Book Review – Iraq and the International Oil System
By Thomas Riggins
Stephen Pelletiere, a former professor at the U.S. Army War College, was, during the Iran-Iraq War, the CIA’s senior Iraq specialist. In this book he has written a history of the development of the oil industry since the nineteenth century with special emphasis on its international development most notably with regard to Iraq.
His major thesis is "that America’s occupation of Iraq is a bid to recoup what the oil companies lost when they were forced to disgorge in 1973 [as a result of the OPEC Revolution--tr]; that is, control over the world oil industry and beyond that control of the global economy."
Pelletiere marshals mounds of facts and statistics to substantiate his thesis. It is refreshing to have this conclusion proven by a former CIA big shot. One expects the Left to make this argument.
He further maintains that America had to go to war due to Iraq’s "unexpected defeat of Iran" in the 8-year long war fought between those two major oil producing countries. From the U.S. point of view the victory of Iraq would lead it to become a regional superpower, a superette-power, that would eventually "have contested the west’s grip on the region."
All the talk about spreading "democracy" and "wanting to over throw a tyrant", "of dangerous weapons of mass destruction" are stories for children. Anyone familiar with the Middle East and U.S. policy, as Pelletiere is with his years of CIA experience, as well as his Ph.D. from Berkeley and knowledge of Arabic, knows perfectly well that Iraq’s oil, and that alone, was at the heart of U.S. ambitions in the region.
The book is divided into six chapters. The first two describe the history and development of the international oil industry and the establishment of the great oil cartel (the Seven Sisters) created by the oil magnates.
In chapter three, Pelletiere discusses the attempts by the U.S. government to control the Cartel and how the Cartel came out on top by effectively enlisting the State and Treasury Departments to do its bidding.
The fourth chapter concentrates on the conflicts between successive Iraqi governments and the oil cartel-- not just the government of Saddam Hussein but his predecessors as well.
In the fifth chapter we learn about the oil cartel’s biggest defeat. How OPEC (the organization set up by the major oil producing and exporting countries) took over the production and pricing of their own oil from the power of the Cartel (the so-called "OPEC Revolution" of 1973).
The last chapter (the sixth) is all about the First Gulf War. The book was basically written to explain how this war came about. One of the most interesting sections is Pelletiere’s discussion of the role of the mass media in drumming up support for this war-- exactly as they did for the invasion of Iraq.
The major American media got their information basically from the CIA, which slanted everything to favor the aims of the U.S. government and its interpretation of events. The media then uncritically put this propaganda out to the American people as "the news." This explains why the American people don’t know anything about what is really going on in the Middle East-- or the rest of the world for that matter.
Pelletiere points out, for example, how the story about Iraq gassing the Kurds "Saddam killed his own people, etc.,") was manufactured. Both Iraq and Iran gassed each other during the 8-year war. The Iraqis used mustard gas and the Iranians used a cyanide-based gas in the Kurdish area. It was the latter that killed the Kurds in Iraq. But this fact did not fit into the American-British propaganda about Iraq. Nevertheless, in "all likelihood," Pelletiere writes, "Iranian gas killed the Kurds." I do remember reading about this in an op-ed article in the New York Times after the invasion of Iraq, but the orthodox view is still that it was Saddam that did it-- but who knows-- Saddam is history and as relations sour with Iran we may be treated to the revelation that it was the Iranians after all having "fooled" the CIA.
The lesson here is, once the U.S. government decides on an "enemy" you cannot rely on the mass media to present truthful and reliable information. All the more reason to rely upon the alternate press.
In the postscript, written for the second edition of his book, Pelletiere attempts to demonstrate, convincingly I think, that the invasion of Iraq, like the Gulf War, was brought about by "America’s determination to control Persian Gulf oil and to hang on to its arms-trading relationship" with middle eastern countries.
The basic argument here is that after the "collapse of communism" the military-industrial complex feared that U.S. spending on arms might go down and that some of the money it was used to getting might actually be invested in programs benefiting the American people.
The neo-conservatives are part of this complex but they are not "the real movers and shakers" of U.S. policy-- that honor goes to "All of the major defense contractors, who, with their hefty donations, subsidize the conservative think tanks, and contribute to candidates to the Congress and for the Presidency" these are the real powers behind the U.S. war policies: they get the billions spent on the military.
The American people will never hear this from our mass media because the Bush-Blair team’s use of the media, Pelletiere shows, is an example "of a technique previously pioneered (or at least made famous by) the National Socialists in Germany; this was the so-called Big Lie." We all know this fascist technique. If you just keep repeating the lie people will eventually believe it. Everyone tired of being lied to should read this book.
