalist or analyst with a good command of at least some of the facts in this case tries to cover up the role of the US and its allies in this latest destabilizing force in the Middle East, and the credibility gap in US foreign policy?
In a recent essay entitled “Corporate-Sponsored Terrorism: Death Squads in Colombia”, I noted the glaring contradictions in US policy not just in the domain of “terrorism” that has been largely manufactured, but in US policy in general. The Middle East situation demonstrates the US is pursuing policies that backfire and force it into a compromising position against its own stated goals, including removing the Assad regime, weakening Iran’s role to determine the balance of power, and crippling terrorism. However, we see a similar pattern, perhaps much more dangerous because Russia has nuclear weapons, in the case of Ukraine where US policy is totally incoherent and justified not on the basis of any tangible real interests, but of containing Russia; a policy that only strengthens Russia internally and forces China to assist it more than it wishes.
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Global poverty and the UN millennium development goals program
September 7th, 2015By John Kofas.
4) Reduce child mortality.
5) Maternal health.
6) Combating HIV/AIDS, malaria, and other diseases.
7) Environmental sustainability.
8) Global partnership for development.
To secure monetary and development loans, debtor nations must meet criteria designed to maintain a very strong market economy, namely, domestic and foreign capital enjoying the support and protection of the state because ‘national interest’ and economic development is equated with private capital, while the enemy is the public sector and workers. Financial dependence is invariably linked to trade, manufacturing, transportation, and service sectors dependence, which does not permit for the less developed nations to emerge from perpetual poverty that a substantial segment of their population is suffering. In the absence of addressing such structural causes of income inequality, the UN-MDG program cannot possibly succeed.
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War on workers: Anti-labor political, social, economic and cultural forces
September 3rd, 2015
By Jon Kofas.
From the 1940s when labor was at the zenith of its influence in society until today, we have seen a very radical transformation that took place as a result of government policy intended to strengthen capital at the expense of labor. In order to accomplish this goal, there was a much broader institutional effort where mainstream media was at the core of the anti-labor campaign. Whereas during the Roosevelt and Truman presidencies newspapers devoted articles on labor affairs, by the end of the century it is almost impossible to find any newspaper, TV, radio, or web page devoting any articles on labor issues. By contrast, there is no end to media outlets devoting all kinds of news and analysis on business matters, as though business does not require workers to run it but somehow runs itself and workers have simply vanished from the face of the earth.
The value system of the bourgeois society is reflected in our daily institutional dealings. This issue was perfectly captured when Pope Francis wondered why it is that media goes into a hysteria mode when the stock market drop by a couple of percentage points, but never mention that a homeless woman dies on a park bench in the middle of winter in New York city? What does it say about society when its entire focus is on markets that benefit the small percentage of the rich, while the many problems of the many are ignored?
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NGO’s: Agents of globalization or grassroots humanitarianism?
September 2nd, 2015By Jon Kofas.
In the last three decades, a number of books and articles have been published about Non-Governmental Organizations (NGOs). Some focus on the marginal impact the NGOs have because they work within an existing institutional framework responsible for the absence of social justice. While some works praise the kind of unique services of NGOs to people in need, others are critical, stressing that NGOs’ goal is integration into an international political economy and institutional structure rooted in inequality and injustice. While it is beyond doubt that there are NGOs serving worthy humanitarian causes and acting as instruments of alleviating misery among the poor, refugees, and others in need, there are many more such organizations acting as instruments of globalization, and in some cases aggressive neo-imperialism.
Are all NGOs truly non-governmental and politically neutral, voluntary non-profit and humanitarian interested only in the poor, the refugees, the minorities, those unprotected by the institutional mainstream? Do NGOs serve society’s various needs at the grassroots level with the ultimate goals of promoting humanitarian needs, human rights, environmental protection, and social justice as they claim? Is the definition of NGO a grassroots non-profit local, national or international organization performing voluntary services for humanitarian purposes, or has it expanded to include what are in essence stealthy lobbying, media and communications, intelligence gathering, and business promotion groups?
Are all NGOs truly independent and practice transparency as they want the public to believe, or do they serve very sinister policy goals of big business and governments to the detriment of different countries and different segments in any given society, while preaching humanitarianism? How trusting should the public be when so many NGOs around the world have been caught in fraud and corruption, used as fronts for money laundering and other illegal activities, ranging from narcotics to arms facilitations or transfers?
Do NGO’s emerge at the grassroots level to serve emergency needs, and do they all have a progressive orientation as they want people to believe? Why did NGOs expand so rapidly after the fall of Communist regimes in the early 1990s, and how do they reflect the era of globalization under neoliberal policies of the past three decades? What role do NGOs play in molding public opinion and why do mainstream media present them as non-partisan when most collaborate with government and business to shape public opinion into accepting globalization, Western-style institutions and thorough integration into the Western spheres of influence?
In this very brief essay, my focus is on the top-down structure of many NGOs that have been established to serve the interests of specific political and business interests, thus playing a counterrevolutionary instead of a progressive role in society. Through the manipulation of mass public opinion in the age of social media and high tech communications, many NGOs are nothing more than agents of promoting globalization.
NGOs – Humanitarians or covert agents of government and big business?
Generally speaking, the average person reading or hearing about NGOs assumes that these are all about helping starving children in sub-Sahara Africa, providing clean water for the impoverished masses in rural areas of developing nations, setting up medical facilities to help the very poor in Central America and Caribbean, helping refugees out of Iraq and Syria, etc. It is true that there are many such organizations, including OXFAM, Danish Refugee Council, “Doctors without Borders”, and others across the world that are devoted to helping those in dire need, that are truly humanitarian and deserve the name non-governmental.
These NGOs deserve support of all people because they are delivering small miracles every day, miracles that governments and United Nations agencies cannot or would not deliver. These prototypes were the honest NGOs before the proliferation after the collapse of Communism that along with it created the massive wave of corrupt and sinister organizations hiding behind the NGO name.
Large segments of the public in many countries have little faith in government because it serves narrow socioeconomic interests. There is equal skepticism toward big businesses and the media that caters to the political and socioeconomic elites. This is the case as much in smaller countries as it is in the US where the poor and minorities do not feel that government represents them, while media is nothing more than a propaganda machine.
To fill the credibility gap that exists among the masses and to mold mass public opinion, NGOs have become a great way for government and business to promote their agendas. There are NGOs that governments and businesses set up, or fund in order to promote a political, military or economic agenda at home or abroad. With the advent of what the US in the early 1990s called the “New World Order”, namely a single integrated world market under the preeminent economic, political and military leadership of the US, there was an NGO explosion to help achieve those goals. The goals included spreading Western-style political institutions and ideology, preventing socialist or nationalist policies from taking hold to obstruct American-led globalization and neoliberalism, removing all obstacles to globalization by making use of the media and social organizations, including social networks in social media in recent years.
Because NGOs are rarely questioned and people assume they are non-partisan, and above nations and politics, what better way to pursue a covert agenda than through an NGO that is above suspicion? What better way than through an NGO, which people believe is progressive and humanitarian, to pursue a reactionary agenda intended to serve political and socioeconomic elites? This category of NGOs has a history of corruption, questionable activity with regard to moving money around illegally, transferring it if not laundering it outright from various sources, becoming involved in staged uprisings and rebel movements, utilizing social media and communications as part of elaborate covert operations to undermine or overthrow governments, and other such activities one would never imagine as the business of an NGO.
There are NGOs operating as fronts for US Agency for International Development (USAID) and major US foundations linked to billionaires whose goal is to secure market share around the world. Many of these NGOs were causing havoc in Russia until Putin tried to curtail their operations. However, Russia is hardly the exception, considering that NGOs with similar funding and goals operate throughout the world from India to Brazil, from the Philippines to Ukraine.
Using NGOs as fronts, the US and its allies have used anti-nuclear and environmental NGOs to stop nuclear plants. This is partly because the contracts for products and services are not awarded to Western corporations, but also because of geopolitical considerations. In July 2014, the Indian government announced that NGOs were fronts for foreign interests undermining the national economic interests and the country’s security. It is well known that India has a record of many human rights violations that the media has publicized. It is not as well known, however, that NGOs operating in India are using human rights, environmental issues and other very significant humanitarian matters to conceal their covert role in subverting the national economy as the finance minister announced in July 2014.
One may argue that permitting NGOs to operate freely is a testament to a nation’s democracy. However, there is the question of drawing the line between pressure groups acting as lobbyists, and non-profits acting as humanitarian NGOs. Would the US permit an al-Qaeda-funded NGO parading as a human rights group defending the rights of Muslim prisoners in Guantanamo? Would the UK permit an Indian NGO undermining its energy sector unless UK bought more equipment from India? Would the UK permit an Iranian NGO promoting a national nuclear energy policy?
In October 2012, NBC news published a story about a New York-based NGO claiming to oppose Iran’s nuclear development program. Calling itself “United Against Nuclear Iran” (UANI), it is staffed by former US diplomats and intelligence officers, as well as former Israeli intelligence agents. UANI presents itself to the public as a peace-loving and a non-governmental organization opposed to Iran developing nuclear weapons. However, UANI has no problem with the nuclear weapons of Israel. A US-Israeli propaganda and psychological warfare machine, UANI’s goal is to stop Western companies from doing business with Tehran, applying some of the same tactics as human rights organizations did when they opposed multinationals doing business with the apartheid state of South Africa before Mandela.
Presenting their groups as citizen advocacy with an altruistic agenda above governments and politics, NGOs are a very clever way to push through political, economic, strategic and other agendas that on the surface appear to be for “the good of society”. Enjoying the cover of legitimacy as guardians of people’s rights, it is very difficult to put an NGO on the defensive in the absence of hard evidence about its real agenda.
Despite the aura of legitimacy, there are NGOs that are conduits not just for governments seeking to undermine another regime, but for money laundering from government budgets going to the pockets of politicians as well as non-government individuals and organizations. Officials in India, Philippines, Greece and other countries have NGO’s used for money laundering and other fraudulent operations. Receiving NGO laundered funds as part of elaborate schemes in clientist politics is not nearly as unusual as it sounds. Even bankrupt Greek government was using NGOs of various types to reward financially certain politicians and favorite clients of the ruling parties.
Some of the NGOs publicly stated purpose was so ludicrous that it would be humorous if it were not criminal. According to a Greek government report on NGOs, nine out of ten of the 3000 organizations were engaged in fraud and corruption involving millions transferred from government funds into NGO budgets and back into the pockets of certain individuals linked to the ruling parties. The Greek foreign ministry funneled millions through NGOs for projects that never took place, including some that never took place. Some money apparently went to bribes for removal of land mines supposedly carried out in Iraq, Lebanon and Serbia, while other funds went for the purpose of reforestation not of Greece that can use it but of areas already fully forested!
The level of corruption that existed in Greece during the 1990s and 2000s also took place in other countries, including the Philippines. Receiving public funds, NGOs would then turn around and use them not for the publicly stated purpose but to line the pockets of politicians. Millions in public funds designated for agricultural development simply wound up in the hands of a handful of people connected with corrupt NGOs. The situation in the Philippines appears similar to that of Greece, and both are similar to that of Brazil where the government began a crack down to distinguish between NGOs involved in corruption and public distortion and those doing an honest day’s work as they publicly stated.
The subversive use and manipulation of NGOs by governments and corporations is a distortion of publicly-proclaimed goals. For example, Israeli arms manufacturers sell land mines used in various conflicts. At the same time, the same manufacturers work with NGO’s to have the land mines removed. This is example illustrates the nefarious use of NGOs, but it also reveals the unseen and unpublicized role of these organizations that are more complicated than they appear on the surface.
NGOs, the former Soviet Republics, China and India
We have seen just a few examples of NGOs in several countries where their role in society has nothing to do with the promotion of public welfare, the poor or the environment, but in essence all to do with money laundering, fraud, political, economic and geopolitical goals. This raises the question about NGOs as a counter-revolutionary force in society, rather than progressive as they claim. Is their goal to advance social justice and national sovereignty or to minimize social justice and national sovereignty, thus advancing the interests of large international and domestic wealthy interests and foreign governments’ geopolitical agenda? Nowhere are these questions more significant to address than in the Ukraine and all the former Soviet republics.
NGOs with questionable goals and modes of operation are in many countries from the US to developing nations. Russia after the collapse of the USSR has at least 400,000 NGOs, and probably as many as one million – registered and non-registered – carrying out political commercial and other activity behind the cover of a non-governmental organization. Russian officials believe that roughly one-fourth of these NGOs are foreign funded, using the cover of human rights, environmental protection, and consumer advocacy to pursue their agendas unrelated to what they declare. Utilizing the connections with government agencies and mainstream media outlets, directly or indirectly-funded government NGOs essentially exert what some analysts call “soft power” – “co-opting through their organizations.
When the Communist bloc fell, the US and western European NGOs played a key role in infiltrating the newly-independent republics with the goal of helping to integrate them in the West and preventing their dependence on the Russian Federation, and to a lesser extent China and Iran. Western-funded NGOs were involved in manufacturing grassroots movements in the Ukraine so that the country dependent on Russia for energy and trade would become a Western satellite that would provide NATO with the stranglehold it wants on Russia’s border as part of a containment policy. Although the Western-funded NGOs actual goal is to secure Western corporate infiltration of the Ukraine, Georgia and other former Soviet republics, the alleged purpose is humanitarian and human-rights-oriented democracy. The publicly-stated goal used was and remains a cover to conceal the real goals of promoting globalization and geopolitical influence.
The Ukrainian upheaval of 2013-2014, culminating in the overthrow of president Yanukovych in February 2014, and the ensuing separatist movement by Russian minorities in the Eastern provinces has brought the role of the NGOs to the attention of some of the more discriminating analysts. The two-year old rebel movement in Syria against Assad also involved Western NGO’s working to fund and guide rebels on the ground, along with other players, including Saudi and Gulf States elements. The goal here was and remains regime change, even if it meant indirectly assisting jihadists that would eventually turn against the West. Similarly, NGOs are operating everywhere from Venezuela and Cuba where the US wants to see regime change to parts of Africa, Middle East, and Asia where the West wants to have a preeminent political, economic and military influence.
In March 2013, Russia decided to curtail the operations of NGOs by introducing legislation that would have them registered as foreign agents. Backing the legislation, Putin stated: “Whether these organizations want it or not, they become an instrument in the hands of foreign states that use them to achieve their own political objectives. This situation is unacceptable. This law is designed to prevent interference in Russia’s internal political life by foreign countries and create transparent conditions for the financing of nongovernmental organizations.”
The spirit of the Russian legislation is not very different from what India has tried to do facing somewhat similar problems with NGOs. More restrictive than India and Russia, China had several hundred thousand NGOs operating under different registrations. Like Russia and India, China has argued that the US and other governments use NGOs to infiltrate institutions, manipulate and mold public opinion, influence policies and destabilize countries with the sole purpose of economic, political, cultural and strategic advantage.
Not just in the former Soviet republics, including troubled, Ukraine, but in China and India NGOs have multiplied by the hundreds of thousands pushing an agenda on everything from varieties of Christian fundamentalism to commercial products, all under the convenient cover of freedom and democracy, and humanitarian assistance.
It is important to note that when European colonists infiltrated Africa, they sent in the clergy to convert the natives, then the merchants and finally the military to protect priests and merchants who enjoyed protection under a formalized colony. NOGs are the instruments of 21st century neo-imperialist policy with a soft front and a very hard core of commercial, political and military interests behind the soft face of human rights.
An example of the NGOs role in neo-imperialism is a case of Russian national Alexei Pankin who ran a USAID-funded media-influence program with $10.5 million coming from billionaire George Soros.
In a published interview, Pankin admitted that his NGOs included US intelligence officers. Russian police have cracked down on numerous non-governmental organizations receiving foreign government funding, an act that means they are in fact foreign agents by definition even in the US. One way that the US has used to circumvent the direct ties with NGOs is to establish funding through foundations including the National Endowment for Democracy, Ford, Rockefeller, Soros, etc. The money trail may start with the foundations, but behind them are the government and the largest multination corporations interested in the integration of former Soviet republics into the Western sphere of influence in every sense from cultural and political to economic and strategic.
The role of U.S.-funded NGOs in trying to impose regime change in a number of Latin American, African, Asian and Eurasian countries has been controversial because people have one impression of NGOs when in fact that impression has nothing to do with the reality. Although NGOs operate on a large scale in the former Soviet republics, their role is hardly known because the Western media does not conduct investigative reporting to expose their sources of funding, their tactics and goals. On the contrary, the media focuses on what appears to be grassroots movements for progressive change, without mentioning that behind the movements are NGO’s and that the movements often contain extreme reactionary elements. This is exactly what took place in Ukraine where neo-Nazis were part of the pro-West movement.
Besides US and EU governments, the IMF and World Bank as well as large corporations funding private foundations are behind the NGOs in the former Soviet republics with the ultimate goal of thoroughly integrating them into the Western orbit of influence – militarily, politically, and economically. The International Center for Policy Studies in Ukraine, an organization devoted to integrate Ukraine into the West, takes pride that the country had more than 40,000 NGOs involving citizens that took place in the Orange Revolution. Needless to say, when a revolution is top down, paid for and manufactured, it hardly represents the grassroots and it hardly has a chance at success, as we have seen in the last two years in civil-war torn Ukraine. This raises the question of how the West uses NGOs to stage revolutions for counterrevolutionary purposes, while all along projecting the impression to the public that the goal is human rights, freedom and democracy.
NGOs can play a vital role in monitoring the abuses of governments and violations of civil rights and human rights. They can also play a significant role assisting in emergency situations with epidemics, famine, refugees, and environmental disasters, economic, social and scientific development, and other such causes that promote the welfare of people and the planet. No doubt, the people involved in NGOs come from the professional middle class and represent a value system and perspectives of the bourgeois society, while the people on the receiving end are invariably working class and peasants. As long as the needs of people are met, the civil society concept is fine. However, when the purpose is to coopt the masses into a political system and consumerist culture, when the purpose is to prevent progressive forces from achieving social justice instead of helping them, then civil society is nothing but an instrument of imperialism.
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US college costs in 2030 and its significance for society
August 20th, 2015
By Jon Kofas.
Introduction
The cost of higher education has been rising steadily in the past four decades, essentially doubling in real terms from 1970 to 2010, and it is expected to skyrocket by 2030. This will not be limited to the US, but it is expected to be a global phenomenon. Moreover, the high cost of college education will coincide with a massive surplus of college graduates and very difficult economic conditions, unless the current neo-liberal model of development is replaced with a mixed economy that produces new wealth and is not parasitic as is finance capitalism resting on the state for constant support and periodic bailouts. If higher education is a mirror of society as well as the source for change and progress, is it time to consider new models that will best serve society and not just a very narrow segment linked to the corporate structure?
1. Where is the cost of education head and what are the causes of high cost?
In just 18 years from now, the average cost for an elite private university could be as much as $130,428 a year, while the cost for a state university could be as much as $57,609, assuming an average annual rise of 7% during the period in question. The situation isn’t much better if you go the public route. The price tag includes room and board, but no beer and books that are essential to survive four years of higher education. Of course, one could assume an annual rise in costs of 5%, which would drop the cost from $130K, to $92K for private school, and from $57K to $41K for state college; still a significant amount for a family that wants to educate more than one child.
As a former university professor, I always heard the college administration argue that the costs of higher education follow the costs of medical care in the US, and that the rest of the world then emulates the American ‘business’ model of education and health, at least in some respect. This prospect should concern citizens, largely because it means that a fair percentage of the population will be excluded from having access to higher education owing to cost, just as is the case in health care and likely to continue.
College costs have been rising well above the inflation rate in the last six decades, but the big rise linked to the ‘business model’ of higher education is the result of the Reagan-Thatcher neo-liberal era whose legacy the Western World and other countries continue to emulate to this day; in short, it is the result of slashing funding from the welfare state and the concept of providing access to education to all, so that higher education, especially quality schools, is increasingly limited to those who are rich, with only token minorities and poor to prove they are not elitists!
Who is to blame for the high cost of college? Taxpayers that want low taxes; college administrators that have created massive expensive and corrupt bureaucracies; parents that do not save enough for college; politicians that allocate smaller funds to colleges; societal values that do not appreciate higher education; college professors who are under-worked and overpaid; banks that make moeny off student loans; all of the above and other?
2. Where is the money going?
In 2010 in the US, college students owed more than one trillion dollars for loans, or about one-third more than credit card debt for the entire nation. Who benefits from this massive business of college loans and where is the money going?
One could argue that large schools with top research labs and highly paid scholars justifiably cost more. This argument would be valid only if the cost in non-research four-year and community colleges would not rise as rapidly as in the top schools. So where is the money going? One answer is that administrators whose compensation was not much than a highly paid full professor in 1970, receive pay packages with all the perks comparable to a CEO of a small corporation. The idea that there are college administrators making more money than many US and most European corporate executives should be alarming to the public.
That college administrators receive high compensation is comparable to administrators in charity organizations receiving the bulk of the funds received to run the organization. Even more alarming, the only accountability of administrators is to politicians and business leaders, regardless of effectiveness of the campus. As long as funds pour into the campus, that translates into good administration, without actually looking at the quality of education students receive. Mechanism of accountability resting with political parties and business leaders means that higher education cannot possibly be merit based as it is advertised to the public. This holds true as much for Harvard University that has a history of admitting the children of the rich and famous and produces some of the most tyrannical rulers and ruthless business executive on earth, as it does for the local community college where a powerful political machine and business bosses decide on the role of the college.
Colleges and universities have become highly bureaucratized and administration salaries bloated, while part-time faculty have skyrocketed. Today’s college administrators are not rooted in scholarship not do they have any commitment to creativity and scholarship that actually impede their role as a ‘business-like’ executive. Instead, they are “business managers,” who see themselves in an antagonistic relationship with the faculty, the enemy of the administration, and they see students as ‘paying customers’, while business contributors are the real ‘asset’ of the campus and not the faculty and students.One reason for all of this is that the political and business elites want a business model higher education. Given that the share of the state’s contribution to colleges and universities has been declining steadily since 1960, and especially after the Reagan-Thatcher era, it was inevitable that colleges and universities would turn to the private sector for money and in return the private sector would demand higher education be shaped to fit the precise needs of business.
3. Does higher cost of college mean high quality of education?
University and college administrators who command very high salaries and numerous perks insist that the cost of higher education is justified by the ‘value’, which to them means ‘cash-value returned’ over a lifetime based on averages. Even if that is true today, which it is not, if we break down the college graduates and not lump them together and average them out, will the same hold true in 2030 and beyond? If total college debt in 2010 was $1 trillion, how much will it be in 2030, and how many years of their lives will graduates have to devote to pay it off, and in what career fields?
We may be transitioning from mass consumer-mass producer education to elites education, and we could very well come full circle in another generation; that is to say, return to the days of when universities were created in Europe and the well-to-do middle class sent off its sons to secure an education so they could secure a respectable career and status in society. Of course, modern technology makes it possible to become self-educated without ever attending college, but that too implies a life of leisure associated with some wealth. Even so, as admirable as self-education may be, it is not a ticket to securing a career for which college degrees are essential.
Does the fact that students are trained to be good test takers make them well-rounded in a solid university education that includes subjects as diverse as arts appreciation and biochemistry, or are they so focused on doing well in their ‘major’ while they are fairly and deliberately oblivious to all other subjects that would contribute to their self-discovery and creativity.
4. How does higher education benefit students and society?
Are colleges and universities adding value to the quality of education to the students and to society because tuition is rising, or are the beneficiaries administrators with high-paying salaries? Articles and books dealing with the high cost of higher education is the abuse and corruption in college administration and the bureaucratized structure of colleges and universities. Another criticism is that along with tuition inflation, there has been grade inflation from the top universities to the community college. Without a corresponding value added to the student’s education, neither the student nor society can possibly benefit from higher education that promotes itself as holding the Enlightenment ideals of meritocracy, but in reality not practicing what it preaches. The result is an undereducated college graduate who must receive more training either by pursuing a graduate degree or training in the field.
An even larger question is what will society do with all of the college educated people, given that the structure of the economy is not evolving to absorb applicants at the rate they are graduating. Whereas fifty years ago it was possible for a high school graduate to experience upward social mobility and move from a working class to a middle class background, that is not possible in the early 21st century and it will become even more difficult two decades from now. On the contrary, increasingly college graduates, even some with advanced degrees, find it difficult to secure employment in their chosen profession. The US Department of Labor notes that the average college graduate will change several careers in a lifetime; not necessarily a bad thing, assuming this is because the move is up and not down or parallel out of necessity.
While it is still true that the average college graduate will earn higher income than the average high school graduate, it is also true that in the past half century, especially in the past twenty years, the bulk of income gains have gone to an elite of college graduates, invariably with advanced degrees, especially in business.
This is fine, except that in the past twenty years wealth has been accumulated mostly through parasitic financial services – stock, bond, currency, bulk mortgage sales, and other financial product trades – rather than creating new wealth that would be able to create new jobs and new wealth for the next generation. College degrees have helped to create mostly a generation of people who are struggling to stay in the middle class and a few who are part of the top 10% making money mostly through parasitic enterprises. The question is what is the value of these people to society, and what does this say about their own values?
5.College education and the ‘Brain Drain’.
The brain drain is continuing and becoming even more pronounced with each contracting economic cycle.It costs enormous public wealth for India and Pakistan to train its doctors and engineers, but a large number leave their countries for wealthy nations, including US and Europe where they are well compensated. The same hold true for Russia and Eastern and Southern Europe that has seen its educated population leave for US, Canada, Australia, Germany and other wealthy nations. Each time there is a global economic contraction, as has been the case from 2008 until the present, a new wave of educated people, some of the most talented that could be helping their struggling nations, head for the wealthy countries. In short, college education that represents a major drain on society, especially in poor nations like India and Pakistan, to some degree benefits the wealthy nations that are mostly but not exclusively responsible for creating the structural conditions for economic contraction.
At the same time that the brain drain takes place, the poorer countries are slowly moving toward the American business (neo-liberal) privatization model of higher education. This model not only means excluding those at the bottom of the socioeconomic ladder from having access to higher education, it means that a segment of the prospective graduates will leave for the wealthy nations, thus perpetuating the vicious circle of the brain drain that is as old as imperialism.