Steven Pelletiere
Iraq and the International Oil System: Why America Went to War in the Gulf
Washington, D.C., Maisonneuve Press, 2004.
--Thomas Riggins is book review editor of Political Affairs.
Thursday, June 22, 2006
Wednesday, June 21, 2006
THE OUTING OF SPONGE-BOB SQUAREPANTS
The Outing of Sponge-Bob SquarePants [Political Affairs Archives]
By Thomas Riggins
Thank the gods for the faux Christian Right! One of their hate groups, Focus on the Family, has uncovered a sinister [left wing?] plot to corrupt America’s youth. David Kirkpatrick reported in The New York Times of 1/20/05 ("Conservatives Taking Aim At Soft Target") that James C. Dobson, the Focus founder, has denounced Mr. Sponge-Bob SquarePants for taking part in a "pro-homosexual video."
Not since the Tele Tubby scandal a few years ago has the so-called X-tian Right (I use the "X" because I don’t think Christ would want his name associated with these jokers) made such an important contribution to the defense of the Republic.
The video is going to be sent to thousands of elementary schools throughout the nation. It was made by the We Are Family Foundation founded by Nile Rogers, who wrote the song "We Are Family" after 9/11. (Not to be confused with the pro-gay advocacy group called We Are Family-- a different outfit. Our X-tian friends may have done this).
Besides Mr. SquarePants, the video features other suspicious characters whose sexual identities may be a problem for Mr. Dobson-- such as Barney. Mr. SquarePants behavior on his own show may also be an issue as well. He does hold hands with his friend Patrick and he has questionable television viewing habits. Mr. Kirkpatrick reports that he and Patrick (while holding hands mind you) watch "The Adventures of Mermaid Man and Barnacle Boy"-- a fact, I am sure, that has not been missed by Mr. Dobson and his inquisitional friends.
Mr. SquarePants has also become "a camp figure among adult gay men." Mr. Dobson cannot be pleased with this information. Mr. Dobson was first alerted to the possibility that Sponge-Bob might better be called Sponge-Bob HotPants by another organization claiming to be X-tian, namely the American Family Association.
Both groups are committed to the prevention of same sex marriages-- arguably the most important issue of the last two thousand years or so. Is the Sponge-Bob video subliminally programming the elementary school children who watch it to be tolerant in the future of same sex unions, or even, heaven forbid, to practice them?
However, the video itself, which has already been shown on network television, according to the Times article, has "nothing in it or its accompanying materials [that] refers to sexual identity." Nevertheless, there is that troubling handholding.
What is the real purpose of this video? Why is it being sent to elementary schools? The video makers state its purpose is to "teach children about multiculturalism" and "tolerance." Perhaps this does not make sense to Mr. Dobson. He may think elementary school children have enough problems just learning one culture. How can they learn many?
In any event, Mr. Dobson, and others of his ilk, will have none of this un-X-tian propaganda foisted off on the children of America. He is quoted as saying, "We see the video as an insidious means by which the organization [the We are Family Foundation, but Dobson is probably confused about this] is manipulating and potentially brainwashing [with a sponge yet!] kids."
But surely these so-called X-tians have Sunday schools to correct any ideas of tolerance and respect for others that may have contaminated their children in the public school systems.
Meanwhile, on the editorial page of the same issue of the Times, we learn that homophobia is weakening our national defense. The government has a serious shortage of people who can read and speak Arabic, as well as other languages, so that there is now a backlog of 120,000 messages in Arabic that, characterized as a "looming threat," remain untranslated.
The Times is rightly upset because in the last few years 20 vital Arabic specialists were discharged by the military for being gay. The mindless homophobia displayed by the government puts all of us at risk. Suppose somewhere in that backlog of 120,000 messages is another 9/11 plot.
No doubt it is more important to purge the armed forces of gays than to get through that backlog and provide security to the American people. Maybe Nile Rogers can send a few of those videos staring the insidious Mr. SquarePants to the Pentagon big-wigs, although I don’t think "tolerance" is a very high priority for Mr. Rumsfeld and his cronies.
--Thomas Riggins writes frequently for Political Affairs' online edition.
By Thomas Riggins
Thank the gods for the faux Christian Right! One of their hate groups, Focus on the Family, has uncovered a sinister [left wing?] plot to corrupt America’s youth. David Kirkpatrick reported in The New York Times of 1/20/05 ("Conservatives Taking Aim At Soft Target") that James C. Dobson, the Focus founder, has denounced Mr. Sponge-Bob SquarePants for taking part in a "pro-homosexual video."
Not since the Tele Tubby scandal a few years ago has the so-called X-tian Right (I use the "X" because I don’t think Christ would want his name associated with these jokers) made such an important contribution to the defense of the Republic.
The video is going to be sent to thousands of elementary schools throughout the nation. It was made by the We Are Family Foundation founded by Nile Rogers, who wrote the song "We Are Family" after 9/11. (Not to be confused with the pro-gay advocacy group called We Are Family-- a different outfit. Our X-tian friends may have done this).
Besides Mr. SquarePants, the video features other suspicious characters whose sexual identities may be a problem for Mr. Dobson-- such as Barney. Mr. SquarePants behavior on his own show may also be an issue as well. He does hold hands with his friend Patrick and he has questionable television viewing habits. Mr. Kirkpatrick reports that he and Patrick (while holding hands mind you) watch "The Adventures of Mermaid Man and Barnacle Boy"-- a fact, I am sure, that has not been missed by Mr. Dobson and his inquisitional friends.
Mr. SquarePants has also become "a camp figure among adult gay men." Mr. Dobson cannot be pleased with this information. Mr. Dobson was first alerted to the possibility that Sponge-Bob might better be called Sponge-Bob HotPants by another organization claiming to be X-tian, namely the American Family Association.
Both groups are committed to the prevention of same sex marriages-- arguably the most important issue of the last two thousand years or so. Is the Sponge-Bob video subliminally programming the elementary school children who watch it to be tolerant in the future of same sex unions, or even, heaven forbid, to practice them?
However, the video itself, which has already been shown on network television, according to the Times article, has "nothing in it or its accompanying materials [that] refers to sexual identity." Nevertheless, there is that troubling handholding.
What is the real purpose of this video? Why is it being sent to elementary schools? The video makers state its purpose is to "teach children about multiculturalism" and "tolerance." Perhaps this does not make sense to Mr. Dobson. He may think elementary school children have enough problems just learning one culture. How can they learn many?
In any event, Mr. Dobson, and others of his ilk, will have none of this un-X-tian propaganda foisted off on the children of America. He is quoted as saying, "We see the video as an insidious means by which the organization [the We are Family Foundation, but Dobson is probably confused about this] is manipulating and potentially brainwashing [with a sponge yet!] kids."
But surely these so-called X-tians have Sunday schools to correct any ideas of tolerance and respect for others that may have contaminated their children in the public school systems.
Meanwhile, on the editorial page of the same issue of the Times, we learn that homophobia is weakening our national defense. The government has a serious shortage of people who can read and speak Arabic, as well as other languages, so that there is now a backlog of 120,000 messages in Arabic that, characterized as a "looming threat," remain untranslated.
The Times is rightly upset because in the last few years 20 vital Arabic specialists were discharged by the military for being gay. The mindless homophobia displayed by the government puts all of us at risk. Suppose somewhere in that backlog of 120,000 messages is another 9/11 plot.
No doubt it is more important to purge the armed forces of gays than to get through that backlog and provide security to the American people. Maybe Nile Rogers can send a few of those videos staring the insidious Mr. SquarePants to the Pentagon big-wigs, although I don’t think "tolerance" is a very high priority for Mr. Rumsfeld and his cronies.
--Thomas Riggins writes frequently for Political Affairs' online edition.
Sunday, June 18, 2006
CALL FOR A RETURN OF THE LOUISIANA PURCHASE
By Thomas Riggins
Our organization, the Louisiana Purchase Return Committee has been formed to facilitate the return of the Louisiana Purchase to its rightful owner France.
Research shows that neither President Jefferson nor Napoleon Bonaparte were authorized to acquire on the one hand or to sell on the other the Louisiana Purchase[LP].
We demand the immediate return of the States of Louisiana, Missouri, Arkansas, Iowa, North and South Dakota, Nebraska and Oklahoma to our true Fatherland-- France. We also maintain that all so-called American citizens living in the LP are actually, by right, French citizens.
There are many benefits to be gained by the population of the LP having their land, illegally sold by Napoleon, returned to France and their rightful French citizenship restored to them.
For example-- they will have a better system of health care as French people. Everyone will be covered by medical insurance and will have affordable prescriptions as well. In addition high quality French wines will be readily available for consumption, replacing the California swill that passes for wine in the American occupied LP.