6. Conclusions and prospects
Higher education emerged in the Renaissance as a result of society’s changing needs during a period of transition from a feudal/manorial structure to a mercantile urban-based structure that depended on long distance trade as well as commercial agriculture, animal husbandry, fisheries and mining. Society needed more doctors amid the plague and other epidemics, more lawyers to deal with an increasingly urban money-market economy, more chemists and mathematicians, more educated people to shape a new world. Although the irony of all this is that witch hunts ran parallel to the rise of higher education, progress in science led to progress in every sector from technology to military and political institutions and government bureaucracies that needed educated people for greater efficiency.
Ideally, higher education ought to serve the goal of self-discovery, creativity, and social responsibility and advancement. However, there is nothing wrong with higher education as a vehicle for a personal career, especially if that entails upward social mobility, even if the ideals are absent. What if today’s higher education does not translate to any of these goals, and it is simply a business like any other collecting prospective students and treating them as ‘paying customers’; and after they are no longer paying customers they are on their own holding debt and trying to compete with others in a saturated market of surplus graduates for jobs?
Higher education is in fact a mirror of society, a mirror of what it is today and where it is headed. Political and business elites should be very concerned with what they see in that mirror, sacrificing higher education for short-term profits, and sociopolitical conformity. If the solution is to come from any side, it cannot come from those responsible for the crisis in higher education as a business model, namely, from the politician and business elites, and least of all from college and university administrators who are more corrupt and ruthless than their political and business patrons. The solution can only come from the grassroots, from society itself that higher education is supposed to serve instead of exploiting it.
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“The Palestinian question and the US-Iran deal”
July 17th, 2015
By Jon Kofas.
Iran as the de facto Hegemonic Power in the Middle East
Does the US-Iran agreement (14 June 2015) that calls for Iran to abandon nuclear weapons ambitions in exchange for lifting of Western sanctions mean a new era in relations between the US and the Middle East? Syria, Turkey, and Egypt publicly praised the deal as a step forward because it would mean greater regional stability and greater economic integration that would benefit all the economies. The Palestinians are also hopeful that the international community would exert pressure on Israel for a political solution to settle the chronic dispute. Unlike Iran, however, the Palestinians have no leverage wile Israel enjoys enormous influence because the US is solidly behind it as it has been since the Truman presidency.
There are those who applaud the US for ignoring Israel and its extreme right-wing allies in the US that have done everything in their power to sabotage the negotiations between Iran and the West. Naturally, there are the pro-defense industry elements that regret these developments as much as those hiding behind a right wing ideology to justify animosity of any kind of rapprochement between the West and Iran, an Islamic republic that has been openly anti-West since 1979. Others see this deal as an opportunity to contain Israel from pursuing military adventures, as well as Saudi Arabia funding jihadists while claiming to support the struggle of the Palestinians but all along siding with Israel on its opposition to Iran as the major power that has a dominant voice to determine the regional balance of power.
No matter where one stands ideologically and politically, the Iran deal has sent a very strong signal across the world that the US and its EU partners finally acknowledge that Iran is the most important regional power in the Middle East after a power gap created by the US-led overt and covert military destruction of Iraq and Syria. After decades of trying to contain Iran and undermine it in every possible manner from economic sanctions to military action in surrounding countries, the US and its EU partners have finally acknowledged that Iran is the catalyst to the regional balance of power in the Middle East.
On major issues that include stabilizing Iraq and defeating the jihadist ISIS fanatics that the US and its Arab and Turkish allies helped to create in order to bring down Syria’s Assad regime it is important to have Iran’s cooperation. Moreover, it is futile to isolate Iran from the Western World, given the increasing global position of China that has cordial relations with Iran. In short, the strategic and economic benefits to the Western countries and multinational corporations are such that it was simply detrimental to their interests to continue the sanctions when it was possible to use them as a bargaining chip for preventing Iran developing nuclear weapons.
What does the Iran-US deal mean for the Palestinians? Israel was and remains adamantly against Iran-US rapprochement and has done everything it can to make sure it is never implemented. One reason is that it feels threatened, although it is Israel that actually possesses nuclear weapons today not Iran, and although the US guarantees its security. Israel simply does not want a US-Western acknowledgment that Iran is indeed the real regional power that has the capacity to contain its neighbors, including its arch enemy Saudi Arabia. The US, however, is driven by the reality of limited resources, including the prospect that foreign aid including aid to Israel must be trimmed back to realize savings to pay down the debt. In short, Israel sees the US as a less friendly than ever because Washington has failed to follow Tel Aviv in foreign policy, regardless of the US pledges about providing for Israel’s security.
Does the new role of Iran as the presumably acknowledged hegemonic power of the Middle East mean a settlement of the Palestinian Question? Some may believe so, just as they did when the Cold War ended when there was no reason to hide behind the East-West confrontation as a pretext to perpetuate the status quo as the permanent occupation of Palestinians by Israel. Certainly, the South African apartheid system came down, the Irish conflict ended, so why not a solution for the plight of the Palestinians after seven decades? On the surface, it certainly appears that the Iran deal works in favor of the Palestinians, but it actually strengthens Israel because it is on the same side as Saudi Arabia, Jordan, and the Gulf states, while Egypt is positioning itself to see what perks it can derive from any forthcoming deal on the Palestinian issue.
In the final analysis, major US and European corporations, top banks, airplane and energy, consumer product and pharmaceutical companies, all wanted to be a part of the rapidly growing Iranian economy in which China and Russia enjoy a role. In short, the benefits of integrating Iran are simply enormous for the 21st century. Can the same be true if Israel settles its chronic dispute with the Palestinians, or is it simply an issue of ensuring stability that defense contractors and right wing ideologues oppose in any case because this is contrary to their interests?
Israel and Human Rights
Is there a chance that Israel will stop violating the human rights of Palestinians because of the Iran-US deal? On the contrary, my guess is that Israel will become even harsher. World-wide moral support for the Palestinians on the part of people, organizations such as the United Nations, and governments is very nice, but it hardly constitutes leverage to move the process forward. Boycotting Israeli businesses in the same manner as US businesses boycotted South African businesses shortly before Mandela is more tangible and some companies are doing as much, but this too is not having much impact because it is not like the Western sanctions on Iran. Precisely because Israel is adamantly opposed to any change in the domestic or regional status quo, it is more likely to move in the direction of military confrontations with the Palestinians than a political one based on the Iran-US deal. This means more human rights violations, no matter what the UN and world community say about Israel.
On 23 July 2014, Navi Pillay, UN high commissioner for human rights, announced that Israel’s military action in Gaza during July may constitute a “war crime” because the targets were children and the demolition of houses. The UN Human Rights Council in Geneva has convened an emergency discussion on the matter. However, there is absolutely no doubt that the US will block any effort to bring to justice the war criminals, largely because Washington had given Israel the green light on the operations that resulted in war crimes.
There is no doubt that even the most monstrous human being that is still in possession of his faculties, a modicum of moral fiber, and just a touch of humanity would not admit that it is appropriate to kill children, that they are collateral damage victims, or any other excuse that we have heard from Tel Aviv and its supporters in the US and the West. This is not a lesson in moral absolutism, but at least human beings ought to agree on some basic principles, including killing of children is immoral and a war crime to be punished accordingly. The exact same principle is applied to all people, including Hamas when it too engages in killing Israeli children, and the same punishment must be accorded to that group as well for its war crimes. The World Court at the Hague has only proceeded with cases against Africans and some from the former Yugoslav Republic, leaving out anyone from the white-dominated Western World, thus making a mockery of the court.
At the root of this conflict is US complicity because of massive aid provided to Israel on a sustained basis, but also broader Western complicity that simply follows the US lead on Middle East policy. The other major issue is Arab indifference, largely because the West has been very successful in keeping the Arabs divided, and they have been using the Palestinian conflict largely as a pretext to maintain the status quo, while in essence cooperating with the US that always backs Israel no matter what war crimes it commits. In addition, Saudi Arabia sees Iran as an arch-enemy largely because it realizes that Iran is the hegemonic regional power. Therefore, Saudi Arabia has been financing jihadists in Syria and Yemen with the aim of undermining Iran, a futile endeavor that has gone nowhere, except to enrich Western defense contractors selling weapons to Saudis.
The Israeli war and collective punishment of Palestinians that has women and children as the majority of the victims is causing a great deal of guilt among humane and rational secularist Israelis who want to see an end to the conflict and a permanent political solution. Demonstrating Arab indifference to Palestinians, an article in the Jerusalem Post noted that during the war (July 2014) the Arab media was more interested in the Soccer World Cup out of Brazil than it was on what Hamas and Israel were doing. The Israeli newspaper notes that with the ISIS Jihadists in Syria and Iraq attracting attention, a possible Kurdish declaration of independence from Iraq, and a host of other areas of conflict in Muslim countries, from Yemen and Libya to Afghanistan Arab media has not taken as much notice. This view was confirmed by Turkey’s Premier Erdogan who insisted that Arab indifference is as reprehensible as the silence of the US and the entire Western World over this issue.
It is estimated that in the last fourteen years, about 1400 Palestinian children have been killed and many more wounded; more than seven thousand children have been detained, interrogated and tortured by Israeli authorities; about half of the children exposed to intermittent war conditions suffer from post-traumatic stress disorders. Israeli policy under the current and past regimes has been that the only children taken into account as human are Israeli, while Palestinian children are those belonging to terrorists. This view was very clearly expressed in a letter from Prime Minister Netanyahu to Obama in December 2012 on the occasion of the Sandy Hook massacres in the US. Reverting to the “victimization” mindset and using the reprehensible holocaust of Jews by Nazis, the Israeli government gives itself license to engage in collective punishment and insist that it is beyond accountability of international war crimes laws. The reason for this is only because the US that enjoys military superpower status provides all the diplomatic, military, economic, and massive propaganda cover for Israel whose only issue is security for itself even if it means killing en masse and indiscriminately.
The more serious issue is how the US and Western media cover the slaughter of Palestinian children by Israel. Amid the mass destruction of Gaza, the US and most Western media outlets have been focusing on other stories. Even the New York Times that likes to claim “objectivity” has been almost silent on the massacre of Palestinian children, while devoting lots of space to the three Israeli teens missing since July 2, 2014. The three innocent Israeli teens deserve lots of coverage without question, but do the 1400 massacred Palestinian deserve any? Perhaps more absurd as well as grossly inaccurate is another New York Times story on why many Americans are siding with Israel the militarist aggressor intent on ethnic cleansing rather than the Palestinian victims.
To justify its biased pro-Israel coverage, the New York Times argued that Arab Spring failed to bring about democracy in the Arab World, thus Israel stands alone as a “true democracy”, no matter its war crimes against Palestinians as the UN has concluded. In the entire history of Israel is there any time when war was launched against Palestinians and Arab neighbors that the US and the media-manipulated public opinion ever sided with Palestinians? Blatant racism on the basis of religion and skin color is very evident here, but even worse, we have a very clear case of journalism that is hardly worthy of the title.
The public would have far greater respect for such media outlets if they simply stated that they are mouthpieces of Tel Aviv and Washington, rather than projecting their reporting as “objective”. Instead, we have a double-standard practiced on a sustained basis not just by the US media, but the European as well, trying to find just about any pretext to demonize the victims in the conflict. Under such conditions, why is anyone surprised when Turkey’s premier Erdogan lashes out at racism of the West against Muslims? All studies show that Western media is heavily pro-Israel and anti-Muslim, depicting Muslims as terrorists with strong racist undertones and stereotyping them, while personalizing the stories of the Israelis. In short, there are no limits to the political propaganda promoting militarism and aggression and suppressing the option of a political solution when it comes to resolving the conflict in question. The role of the media is indeed an obstacle to cultivating a constructive climate to reach peace between Israel and the Palestinians, especially in the absence of Palestinian leverage that Iran enjoys internationally.
This is not to argue that Hamas is made up of boy scouts that the Arabs are angels by nature and the Israelis are inherently evil. Nor does it help those interested in a Palestinian solution to argue that Israelis are the new Nazis in the Middle East, despite their policy of apartheid that is very similar to that of former South Africa. Israel has every right to self-defense and peace within its own borders. Because Israel never approved of US diplomatic solutions in Syria and Iran, nor US rapprochement with Iran, Obama had to give the green light to the Gaza military operations in July 2014, while in return promising as few million dollars to the Palestinians to take care of their medical and other needs.
The ultimate insult in military confrontations that Israel engages periodically is that the US, which has approved and backed them, steps in after mounting world protests to present itself as the “peacemaker” and objective intermediary. That the militarist super power behind Israel tries to present itself as the peace broker is insulting to all people, but especially to Palestinians who know that the US has had a role in killing their children and backing the status quo of no permanent peace on the Palestinian Question.
The media always projects the image of Israel as the real victim in the wars it launches against the Palestinians and the US as the peace broker. Anything that the UN does to condemn Israel has no impact because it enjoys US support in the Security Council where veto is readily exercised, no matter the magnitude of the problem, from war crimes to seizing land illegally. Although Israel has historically ignored the UN on many issues from seizing Palestinian land and resources to systematically violating human rights, it has suffered no consequences because the US as patron state is behind Israel.
There are those who maintain that every conflict in which Israel has been engaged involves economic interests, directly or indirectly. For example, it is no secret that Israel controls the water resources, but it also has an interest in securing control of energy resources. It has been in negotiations with Cyprus for undersea explorations of natural gas and oil, and it has also been interested in undersea oil of Greece. When Russia decided to cut out Israel from the GAZPROM gas pipeline and run it from Syria and Lebanon to Gaza, Israel went to war in June 2014. The idea is to deprive Palestinians from having any access to natural resources that can be used as leverage or would make Palestinians more self-sufficient.
One-State or Two-State Solution?
The two-state solution has failed because it brought nothing but war and destruction to the Palestinians for many decades. Moreover, the end of the Cold War with the US decision to replace the Cold War with the war on terror meant that the stigma of having the label “terrorist” as Israel and its right-wing allies in the US and Europe insisted on calling Palestinians cried out for a new strategy. Working within the system to support left wing Israeli parties as part of a coalition is one strategy to change the political dynamics inside Israel.
The failure of uprisings and guerilla military conflicts, combined with the absence of any Arab state backing Palestinians, the US insisting on blind support of Israel no matter how destructive its policies and detrimental to US interests have convinced some Palestinians that an internal solution is about the only leverage the people have left. Some view guerrilla war as a thing of the past, or they associate it with ISIS and al-Qaeda or other jihadists groups, rather than liberation armies. Of course, Israel and the Western press and governments go out of their way to portray Palestinians as terrorists simply because they are fighting for a homeland and against colonial oppression.
Abandoning the armed struggle and working within the system would mean securing basic rights and sharing power at all institutional levels, at least in theory. This would then be the Palestinian leverage that is more powerful theoretically than anything coming from the outside world. If there is no leverage that the Palestinians can use to negotiate a solution to their satisfaction, then the only thing left to do is work within the Israeli parliamentary system. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu with the full support of right wing political elements is a committed Zionist who wants neither the two-state solution nor the single-state state solution as many Palestinians envision it. Palestinians know that the majority of Israeli Jews strongly oppose a single-state solution and it is not just the Zionists who want a religious identity to transcend the democratic image of the state. The Russia-Jewish influx has made the right wing parties more popular and a right wing coalition regime will probably remain in power for many years, unless an economic crisis impacts the country in a detrimental way.
The rightist trend of Israeli politics has been a reality in the last two decades. This does not necessarily explain the unwillingness to find a solution to the Palestinian Question as some Jewish and Palestinian analysts believe because they hold hope for a solution with a leftist regime that favors a secular rather than a Zionist state. After, all, for decades the center-left was in power and the Palestinians suffered wars and repression just as they have under the right wing. That the center-left identified with the secularists and not the Zionists like the right wing is far more interested in co-opting the Palestinian population in total and extending the same rights and privileges is an attractive idea. However, even non-Zionists committed to Israel as a secular state may have a concern about integrating the entire Palestinian population that would then have a major voice in public policy and society’s direction. There is the fear that more than 3 million Palestinians who live in Jordan, Lebanon, and Syria would return and become the majority, a fear hardly justified by the reality of economic limitations within Israel for all of those people to make a living.
A more likely scenario is that the Palestinians as a minority in society would meet a fate no different than black South Africans after Nelson Mandela ended apartheid. Another likely scenario is that the Palestinians would be no different than American blacks before the Civil Rights movement. I am not at all amazed that according to a public opinion poll in Israel, one-third to as many as one-half of Israelis do not want Palestinians working for them or work next to them. Denying Palestinians the right to live in peace and harmony because Zionist ideologues leading the country have convinced the masses to live in fear of the Palestinian “terrorist monster”, because a handful of weapons producers want to make greater profits by keeping conflict alive, because the Jewish Diaspora feels better about themselves supporting militarist solutions with its checkbook, because the Israeli lobby is extremely powerful in US politics is at the core of maintaining the status quo that is as criminal as it was for the Christians to stand by and watch governments from the Black Death to the Third Reich persecute European Jews.
Are there enough enlightened Israeli Jews to collaborate with Palestinians in finding common ground through the one-state solution process? My view is that it is worth further exploration because Palestinians have no friends in the outside world that would do anything for them other than express moral support. Palestinians must at least explore the solution from within and see how far they get while at the same time see who on the outside is able to offer assistance toward a solution both sides would accept. The two-state solution has run its course as has the idea of peace negotiations that Israel under the right wing regime will not accept without essentially forcing Palestinians to live in ghettos and reduced to the class of the “untouchables”. Integration within Israeli society will not be difficult because of profound suspicions on both sides, and in the end it may not work any better than Jim Crow laws in the US.
Despite the Iran deal, US behavior in the Middle East has been to destabilize the region, to keep it as integrated as possible to the West by any means including military intervention, and to continue providing massive foreign aid to Israel that contributes to instability and opposes any kind of settlement with the Palestinians unless it is one that reduces the tiny occupies lands into an even worse ghetto than it has been. In short, US foreign policy does not offer hope for a Palestinian solution just because Iran struck a deal with the US and the West.
The new role of China in global affairs may indeed change the dynamic inside Israel and force the US into a compromise. In August 2014, Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi announced China’s five-point peace proposal on settling the Israel-Palestine conflict, which included abandoning military solutions and seeking a political settlement in order to advance regional and global stability. China is a prominent player in Africa and will be even more so in the 21st century, so it has a major interest in regional stability at a time the US has been working directly and indirectly to create instability. While China’s role can be significant and will become even more so in the decades ahead, without the US stepping forward to lead on this issue now, the otherwise politically divided Palestinians are left on their own to pursue varieties of solutions, which includes working within the Israeli parliamentary system to influence progressive politicians into reaching a permanent settlement.
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“Messiah politics or grassroots movements?”
July 11th, 2015
By Jon Kofas.
Synoptic Description of Messiah Politics
In 2001 throughout the Western World, the Middle East and North Africa, grassroots movements challenged mainstream politics, in which category belongs ‘Messiah politics’ – I would also characterize it as ‘Savior politics’ or ‘hero-worship politics’. This is not to suggest that the choice in “social contracts”, as Enlightenment thinkers defined the concept, is between ‘Messiah politics’ – salvation from a Savior acting as a benevolent master of the masses – or grassroots movements invariably linked to protest, dissidence and /or revolution – salvation from below with the masses’ participation. However, in the early 21st century when markets are imposing complete hegemony over all aspects of society from politics to culture, I am suggesting that the dichotomy between ‘Messiah politics’ and grassroots movements appears to be growing sharper owing to the huge gap between what “Messiah politics” pledges either under “democracy’s” promising theoretical rhetoric vs. the reality of socioeconomic polarization, or under an authoritarian regime that pledges to act benevolently on behalf of the people, but in reality serves very narrow interests.
Whether under the authoritarian ‘one-man rule’, or an elected representative model, in all cases and under disparate political and ideological models, ”Messiah politics” has the following three common denominators:
a) Benevolent ruler: Projecting the notion that society’s welfare rests in the hands of one person (savior-political leader) theoretically acting on behalf of all citizens and invoking “national interest”.
b) Class Hegemony: The “Messiah” – elected for limited term or ruler for life – often represents the national and international socioeconomic elites to the detriment of the masses that Messiah politics claims it wishes to save.
c) Machiavellian Rule: The criteria for Messiah politics is not necessarily social justice or any moral foundation, let alone a benevolent goal, though it could be as a theoretical framework, but rather a practical Machiavellian projection of and the quest for power, glory and riches that people identify with the ‘Savior politician’.
Does “Messiah politics” differ from ‘apocalyptic’ politics, and does it have an inordinate influence in the public mind during the age of mass politics both in Western countries and traditional/religious societies? Messiah politics transcends regime, ideology, political party, national, ethnic or religious identity, as well as historical epoch. While the focus of Messiah politics is on “saving” the nation-state (in the Westphalian sense of the term“sovereignty is the principle of international law that each nation state has sovereignty over its territory and domestic affairs”) from domestic and external forces trying to disrupt its sociopolitical consensus, there have also been Messiah political figures who have tried to save the region surrounding the nation-state, or the world at large through revolution, wars, imperialist (political, economic, cultural) policies intended to spread the values and institutions on a global scale with the goal of imposing hegemony. In other words, the charismatic element of the Messiah political figure is not limited to the status quo ruler, but extends to the dissident or rebel using the same means to mobilize grassroots support for regime change.
Apocalyptic Politics vs. Messiah Politics
The concept of a ‘political savior’ equated with a spiritual prophet (Messiah politics) in charge of society is as universal and as timeless as civilization and owes its origin to concentrated powers of defense (warfare) and society’s welfare in the hands of a single person – the tribal war chieftain in early civilization, and later King and Emperor ruling with the military as the power base and the priests and nobility as the privileged popular base.
The origin of the state, which accounted for the division of labor and class-based society with institutions reflecting it, gave rise to the origin of Messiah politics that we have inherited and maintain five thousand years since the emergence of city-states in ancient Mesopotamia. The intersection of politics and religion accounts for the “messiah politics” phenomenon throughout history. Even in contemporary times when secular civilization is thoroughly materialistic, the general conceptualization of Messiah politics maintains its religious aura, regardless of religion or absence of it.
The concept of Messiah politics differs from ‘Apocalyptic politics’, although in some cases there can be convergence. Apocalyptic politics is about predicting Armageddon resulting from the forces of good and evil, the struggle of morality or God as subjectively defined and the anti-Christ, for example. Christian “Apocalyptism” has a long history in the West, especially among fundamentalists who fear the strong state and deem that sin is measured by the scale of a strong public sector and a trend toward greater materialism, hedonism and moral relativism.
The solution for “Apocalyptism” is greater adherence to faith (institutionalized religion) and a messiah-style leader who protects religious traditions on which society is built and conducts policy on the basis of moral absolutes, targeting for elimination any threat to traditionalism – for example, mode of dress and behavior, gay rights, abortion, replacing scientific theories resting on physical cosmology with religious cosmology, etc. Furthermore, “Apocalyptism” in some cases provides a religiously-based legal system as a means of preventing the degradation of society that would otherwise be viewed as secular progress. If society is headed for ruin owing to the economic and political system in the hands of ‘secularist sinners’, then the essential problem of “Apocalyptic politics” is to propose a Messiah-on-earth solution to prevent, or at least postpone, Armageddon.
A Historical Overview of “Messiah Politics”
“Messiah politics” differs in scope from “Apocalyptic politics”, in so far as the former is a much broader concept that includes rulers of any type with strong hegemonic role and societal acceptance that the individual can save society through divine inspiration or divine right principle, but not limited to those alone. Messiah politics is a concept as ancient as civilization when kings and emperors identified with deities and people engaged in worship of their leaders that they deemed closer to divinity than mere mortals. Hence, paternalism whether under the Czars of Russia, Chinese Emperors, modern-day dictators, or elected presidents is an integral part of Messiah politics. The ruler is the father of the country and embodies its welfare (Thomas Hobbes paternalistic concept of sovereignty), thus he must not be questioned by his subjects who are prone toward atomistic behavior.
With the advent of the Renaissance era’s drastic change in Europe owing to the Commercial Revolution (transition from subsistence to commercial agriculture and long-distance trade), Messiah politics evolved as the idea of a savior leader in the image of Machiavelli’s “The Prince” of in Thomas Hobbes “The Leviathan”. The emergence of capitalism and new division of labor – capitalist and worker replacing landlord and serf – accounted for modification of Messiah politics in so far as the monarch Messiah would have to cater to the interests of the bourgeoisie along with the nobility and upper clergy.
After the American and French Revolutions, elected officials emerged as guardian-saviors of the electoral system itself – George Washington and Thomas Jefferson embodied the concept of ‘fathers of the nation’. The French Revolution was obviously broader in its definition of Messiah politics, considering that all Revolutionary leaders from the early more bourgeois ones to the later more egalitarians fell into the Messiah mold because some people and they saw themselves from that perspective. The Emperors Napoleon Bonaparte and half a century later Napoleon III were probably the two most important figures of messiah politicians representing the grandeur France was seeking in competing with industrialized Great Britain.
It can be argued, however, that Abraham Lincoln belonged in the same category, largely because of his impact to ‘save’ American society by ending slavery as an obstacle to progress domestically and internationally. Whether he “saved” black slaves or white capitalists – in essence helped end an archaic institution that was an obstacle to industrial capitalism operating under free wage labor rules – is another matter. After all, in 1861 Tsar Alexander II issued a decree freeing Russia’s serfs also as part of broader reforms to modernize society just as the US was working toward a similar goal at the same time. Than an absolutist monarch freed serfs about the same time as the democratically-elected US president is very telling not about Messiah politics but the top-down reforms necessary to modernize society and make it competitive with the rest of the world. Social justice did not result any more for the Russian serfs after 1861 than it did for the former American slaves after 1865.
In the 20th century there were a number of revolutionary leaders belonging to the category of ‘Messiah politics’ that they redefined. Those included Vladimir Lenin (leader of the Bolshevik Revolution), Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, (leader of the nationalist-reformist movement in Turkey), Mao Tse-tung (leader of the Chinese Communist revolution), Gamal Abdel Nasser (Egyptian nationalist social reformer), revolutionary leaders Kwame Nkrumah of Ghana, Ho Chi Minh the father of Communist-nationalist Vietnam, Sukarno the non-Aligned leader of Indonesia, and Fidel Castro who revolutionized Latin American politics by taking over Cuba and challenging US hemispheric hegemony. As leaders of the political opposition, they represented hope for social justice and progress. Their brand of Messiah politics rested on the hope that change would raise the dignity of their people amid massive changes owing to industrial, technological and scientific developments in the Western World exploiting labor and natural resources of the rest of the planet and imposing its economic and political hegemony.
Liberal-democratic elected leaders Charles De Gaulle, Dwight D. Eisenhower, John F. Kennedy, Margaret Thatcher, Ronald Reagan and Barak Obama were swept into power as a result of Messiah politics mystique surrounding their leadership of forging middle class consensus while strengthening capitalism. Of course, it is true that there are degrees of popularity and power that individual leaders under the category of Messiah politics have enjoyed through the ages. One cannot possibly compare the popularity and power of Nasser ruler for life, for example, at home and globally with Obama. The first black US president was elected to office and had very constrictive institutional perimeters of power that he had to serve faithfully as a status quo leader. This is in sharp contrast with Egypt’s Nasser who came to power to change the status quo at home and regionally, while having the military as his power base and the broader social classes as his political base.
There are presidents like George Washington or leaders of movements like Mahatma Gandhi who have become demigod legends as part of the ‘Messiah politics’ mythology that surrounds their legacy that a majority of the population deems constructive for society. There vast differences between Washington who respected the international order based on European imperialism as long as the US as a free nation was not exploited, and Gandhi who opposed imperialism on political, economic, social, and moral grounds.
There are also leaders like North Korea’s Kim Jong-il whose funeral (December 2011) revealed that Messiah politics can easily be transformed into ‘demigod politics’ in order to maintain a political system through a massive public relations campaign that the state stages. While it would not have surprised people if Kim’s funeral scene had taken place 3000 years ago, they found it eerie in the 21st century because it blatantly revealed the degree to which Messiah politics penetrates society. The psychology of a nation is very much dependent on image cultivation, more so today in the age of mass communications than in the Renaissance when Machiavelli and Hobbes crafted their political philosophy based on paternalism.
Nationalist populist politician Vladimir Putin appealing to the ‘New Russia’ of a rising middle class, and former president Hugo Chavez appealing to the working class and peasantry of Venezuela belong in the category of Messiah politics. Although the latter proved far more popular and with far more staying power in the country’s political culture than his Russian counterpart resting his political base on Russia’s wealthy class, the modality of power is not very different. Clearly, Chavez had a firm commitment to social justice rooted in Venezuela’s “caudillo” political tradition, while Putin merely cultivates nationalist sentiment given that the US and the West make it easy for him with hostile policies. While the goal in both Russia and Venezuela under Messiah political figures is image cultivation to forge a broad public consensus, class interests dominate as much in Venezuela where capitalists demand a dominant voice in policy to the detriment of the rest of society, as in Russia where the there are limitations to how far nationalism focused on external enemies can carry the self-styled Messiah political leader.
As we have seen in the last century, Messiah politics in modern times can entail a dictator imposed upon society, by heredity, military force, or manipulation of the electoral system based on massive amounts of campaign contributions from the wealthy as we have in the US and other countries. Regardless of how a Messiah leader comes to power, the idea is to project the image of indispensability to holding society together – forging political consensus while projecting the image of serving the general welfare. Such has been the case with a number of authoritarian rulers in many parts of the Middle East and Asia. Identifying their regime with the national interest, thus with the national welfare, these dictators can be ideologically right-wing or populist left wing, ruling on behalf of the armed forces and police for the benefit of a small segment in society, or ruling on behalf of a segment of the masses but in reality benefiting a small group linked to supporting the “Savior politician” who has no grassroots support.
Grassroots Movement’s Challenge: the case of Italy
In the early 21st century, Italy seemed to be the birthplace of the ‘anti-Messiah politics’ movement. Grass-roots protest movements took place spread across the Western World and the uprisings in North Africa and the Middle East initially appeared as grassroots movements that would end the era of dictators for life cultivating a cult of personality and serving the rich at home and foreign capital. In the age of NGO’s funded by governments and corporations, there is enormous manipulation of grassroots movements, as we have seen in the last ten years in a number of countries including those like Ukraine, Syria, etc. Until the dust settles, it is very difficult to know the difference between a genuine grassroots movement, and a well organized and government or business-financed group of people manipulating dissidents on behalf of narrow political and corporate interests.
It can be argued that grassroots politics has been around since the creation of organized society and popularized since fifth century Athens as Aristophanes explains in his satirical play “Lysistrata”. In modern European history, the earliest evidence of a mass grassroots movement came in the Age of the Reformation with the “German Peasants’ War” (1524-1525) when capitalism was making cost of living very high for the lower classes amid greater wealth concentration. There were aspects of grassroots movements within the French Revolution that the middle class led and dominated, and increasingly in trade union organizing throughout the 19th century in Europe and US.
The evidence of grassroots organizing in the 20th century can be seen by the results of successful revolutions – Russia, China, Vietnam, Cuba – all involving Messiah-styled leaders to whom the masses looked to bring social justice where was none. In the early 21st century, it appeared that Islamic countries would set the example for the rest of the world to follow when it came to ending Messiah politics and embracing grassroots movements. This proved another illusion because of the manipulation of these movements by domestic and foreign political and economic interests.
Italy presented itself as the country that could set the example of grassroots anti-Messiah politics, a movement that has the potential of spreading to other countries. Italy’s Movement of National Liberation launched in October 2009 by Beppe Grillo, evolved into the Five Star Movement whose platform is anti-corruption, respect for the environment, and genuine democracy rooted on people and not the elites. The five stars stand for 1. environment, 2. water, 3. connectivity, 4. development, 5. transportation. Political candidates qualifying for theFive Star Movement needed to:
1. have no criminal record, 2. no political affiliation, 3. reside in the city that they represent, 4. have not previously held office for the position they are candidate, 5. refusal of government campaign funds.
One among dozens in Italy known for its dozens of national and regional political parties, the Five Star Movement is close to what I call the equivalent of the ‘Cyber-Eco-Bourgeois’ revolution in contemporary politics (see my four-part essay on cyber-eco-bourgeoisie and the future of revolutions). Using the web and blogging to raise consciousness attract followers, Beppe Grillo started the ‘vendetta’ or vengeance protest movement in 2007, pointing out Italian politicians who were not only corrupt but criminal, aiding and abetting murderers. Considering that organized crime has had a long history of involvement in Italy’s politics and business, and considering that former Prime Minister Berlusconi, who owned a media empire, was in constant trouble with the law for various violations including collusion with the mafia, tax evasion, fraud, etc., it is understandable to see how corruption had a corroding impact on Italian society and not because of the prime minister’s licentious lifestyle, but more because of the deteriorating socioeconomic conditions.
Circumventing government-subsidized media that Berlusconi and other millionaires control, the anti-Messiah grassroots movement petitioned for a Bill of Popular Initiative to remove known criminals who were members of parliament – criminals in politics also part of the Messiah political mystique. Although Berlusconi was able to continue buying votes so he can remain premier, more than two million people joined the anti-Messiah or V-Day movement against a corrupt and undemocratic regime that controlled the mainstream media and perpetuated messiah politics as embodied by “il Cavaliere”. The success was largely to blogging, internet, cell phone and new technology that links people together and bypasses the mainstream media representing the elites.
While the party is primarily popular in the north that historically has been more progressive and more ‘European’ than the south where organized crime, politics and business play a larger role, the ‘Anti-Messiah’ grassroots movement, largely lower middle class with some working class elements, is in its nascent stage. It remains to be seen if it takes off in the next few years when Italy sinks deeper into recession and when the major political parties fail to deliver a political solution that takes into account not just finance capital and the markets, but the middle class and workers. It also remains to be seen if Italy’s anti-Messiah movement, largely middle class (part of what I call cyber-eco-bourgeois) spreads to the rest of Europe and beyond. So far, the movement has fallen into the same mold of “politics as usual” and lost its luster as a genuine grassroots movement interested in promoting social justice. Clearly, the institutionalization of a political party that becomes part of the status quo entails co-optation and abandonment of its goals to serve the masses.
Somewhat similar to Italy, Greece after 2010 immersed itself in Messiah politics, seeking a savior either on the right or the left to lift the country out of austerity and deep recession that is not unlike the Great Depression of the 1930s. The majority opted for Alexis Tsipras of the center-left SYRIZA party that came to office in January 2015 promising salvation for the working class and the rapidly declining middle class. Five months later, the Greek Messiah Tsipras proved that he is unable and perhaps unwilling to abandon the commitment of the state faithfully serving domestic and foreign capital regardless of the cost to the workers and middle class. The irony here is that a large segment of the people will continue to embrace the Messiah politician regardless of the absolute and total abandonment of pledge to support social justice. The only thing that matters is the appearance of “salvation” from what actually may be far worse – the unknown!
The Future of Messiah Politics and Grassroots Movements
The future of Messiah politics is safe, given that a segment of the population wants to believe in morally-motivated idealistic ‘Savior politicians’ that bring miracles to society on behalf of the people, at least appearing to do so in a Machiavellian sense. In this respect, both Machiavelli and Hobbes were correct regarding assumption about human nature and likely political behavior under the social contract. Messiah politics will continue to exist because the elites have the means to manipulate public opinion and co-opt just about everything in society.
It can be argued that Messiah politics, like religion represents the human soul (the spiritual craving of the human mind), and conditions will always deteriorate to the degree that a well-motivated person or an opportunistic demagogue will come along to promise deliverance from human suffering brought on by societal institutions. In open societies, Messiah politics will continue to thrive as long as there are powerful elites behind such political packaging, promoting, and delivering the ‘Savior politician’ to the voters for their approval, and as long as voters remain committed to worshiping power, at least mesmerized by it, even if it is to the detriment of their interests that the elites define for the masses.
At the same time, there will also be a rising trend toward grassroots movements that has swept across Europe, US, Australia and Islamic nations, Russia, and Latin America. Many politicians and analysts have argued that the deep recession of 1008-2011 resembled the Great Depression era in terms of the shock in the magnitude of economic global contraction and socioeconomic downward mobility. It is precisely such objective conditions that account for the rising popularity of grassroots movements that may or may not evolve into political parties, but will most definitely influence the political arena.
There are indications that ‘democracy’ as currently constituted is more authoritarian than democratic, something proved by the large number of voters who choose not to take part in voting process, to vote for small parties, or to decry the entire institutional structure by simply engaging in protests, as is the case with a segment of educated youth that does not have much hope for a bright future under the existing institutions favoring a small segment of the population benefiting from Messiah politics.
Anti-Messiah example may spread throughout Europe, Russia, US, Canada, Australia, and beyond. Europe is especially vulnerable, as the continent sinks deeper into a division between the rich northwest and the periphery across the south and east. A rejection of Messiah politics in favor of grassroots movements can continue assuming the following conditions:
a) One or more members of the eurozone leave the common currency, or if the EU disintegrates.
b) The parliamentary system that theoretically claims to represent all people continues to be undermined by the hegemonic economic system that caters to a small percentage of the rich, and the poor-rich gap widens with unemployment remaining in double-digits. The US is especially vulnerable because it is a quasi-police state society with strong indications of ideological polarization from a convergence of right wing elements adamantly opposed to maintaining a liberal consensus on domestic issues and foreign affairs.
c) The mainstream major parties – varieties of center–left, center, center-right, and right – fail to achieve political consensus and mobilize at least half of the voters, and especially the declining and weaker middle class.
d) Varieties of rightwing extremism are on the rise, especially nationalism, xenophobia, and anti-Islam sentiment translated into a stronger right wing movement and/or platform of political parties.
e) There is a growing perception that society will become relatively stagnant and there is a gap between the high expectations of the middle class and the lack of fulfillment of the social contract by regimes that rest largely on middle class votes for their support.
f) The contagion effect becomes a factor as one country’s grassroots movement will emulate the other.
g) There is continued erosion of the middle class ‘Liberal-democratic’ consensus on which representative regimes are based, and a continued transfer of public wealth toward corporate welfare at the expense of the rest of society.
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Neo-Colonialism in Greece
July 4th, 2015
By Jon Kofas.
Besides the Iran-US nuclear negotiations, Greece was one of the biggest stories in the last two weeks of June 2015. Not just the mainstream media throughout the world, but the social media has been covering the drama unfolding in Greece, a drama that actually started in early 2010 when the creditors decided to make borrowing expensive for the Greek government. In May 2010, Greece opted for IMF-style austerity and massive cuts in public spending and public sector jobs, combined with higher indirect taxes, measures the EU and IMF promised would lower the public debt and stimulate higher growth rates on a sustainable basis. Promises notwithstanding, the result has been one of the highest unemployment rates in the world, negative GDP growth, accompanied by much higher debt.
The center-left SYRIZA government called for a referendum on 5 July 2015. In my view, this makes a difference only in a political and symbolic sense for the reformist orientation of SYRIZA, but it means nothing when it comes to whether Greece remains integrated with the Western alliance and market economy. The country has been a virtual semi-colony of the West throughout its two-century history and it remains so to this day. While many around the world find it surprising that German officials are demanding the right not only to conduct policy in Greece but to determine what party will govern, those familiar with Greek history know this is actually part of the country’s legacy from 1832 until the military Junta of 1967-1974.
The “panic of 1893″ hit countries from the US to Russia very hard, and it was the era that gave birth to many radicals in Russia, China, Europe and the US. On 10 December 1893, Greek premier Harilaos Trikoupis stood before Parliament and announced official bankruptcy. After a frenzy of massive borrowing that European banks encouraged so that Greece could modernize its infrastructure so that it could attract more foreign investment, after a decade of Western economic expansion in the 1880s, the depression of the 1890s that plagued the US and Europe forced Greece into bankruptcy.
Like the Ottoman Empire, China, Russia and many Latin American countries that had a very large foreign debt, Greece fell under tight financial control of the Great Powers. Like the Ottoman Empire, China, Latin American republics and to a certain degree Russia, Greece was a quasi-protectorate of Britain and France that represented the interests of bondholders and export interests. As to be expected, Greece had very limited sovereignty in the 19th century as it does today, except that the people really want to believe they are Europeans with equal rights as much as the French and Germans. Naturally, this holds true for the top 30% who do not have much of an economic problem, but it is hardly the case for all the rest.
At the core of the problem is the immediate and long-term sustainability of the sovereign debt, but below the surface the patron-client integration model that Germany wishes to impose is far more significant. The Western media and pundits have used a scare campaign to force Greece into the neoliberal global consensus that the IMF and EU demand. The issue they have used is lack of liquidity and the promise for continued supply if Greece accepts more austerity and neoliberal polices.
Greek Money Supplyand the European Central Bank
Although Greek banks account an estimated 80 percent of the money supply, this is a very elusive statistic because the wealthy Greeks and even medium-sized businesses have taken their money out of banks. After all, they had five years to prepare for the inevitable bottom of the crisis that is yet to come. The same holds true for the retail investors. This means that what held true during the Great Depression when FDR was asking the American people to put their money back in the banks also holds true for Greece today. Fear and insecurity drove people to deprive the banks of liquidity, leaving the European Central Bank (ECB) in the role of playing politics with this issue. The ECB has essentially precipitated a run on the Greek banks by signaling it will not provide liquidity, but a percentage of the money Greeks have taken from the banks remains largely inside the country.
It is important to underscore another cultural trait about the Greek mindset regarding money and banks. Even before the EU-IMF austerity, Greeks had a tradition of hoarding large amounts of money outside the banking system. This is largely in part because of the thriving “informal” economy that operates in an economy that includes everyone from your local dentist who does not provide patients with a payment receipt to the billionaire oil-gasoline distributor whose goal is to conceal illegally-gained profits so it is not traceable by the tax authorities. In short, Greek banks may have a very low liquidity level, but as a whole Greece has most of its liquid assets in private hands because there has been the fear government will impose a “haircut” on deposits or simply confiscate everything in case there is conversion to a national currency.
There is no accurate number about how much money is held in private hands. On the basis of official bank withdrawals in the last two years and the worth of the “informal economy”, there are speculations that over 100 billion euros are held, or more thyan half of the GDP. This kind of home-cash reserve situation has been building from January 2010 until the present. Even before the crisis Greeks kept large reserves outside of banks and those amounts are not counted as part of M3 money supply. Nor can we argue that money in circulation is an accurate reflection of M3 in the case of Greece, because there is a huge difference on the manner that the US accounts for money supply – always taking into account the subterranean economy – and the manner that Greece does where the subterranean economy is much higher than the US.
Long before the austerity crisis, Greek accounting methods have been immersed in corrupt practices, especially by the private sector that insists on tax evasion. Historically, Greek businesses prefer to spend almost as much money bribing officials to avoid paying the right amount of taxes as they would have paid legally. In short, the money supply as shown on official records is meaningless. Most of the cash is in the hands of the top one-third of the income earners who have a stake in keeping the euro and continuing with austerity no matter the devastation for the bottom two-thirds of the population.
German-Neoliberal Colonization of Greece
The SYRIZA government promised a great deal than it could possibly deliver to the Greek people, but from January 2015 until the end of June 2015, it tried to negotiate the following things: a) easier terms of austerity so that the very poor are not impacted further; b) halt to measures that continue to erode the middle class and working class living standards; c) a policy mix that permits some modicum of development to offset austerity; d) trying to secure funding for the immediate debt payments for which there is no money in the current budget; e) a long-term program (anything from haircut to a rollover by issuing new bonds) to address the unsustainable public debt and avoid default; f) easing on privatizations that provide essential services to the public – electricity and water, for example.
Led by Germany and the IMF, the EU rejected everything and demanded even greater austerity and conformity to neoliberal measures. Both Germany and the IMF made it clear that Greece must be reduced to the level of tits northern Balkan neighbors in terms of living standards, which in effect meant enormous cuts in wages and pensions. In essence, the German-IMF deal on the table was that Greece would be reduced to a status comparable to its northern Balkan neighbors that are not EU members and do not have the high costs of living as does Greece.
The real issue in 2015 was whether the German-IMF led dogmatic neoliberals prevail or whether the reformers who believe that the German-imposed patron-client integration model in the EU is forcing Greece and the periphery members into neo-colonial status. Germany failed to conquer Europe by going to wars twice in the 20th century, but it is now trying to achieve the same result through the route of economic hegemony. However, it has very powerful allies in multinational banks and corporations of the entire Western World and this is why it is so powerful against those trying to maintain a bit of their national sovereignty in order to present the illusion of democracy to their citizens.
Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras (SYRIZA party) rejected the austerity package that the EU-IMF provided because it called for greater cuts in pensions, cuts in public sector spending targeting jobs, and higher indirect taxes, as well as a host of privatizations that included public utilities led by the electric company. These demands on the part of the EU-IMF did not operate on the assumption that Greek debt at 177% of GDP is not sustainable, that is, Greece cannot possibly meet creditor obligations, especially since they are frontloaded. On the contrary, these measures promise to deliver growth and development and a sustainable debt. These were the same promises the IMF and EU have been making from 2010 when the public debt was 110% of GDP , and despite a 50% haircut in 2012, it now stands at 177% with the prospect of going above 200% if austerity continues.
Throughout June 2015, the center-leftist Tsipras, whom Western media label “extreme leftist” because he is opposed to neoliberal policies and austerity, tried to compromise. Perhaps naively so because reformism on the part of periphery countries does not work going up against the core countries, Tsipras realized the pressure from creditors, domestic capitalists, media and political opposition from both the neoliberal parties – PASOSK, New Democracy and POTAMI – was immense against the background of ECB cutting off the money supply to Greek banks where depositors ran to take their money out.
The EU-IMF reaction was “no negotiations with Tsipras”, focusing instead on securing a vote against SYRIZA and in favor of austerity on Sunday, 5 July 2015. A YES vote for austerity would in effect mean at the very least a very weak SYRIZA government, and at most, Tsipras resigning and allowing a pro-IMF-EU caretaker regime to take over exactly as Germany demands. Four days before the referendum, the IMF issued a report essentially validating the SYRIZA that the debt is indeed unsustainable and that Greece will need an estimated $67 billion in the next three years, mostly to service the debt. However, the need for a new loan package would come with another “memorandum of understanding”, or simply put, another round of austerity measures much tougher than before. Regardless of the outcome of the vote, Greece will be integrated with the West, although SYRIZA tried to alter the patron-client integration model that has essentially reduced the country into a semi-colony no matter how much people wish to deny this very obvious reality.
During WWII, Germany invaded Greece, ravaged the country and was responsible for war crimes well documented. A Greek government report has asked that Germany address the matter of war reparations amounting to $300 billion, or about the size of the Greek public debt. Germany does not acknowledge there is an issue of war reparations, because if it did then that would mean the end of austerity and neoliberal policies. To enforcing the neo-colonial patron-client model of integration on Greece, Germany has no choice but to use the public debt as a catalyst.
In retrospect, it was very naïve of SYRIZA to believe that it could possibly alter the patron-client model of integration and revert to the inter-dependent model on which the EU was founded. If it simply used the issue just to win the election in January 2015, no doubt its more astute members must have known they would not very long in power by deceiving the public in exactly the same manner as the previous pro-austerity governments. Given the country’s sociopolitical polarization that reflects the socioeconomic one, SYRIZA could only survive if it forged a consensus with which the middle class and workers could accept. This proved an elusive goal built on lies no different than the neoliberal New Democracy and PASOK governments.
The reality is that the core countries of the EU enjoy enormous power to shape the model of integration, while the periphery ones simply go along and try to secure the best possible terms within that model. The result of forcing such a model of economic-political integration for Greece has in essence meant extreme sociopolitical polarization to the degree the country has not experienced since the Civil War of 1946-1949 when it was divided between Communist rebels and pro-Western elements demanding integration with the US during the Truman administration. The polarization has left workers, pensioners, and the middle class bewildered because they know regardless of the referendum result, their situation and that of the country as a whole, will not improve. They also know that the wealthy Greeks and foreign investors will grab investment opportunities as asset values continue to drop along with wages.
Beyond the very tragic issue of millions suffering lower living standards, and beyond the very real prospect of their continued suffering for a number of years under such conditions, there is the fear that other countries could also meet with a similar fate as Greece. The question for EU leaders must be to what degree is Greece and for matter all of the periphery (southern and eastern European countries) sovereign and to what degree do citizens have a voice in the illusion of a democratic process that really belongs to the banks and multinational corporations that the state represents?
Can a country so externally dependent as Greece enjoy national sovereignty at the same level as a more affluent country like Germany? Of course, there is the larger and more essential question of the degree to which a worker or a middle class professional in Germany or any core country feel that she/he is influential in the democratic process that serves almost exclusively financial and corporate interests. In the last analysis, national sovereignty is more about the struggle between the comprador bourgeoisie serving external interests while advancing their own, and the national bourgeoisie wishing to assert their influence. In the last analysis, Greece was a virtual semi-colony of the West ever since 1832, and it remains one today. The difference is that in the last four decades, the country developed a middle class and it raised living standards rapidly to lift itself from the “Third World” status it was in the 1950s. All of this is now lost, and it is very difficult for a country to drift backwards in this manner. Greece should be a lesson for all periphery countries for this is what capitalism has in store for them as well.
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Myths about Greece relations with the IMF, Europe and the US
June 17th, 2015
By Jon Kofas.
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Capitalism and development models
June 8th, 2015
By Jon Kofas.
The question of “Developments Models”
In the post-Communist era now more than two decades old, many people around the world are questioning what is the best economic development model? One reason for such a question is the very deep recession of 2008-present that has thrown many economies into a downward spiral of unemployment, rising public and private sector debt, and lack of rapid growth in the remainder of the decade.
So, what are some models of modern economic development and to what degree do they improve people’s lives, and do economic growth and development alone account for human happiness – with the broader meaning of the latter term?The mode of production that determines the social order has been capitalism that has evolved from the Commercial Revolution in the 16th century to globalization in the late 20th-early 21st century. Under the world-system of capitalism, there have been different models of development in the history of capitalism, determined to a large degree by the shifts from the primary sector of production (agriculture, forestry, mining and fisheries) to the secondary sector (manufacturing) and to the tertiary (service) and high tech/biotechnology sector. Before analyzing some models of economic development, it is instructive to consider the following questions about “development economics”.
a) What development model best serves the needs of the people, presumably all people and not just the financial and or political, military, bureaucratic elites?
b) Is it possible to separate politics from economics and speak in terms of pure economics instead of a system of political economy and social structure?
c) Is there such a thing as “the perfect” or ‘ideal’ system that can be applied perfectly in practice as it may appear in theory, whether such a system is market-based, statist, or some model based on a mixture?
d) Different countries would require to adopt variations of different models depending on their natural resources, labor force, level of current development.
e) Change is required to models of political economy to keep up with changes in the real economy and society.”
f) As perfect as they may be in theory for any given society, economic models in practice do not mean very much, simply because the decision on what policies to pursue are always taken by those who command economic and political power. Add to the equation the factor of corruption and the model is coffee table reading material.
g) There is no such thing as the ideal model in theory that is not in practice a mixture of several theories. For example, is the US a “free market model” economy when in essence it has been practicing corporate welfare economics for decades? Is Indonesia a neoliberal economy under an Islamic regime, similar to Malaysia, Turkey, and now Egypt and Tunisia? Is China a statist economy or a mixed economy that allows a heavy dose of free enterprise?
Can there be a development model that serves all people based on social justice?
In the 19th century, there were a number of intellectuals from Adam Smith to Karl Marx who believed that it was possible to have an economic system that best served all people. However, Smith was an advocate of free market economic development, while Marx believed only Communism, the natural state of human beings, can best serve the people by eliminating elites, not reinforcing them. Because people have differing views on what best serves society, that is, best serves every person equally in every respect in institutional terms, most economic models are necessarily based on what best serves interest groups within society.
There are of course economic development models that claim to best serve everyone, including Socialist and Communist models, but in practice some sectors and some individuals are better served even by those models, as history has clearly demonstrated in the 20th century, than other groups in society. In short, as Jean-Paul Sartre and many others correctly maintained, there will always be elites in society, and that means that no economic model can possibly be free of that reality. Another way to view this is that there is no such thing as an economic development model that is “objective”, because models are rooted in everything from investment to terms of trade that invariably benefit certain groups and not society as a whole. Should GDP growth be the sole criteria for human happiness?
It is true that in world public opinion polls the top ten “happiest countries” are those that we consider developed economically, that is, those with diversified economies and high incomes. This is an indication that in the age of materialism where the value system is rooted in wealth and the security provided to maintain it people believe their happiness hinges on things associated primarily with material possessions. However, national economic growth and development do not necessarily translate into individual happiness, if a percentage of the population, anything above 10%, lives in chronic poverty.
Moreover, human happiness is also predicated on spiritual fulfillment for many non-Western societies. In the early 1970s, Bhutan rejected GDP as the sole criterion for progress, asserting that quality of life, social progress and the psychological well being of people are significant indicators to take into account. The Bhutan example became the UN standard as well. Although this is something that can be used as distraction by those trying to justify socioeconomic injustice by arguing why do people need material improvement when they have spiritual fulfillment, it is important to note that we cannot use the Western material criterion alone for it does not reflect the human experience worldwide.
Defining “Development”
The term development in economics does not mean the same thing for an advocate of “dependency theory” as it does for a monetarist. Nor does it necessarily mean the same thing for an advocate of sustainable development in India vs. one in Canada. For this reason, I need to lay some groundwork for this synoptic perspective of what the term means to intellectuals and politicians who do not share common views.
1. Centrally-planed models.
The old Soviet centrally-planned economy from the 1920s until the early 1980s was a model in which the command economy was rooted. The government decided on productivity and investment by sector as well as absorption of the surplus labor force from one sector by the other, not to satisfy consumer demand, but rather to meet the greater societal or national needs as the state defined them. In varying degrees, this model became a prototype for Eastern Europe after 1945, and for Cuba, Vietnam, North Korea, and China under Mao. Development was measured by the state in terms of meeting production quotas, though in practice, the bureaucracy falsified reports to make productivity appear much better than it was.
In the end, such a non-consumption-geared economy did not translate into rising living standards across the board, but it did absorb the surplus labor force and it tried to meet essential needs such as housing, health, and education. Command economies had enormous problems, not only because their civilian economies failed to meet mass consumer demand, but also because of the emphasis on durable goods focus vs. consumer goods, and heavy military spending that absorbed resources otherwise needed for the civilian economy.
In practice, the politically-connected elites (the ‘new class’ linked to the Communist Party) benefited, while the broader masses lagged behind and lacked basic freedoms that many of them valued, such as freedom of worship, expression, and others that are common in open societies of the Western World.
2. Quasi-statist and neo-corporatist models.
Government permits free enterprise, but invests heavily in certain industries and/or subsidizes others even if they show chronic deficits instead of profits, because it deems it is in the ‘national economic’ interest. It is difficult to argue that quasi-statism and neo-corporatism, both of which are inter-related and have many aspects to them, are alike in South Korea as in Brazil, or in Russia as in Argentina and Venezuela.
The common denominator is heavy government involvement in investment with the intent to promote certain sectors, trade regulation intended to promote national capitalism and not permit international capital to determine economic planning, and strengthening the state structure so that the private sector, especially foreign capital does not have a dominant role. After the Second World War, a number of countries, including Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, among others, began to adopt ‘top-down’ development models so they can help build sectors such as steel industry, shipbuilding, and others.
This model in varying degrees found expression in Brazil, Argentina after 2001, post-Communist Russia, even Spain in the late 1980s-early 1990s before the wave of neoliberalism swept the EU that had itself aspects of corporatism and quasi-statism as a regional bloc rooted in heavy subsidies of certain sectors. The quasi-statist model is also operating in a number of countries as different as Norway and Saudi Arabia. There is the Norwegian development model, (to some extent also practiced in other Scandinavian countries) essentially a variation of Keynesian economics, is rooted in a strong state structure that relies on a solid welfare state with a private competitive sector backed by the social-democratic state.
The benefits of this model are that there is a sense of national control over the economy, vs. foreign capital control, thus it is an issue of national sovereignty prevailing in the age of globalization. Another benefit is that the state helps to plan for the country’s future with the intent of long-term development that presumably would meet the needs of the majority of the people. Moreover, the nation retains a strong national capitalist class that is able to compete internationally instead of becoming subservient to exporters from developed core countries. How well has this model worked? The examples of South Korea, Taiwan, all of the BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa) indicate that the national economies experience phenomenal growth.
This does not mean, however, that the wealth is evenly spread across the population.It is true that South Korea, and Taiwan developed a middle class on the basis of this model and it is also true that the fastest middle class growth is taking place in the BRICS. However, the world’s largest percentage of poor live in the BRICS. With the promise that national economic growth and development will some day in the future translate into individual prosperity the quasi-statist countries can continue to operate as they do until such time as the broader masses rise up and demand results filter down to them.
3. Neo-classical (free enterprise) model.
The classical free enterprise system theory of Adam Smith and its apologists in the 20th century, from the neo-classical advocates (Robert Solow and T. W. Swan) to Milton Friedman and the Chicago School that rejected Keynesian economics in favor of rigid monetarism that is an integral part of the neo-classical movement. Productivity and capital accumulation based on a fiscal system that favors capital, allows maximal freedom of capital movement and investment and limits organized workers’ rights that inhibit capital expansion and accumulation are at the core of this school of thought.
With many variations, the neo-classical school and its advocates ranging from supply side economics to neoliberalism and monetarism as expressed by IMF-World Bank economists as well as purists of the classical theory made a major comeback in the 1980s and they have triumphed ever since. In practice, the theory never worked as its advocates claim, because the state became a vehicle to transfer massive income from the welfare state to corporate welfare, thus a form of statism was part of this model. Moreover, the model in practice proved to have many flaws as it permitted numerous scandals from banking to corporate corruption and investor fraud on which fortunes of the very few were built at the expense of the general economy.
The market-oriented growth and development model is presumably one that takes place under an open, free and democratic society where free market forces trade, invest and consume with minimal government intervention. This is the theory. In reality, the role of government is very heavy in every aspect from monetary to fiscal policy, and society is not nearly as free and open as one would argue in theory. The quasi-police state methods of the US, everything from illegally tapping into the private phone records of millions of people to denying due process to anyone that government has the right to brand terrorist indicate a slippery slope toward authoritarian capitalism.
“The National Security Agency and the FBI are tapping directly into the central servers of nine leading U.S. Internet companies, extracting audio and video chats, photographs, e-mails, documents, and connection logs…” Putting aside the reality that economic models necessarily work within a political system that makes all kinds of lofty claims about what best serves “the people”, let also consider that many people actually believe that if the “national economy” is performing well, so will they, because they identify with the nation-state, even though they as individuals may be in the lower socioeconomic strata and derive no benefits from any growth and development. This is the case in many countries, most notably the US. The latest (June 2013) Department of Labor report shows that labor costs are the lowest since 1947 when the US began keeping records.
Hourly compensation continues to sink, most notably in the manufacturing sector that was historically the best-paying sector for workers. This trend of downward socioeconomic mobilization has been a reality for the past three decades, but the US economy continues to develop and grow, though without such development translating into income growth for the middle class and workers. There are variations of authoritarian capitalist models found in many non-Western countries such as Saudi Arabia but also in a number of African nations. This model allows for free enterprise, it rests on one or very few sources for economic growth and development, and it has a strong state monopolized by authoritarian regimes, invariably more corrupt than countries where there is some semblance of checks and balances.
There is the Indonesian, Malaysian, Turkish model of neoliberalism under Islamic regimes; something that is now spreading across other Muslim nations, including Tunisia and Egypt. This model is an integral part of the neoliberal one under globalization. Clearly, there are models today that result in tremendous GDP growth, but that does not translate to upward socioeconomic mobility and the qualitative and quantitative growth of a middle class. For example, the result of globalization, especially from 2007 to the present, is that the middle class in the US and EU has been shrinking, while it has expanded in Asia and to some degree in Latin America and parts of Africa. Therefore, versions of the neoliberal model of development that the US and EU have been pursuing has resulted in downward socioeconomic mobility for the most advanced nations as well as semi-developed ones in Southern Europe. Nevertheless, more than half of the middle class in in North America and EU, while the vast majority of the poor are in the non-Western world. According to OECD statistics, “In 2009 the middle class included 1.8 billion people, with Europe (664 million), Asia (525 million) North America (338 million) accounting for the highest number of people belonging to this group. … The size of the “global middle class” will increase from 1.8 billion in 2009 to 3.2 billion by 2020 and 4.9 billion by 2030.
The bulk of this growth will come from Asia: by 2030 Asia will represent 66% of the global middle-class population and 59% of middle-class consumption, compared to 28% and 23%, respectively in 2009…” One paradox in economics is that it is possible to have growth without development (vertical growth), or growth accompanied by underdevelopment as in the case of African, Latin American and some Asian countries that are relying on one or two export products, while using the proceeds to import everything else. This kind of dependency has been characteristic of the core-periphery divide in the capitalist world system for the past five centuries; for there is a vast difference between an undeveloped country enjoying self-sufficiency and an underdeveloped that one that is financially, commercially and industrially dependent on the advanced capitalist (core) countries.
Moreover, there is a vast difference between a country experiencing ephemeral growth owing to the availability of some export product –let us say oil – and sustainable development that leads to diversified economic development and greater self-sufficiency.
Conclusions
The idea that there is any model that can possibly reflect “human behavior” and its idiosyncratic proclivities assumes that there is such a thing as a “uniform generic model” of human behavior, rather than “atomic action constraints, as determined genetically and by cultural conditioning”. In fact, the reason I argue that there cannot be a perfect model, is because I made certain assumptions about human nature, namely that the irrational tendencies play a far greater role than the rational.
This is a very old argument rooted in the philosophical debates that goes back to the 17th century (Hobbes and Locke) and continuing in the Age of Reason as well as the 19th century when Marx and Mill who relied on the rationalist tradition to formulate significant political theories on which society could build. In short, just as a scientific theory can provide solid and unquestioned answers, similar philosophical models of political economy could do the same, at least this was the assumption. But can scientific certainty be applied to economic models, given that they must in the end apply to human beings that are neither neutrons nor algebraic equations?
Are the domains of economics, political science, sociology and social science as “scientific” as mathematics, chemistry and physics, or are we ultimately dealing with a question of societal structure based on a social contract? To what degree is the social contract itself modeled after rationalist assumptions, as was the case for both Jon Locke and Karl Marx and F. Engels, is a legitimate issue. However, the matter of societal organization, mode of production, is subject to historical dynamics (dialectical materialism, to be sure, but certainly not limited to it). Is there a single development model that works best to serve the people of all countries around the world; like us say the neoliberal that IMF, World Bank, European Central Bank, US and EU governments are promoting globally as the panacea? Economic development models, whether like that of the US, or regional bloc one like the one of the European Union, are always designed down to the smallest detail to serve and promote the privileged socioeconomic and political elites, within the boundaries of what the middle class and working class will tolerate so there would not be social unrest or revolt.
Development models under capitalism are not intended to foster greater upward socioeconomic mobility, but to further concentrate capital in the hands of the privileged elites that enjoy policy influence. The social safety net, social welfare measures within varying degrees that have been in place in many countries around the world are now threatened by the neoliberal model that encourages the erosion of welfare measures amid an era of downward pressure on wages and limited opportunities for youth suffering high unemployment. These are explosive social conditions that could result in social upheaval if the trend continues. Lower global poverty, gender equality, basic education and health care, and a sustainable future for all people are desirable goals of many human-centered rather than market-focused people for the past two centuries.
The question is which development model can achieve such goals i9f the political economy is structured to serve narrow class interests. Not any time in the near future, or in the next half century do I expect systemic changes in the neoliberal political economy. On the contrary, statistics indicate that there is regression in the areas of social progress. Why? I repeat that people who have economic and political (military/police) power always prevail, while the broader masses of the population, middle classes and workers continue to demand social justice. The social dialectic (Marxian-based “dialectical social theory”) leads me to conclude that concessions will be made to the broader masses only when absolutely necessary to preserve the status quo.
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Obama, Osama Bin-Laden and disinformation
May 12th, 2015
By Jon Kofas.
We live in the age of conspiracy theories and the thirsting of the public for a story that challenges the manufactured news of the corporate media and government. The reason for this is that indeed news is so slanted toward molding public opinion than of informing. Government has intentionally used the media to induce political conformity so the truth of a news story is lost in propaganda. Disinformation has been an integral part of foreign policy in modern history and this is understandable when countries are enaged in war. From the Spanish-American War when the US launched its imperial global reach until the present era of modern surveillance and drone warfare, the media has been a tool in policy for the purpose of shaping public opinion at home and abroad.
The latest news story that is receiving modest attention in the US and strong refutations from the government, media, and apologists of foreign policy has to do with the claims of award-winning investigative reporter Seymour Hersh. In the May 2015 issue (Vol. 37 No. 10), Hersh is reporting that according to a confidential Pakistani source, the government of Pakistan had captured Osama bin-Laden in 2006 and was holding him in a secret compound until the US military operation that resulted in his capture and death.
Hersh claims that in exchange for a payment of $25 million, a Pakistani intelligence officer walked into the US embassy and revealed that his government was holding Osama bin-Laden prisoner in a secret compound. Because of the Pakistani government had itself lied about not knowing bin-Laden’s location it was and is in a very difficult position revealing what actually took place. Pakistan had no choice but to yield to the US on the the Navy Seals operation for the capture that would unfold exactly as Washington demanded, evidently staged if the sources of Hersh are telling the truth. Even before Hersh’s story, there were some unconfirmed reports that bin-Laden was indeed held in a compound in Abbottabad. Neither the US nor the Pakistani officials would acknowledge it, despite some serious questions about the official version of events. It is understandable that they could not possibly do so for they would derive no benefit of any sort and only damage their own credibility.
Although Hersh claims that the Obama administration was facing reelection and needed a glorified heroic Osama capture to put him over the top with increasingly skeptical voters, the fact is that the US could not possibly permit Pakistan to simply hand Osama over for trial at the International Court of Justice at the Hague. After all, the US had spent hundreds of billions in taxpayer money and many lives on the global war on terror, and the only way to justify the military solution was the “Rambo-style” capture and elimination of Osama. The US had insisted that it would prevail on the war on terror, no matter what, and asked its own people and the world to support the policy. It was symbolically significant for the US to carry out the capture and killing of bin-Laden in the manner it unfolded to prove to voters at home and to the world that the policy of the war on terror rooted in military interventionism was working and no other solution was an option. Therefore, taxpayer dollars were not wasted on some wild goose chase where the Pakistanis catch the goose and hand it over.
It is true that Pakistan was receiving about $2 billion, perhaps more covertly and who knows about bribes through third parties to various officials in government, military and intelligence services. US aid was given largely because the Pakistani government had agreed to be actively engaged in the US war against al-Qaeda and jihadists in Afghanistan and Pakistan. In exchange for occupying Pakistan militarily, determining Pakistan’s foreign and defense policy, and for “collateral damage” fatalities resulting from misdirected missions, the US had to provide aid. It is entirely possible, that Pakistan gave bin-Laden to the US because it feared cuts in aid and wanted to make sure that it secured even greater benefits if it cooperated, especially when it had no choice, according to Hersh. Given the nature of Pakistan’s internal politics and the sympathy within the government and intelligence services, it is possible bin-Laden represented a great deal of leverage for Pakistan and that is how they used it.
The publicly-stated US goal in invading Afghanistan and coercing Pakistan to accept US military intervention on its soil after 9/11 from which to launch operation against the Afghan regime, Taliban and al-Qaeda was to capture and/or kill Osama bin-Laden thus eliminating the terrorism threat to the US; a public relations promise that in reality would amount to nothing, considering Islamic militancy has actually been on the rise in the last five years. The publicly-stated goal placed the US in a very limited position because it entailed only a military solution was possible to the “manufactured war on terror” intended to replace the Cold War as the rationale for continuing the same foreign policy from the Truman administration to the present.
The unspoken US goal was to establish a foothold next to Iran or to encircle Iran and force it into making concessions on the development of nuclear weapons under the guise of developing energy. In short, the real goal of the US was to determine the balance of power so that Iran does not enjoy that role or at least its power is considerably diminished. Osama bin-Laden was the catalytic symbol that held together an otherwise futile and contradictory US foreign policy with detrimental consequences to the economy drained by massive defense spending while China was capturing market share even in Afghanistan and Pakistan that the US controlled militarily. In other words, the US was desperate and needed a symbolic victory so that it avoids the Vietnam syndrome, considering that Iran and China had actually benefited from the US military intervention in Afghanistan and Iraq.
Seymour Hersh is not the focus of this story he uncovered but the credibility of the US government and American media must be questioned. If his sources are valid, there are two larger issues here: 1) under Obama with Hillary Clinton as Secretary of State there was a massive lie and cover up of what actually took place; and 2) the role of the media in aiding the government with an incredible lie about what took place. No one expects confirmation that indeed Hersh is correct that the Obama administration blatantly falsified facts for such an admission would be unrealistic.
Assuming Hersh is correct, it is easy to understand why the US would want to cover up what actually took place with Osama bin-Laden. In the 1980s during the Mujahedin war against the Soviet-backed regime in Afghanistan, the US helped to create Osama bin-Laden along with US ally Saudi Arabia. In the last decade, the US has played all sides of the war on terror, directly and through third parties like Turkey, Saudi Arabia and the Gulf States siding with jihadists in Libya and Syria, opposing them in Afghanistan. These kinds of contradictions of playing all sides reflect a policy rooted not in ideology and principles of freedom and democracy, but opportunism and deception with the intent of stretching out the counterterrorism regime.
The US war on terror has been at the core of the US foreign and domestic policy. It has implications on the federal budget, while it has a great impact on keeping the defense industry strong, with massive banking financing behind them. Above all the war on terror helps to keep both the domestic and global agendas focused on a foreign enemy instead of the absence of social justice and the massive problems confronting people’s lives with unemployment, underemployment, low-paying jobs, dwindling middle class and massive capital concentration in the hands of a few billionaires. In short, the domestic and international counterterrorism campaign that the US government has institutionalized has become an integral part of the American culture and keeps the existing political economy intact and the existing social structure. However, it is backfiring both in the domain of foreign affairs as well as the domestic arena where democracy has fallen victim to counterterrorism with minorities paying the price in urban centers and the middle class continuing to weaken.
The mainstream media that has always been enthusiastic to reflect and reinforce the views of the government, especially the CIA and Pentagon, is skeptical about Hersh’s story because he does not reveal the informant’s name and he does not offer incontrovertible proof – written documents, audio or video to back this story. Common sense tells us that in the absence of a Snowden-like or Wikileaks-type revelation, it is very difficult to produce evidence of a Pakistani intelligence officer walking into the US embassy and making a deal on Osama. In its official response to the story, the White House and CIA dismissed Hersh’s story as baseless and false. This was expected, as was the reaction of US media attacking Hersh for irresponsible journalism.
However, it is important to consider that the US government has denied numerous stories about operations that in time proved the government had engaged in disinformation on a grand scale. This is everything from conducting medical experiments at home and other countries half a century ago, to carrying out counterinsurgency operations in Africa, Latin America and Asia, to assassinating political leaders, as the Frank Church intelligence committee uncovered and where Seymour Hersh was also a key player as an investigate journalist in the 1970s. For decades, the US government and media denied any CIA involvement in Salvador Allende’s Chile. We know now that they were blatantly lying. The list of manufactured stories by the US government is long as is the role of the media going along with such stories.
The disturbing element in all of this is how the media has a very close relationship with former defense, national security analysts working as “news commentators” trying to mold if not reinforce the lies and deception. Part of the reason is the connection with defense contractors, but also the role that finance capital plays as well. When FOXNEWS covered the Hersh story, it relied on a former Reagan administration official on security who simply denied that there is any legitimacy to what Hersh is claiming because he cannot prove it. Her argument was that she believed the CIA director whom she has known for years and “he is a good man” who presumably would not lie on a serious matter such as this. In other words, the media with close ties to government always reinforces the official version until it becomes politically necessary to put a different spin on the story, let us say to use the information Hersh has uncovered against Hillary Clinton running for president because she too was part of the alleged Obama lie on Osama bin-Laden.
Exactly 70 years ago (1941), Orson Welles made Citizen Kanebased on the life of newspaper magnate William Randolph Hearst whose newspapers molded public opinion and influenced politics to a degree that some argue the corporate press determined the course of politics instead of reporting it in an open society where people are provided with information from all sides and all perspectives so they can make up their own minds. In an open society “Citizen Murdoch” and corporations with management that thinks like Murdoch have the right to present their views freely and to reinforce disinformation that the CIA and other government agencies dish out. We know that to expand a media empire or an internet corporation that shares private information with the NSA means insider political influence will result in political favors and contracts among other perks for the media and communications industry.
In a democratic society, the public is ‘consuming news’ often unaware that it is really disinformation. This is a major reason that conspiracy theories have become so popular. For example, the more that the US tried to demonize Russian President Vladimir Putin over the Ukraine crisis, the more the disinformation was backfiring, leaving the Obama team to argue that more money was needed to devote countering the Russian propaganda campaign. This reveals that the only response for the ineffective disinformation campaign was more disinformation, as though the Russians enjoy a ubiquitous influence over Western public opinion.
Time will prove if the Hersh story is legitimate or simply another “journalistic plant” to disinform and distract. In time we will know if this story is partially true, or if it is even worse than Hersh described it. For now, we are left with the Obama administration that came to office in 2009 with the pledge to end exactly the kind of practices he has been pursuing in foreign policy and in the process lying to the American people, as in the case of US drones killing of a US and Italian hostage in January 2015. This does not mean that the world will ever know a single version of what took place with Osama bin-Laden, the Pakistanis and the Americans, but a clearer picture will emerge at some point. Meanwhile, the foreign policy of destabilizing the Middle East, the foreign policy of contradictions, and the defense policy of outspending all rivals to maintain Pax American will continue until it brings the nation deeper in debt, economically weaker with a dwindling middle class in a country where the word democracy will not have much meaning.
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Part 3: 21st century challenges to American democracy
May 5th, 2015
By Jon Kofas.
If we need incontrovertible evidence of a chronic threat to American democracy, then we need not look any farther than institutionalized racism manifesting itself in the police enforcement, judicial and penal systems. This is not to say that there is no evidence of racism when we analyze socioeconomic indicators from unemployment and income distribution to housing, health and education statistics. It would be false to argue that there has been no progress since the 1960s. However, it would equally wrong to argue that institutionalized racism is not a 21st century challenge for American democracy. Regardless of the Bill of Rights, amendments to the Constitution, the Civil Rights movement, and of course political correctness intended to provide a thin veil of superficial politeness beneath which rests an apartheid mindset, racism remains an institutional problem.
The absence of political will to enforce the Fourteenth Amendment from the end of the Civil War until the early 1960s meant that it was not until the Johnson administration that the courts finally began to impose the law, and then only selectively and on-case-by-case depending on the court. The numerous court cases and millions of dollars paid to victims of civil rights violations have yet to stop either the police or any other entity public or private from overlooking the law with regard to race. Despite a black US president and a Justice Department with minority leadership from 2008 until 2016, the militarist-racist culture in police departments around America is clearly manifested in its treatment of minorities, especially black males. Targeting minorities by police and the methods often used is a reflection on the entire democratic system and the collapse of the Constitutional protections afforded to citizens. Recorded visual and audio evidence of police methods notwithstanding, and police and court records clearly showing deliberate targeting of minorities, government at all levels from local and state to federal have done nothing to change the culture of racism, thus sending the message that democracy must be subordinated to police-state methods that violate the law of the land.
In the early 21st century, American democracy will be challenged by the persistence of the culture of discrimination against minorities that has been a part of the history from Independence until the present. Marginalizing minorities reflects the glaring contradiction between the ideological commitment to the constitution that promises equality for all, and the reality of subtle and blatant discrimination against blacks, non-white immigrants, and in the last two decades Muslims. If Muslim, black and Hispanic minorities have to engage in self-censorship to show that they have accepted the institutional structure and hegemonic culture that is in itself a constraint on their freedom and their right of dissent in a democratic society. If there is a need for Affirmative Action because the majority is not to be trusted to make decisions based on a combination of merit criteria and rectifying social injustices, that too is a reflection that democracy is not functioning the same for all as the Constitution stipulates. (Manisha Sinha and Penny von Eschen, Contested Democracy: Freedom, Race, and Power in American History)
The most significant protest movements in American history that have resulted in reforms include tax revolts (Boston Tea Party rebellion 1773) that led to the War of Independence, the abolitionist movement leading to the Civil War, the Women’s suffrage that led to voting rights, and the Civil Rights movement that ended legalized segregation. The degree to which popular protest movements have actually resulted in reforms of greater democratization is debatable, considering that women remain the discriminated gender, and racism has very deep institutional roots as evidenced by all indicators from the percentages of blacks living below poverty to the percentage convicted and imprisoned in comparison with the general population. It is simply impossible to overcome the challenge of racism to American democracy in isolation and not part of an integrated effort of democratizing all of society as part of a commitment to social justice. Both Malcolm X and Martin Luther King recognized toward the end of their lives that institutionalized racism is part of a larger issue regarding social justice. (Nick Bromell, The Time is Always Now: Black Thought and the Transformation of US Democracy; Joseph Barndt, Understanding and Dismantling Racism: The Twenty-First Century Challenge to White America.)
People have no illusions that the US is a country with elected officials that hardly represent the interests of the workers and middle class. Focused on the elites for whose benefit laws and policies are designed, the entire institutional structure exists to line up the masses into conformity. It is amazing that even in the latest budget deal that Obama sent to Congress for approval in December 2014, school lunch subsidies were slashed, while more tax breaks for Wall Street were included. No matter how much right wing radio and TV rhetoric is thrown at the American public, how is it possible that the vast majority do not appreciate that Congress consistently fails to serve the public interest because the financing of its campaigns and its ideological commitment is to the top ten percent of the country’s richest people?
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