The educational system will aso be vastly improved. It is well known that the French have a superior educational system-- a French 10th grade drop out scores higher on average on tests of general knowledge, culture and science than do American college graduates. The people of the LP have the right to be French and the American government and the Bush administration can no longer deny them their true citizenship.
Older people living in the LP will also have a better time of it being French than at present. The French do not have a "Social Security" crises. French people have better pensions and retirement incomes than do the people living in the illegally occupied LP. In the America of today 850,000 elderly people are in dire poverty even with their social security benefits. Many of them are really French people forced to be Americans because of the illegal occupation. The return of the LP to France would be a boon to them.
The French also take care of their veterans better than the American government takes care of theirs. Instead of serving in the National Guard and finding yourself sent to Iraq, the young men and women of the LP will be able to join the French army. Provisions may also be made to allow the American-French to join the Foreign Legion which is certainly more romantic than the National Guard.
Speaking of Romance-- we all know that the French are much more romantic than the inhibited and uptight evangelical population of the LP. By becoming French both the men and women living in French America will acquire the mystique of the passionate French lover.
The LP states will all become overseas departments of France with all the rights of French people. This means a more democratic system than they now live under. Presently they are subject to "red state terrorism"-- their science text books have nasty little stickers put in them attacking evolution and their public officials are elected in undemocratic winner take all elections, As French people we will have proportional representation and dozens of parties to choose from-- all will represented in the Parliament in Paris.
Workers will also be better off-- with guaranteed unemployment insurance, strong unions, many controlled by communists who don’t fool around with workers rights, and six week vacations instead of the measly two weeks Americans get.
The people in the LP will also be paid in Euros not the weak and declining dollar. So, better food, better wine, better cheese, better movies (you can’t beat the art house French movie industry instead the violent shoot em up Hollywood junk), better love making, better working conditions, better health, better money, etc., etc.
I think the case has been made that the population of the LP will be 100% better off if they are French and they should now organize, demand that France return the $27,267,622 they were paid for the LP, they should also demand the right of return so that any present day citizen in the LP can go to France and be instantly given French citizenship. American French people, the time has come to break out the Chardonnay, start singing the Marseillaise, raise the Tricolor and tell the US government au revoir.
Our organization, the Louisiana Purchase Return Committee has been formed to facilitate the return of the Louisiana Purchase to its rightful owner France.
Research shows that neither President Jefferson nor Napoleon Bonaparte were authorized to acquire on the one hand or to sell on the other the Louisiana Purchase[LP].
We demand the immediate return of the States of Louisiana, Missouri, Arkansas, Iowa, North and South Dakota, Nebraska and Oklahoma to our true Fatherland-- France. We also maintain that all so-called American citizens living in the LP are actually, by right, French citizens.
There are many benefits to be gained by the population of the LP having their land, illegally sold by Napoleon, returned to France and their rightful French citizenship restored to them.
For example-- they will have a better system of health care as French people. Everyone will be covered by medical insurance and will have affordable prescriptions as well. In addition high quality French wines will be readily available for consumption, replacing the California swill that passes for wine in the American occupied LP.
The educational system will aso be vastly improved. It is well known that the French have a superior educational system-- a French 10th grade drop out scores higher on average on tests of general knowledge, culture and science than do American college graduates. The people of the LP have the right to be French and the American government and the Bush administration can no longer deny them their true citizenship.
Older people living in the LP will also have a better time of it being French than at present. The French do not have a "Social Security" crises. French people have better pensions and retirement incomes than do the people living in the illegally occupied LP. In the America of today 850,000 elderly people are in dire poverty even with their social security benefits. Many of them are really French people forced to be Americans because of the illegal occupation. The return of the LP to France would be a boon to them.
The French also take care of their veterans better than the American government takes care of theirs. Instead of serving in the National Guard and finding yourself sent to Iraq, the young men and women of the LP will be able to join the French army. Provisions may also be made to allow the American-French to join the Foreign Legion which is certainly more romantic than the National Guard.
Speaking of Romance-- we all know that the French are much more romantic than the inhibited and uptight evangelical population of the LP. By becoming French both the men and women living in French America will acquire the mystique of the passionate French lover.
The LP states will all become overseas departments of France with all the rights of French people. This means a more democratic system than they now live under. Presently they are subject to "red state terrorism"-- their science text books have nasty little stickers put in them attacking evolution and their public officials are elected in undemocratic winner take all elections, As French people we will have proportional representation and dozens of parties to choose from-- all will represented in the Parliament in Paris.
Workers will also be better off-- with guaranteed unemployment insurance, strong unions, many controlled by communists who don’t fool around with workers rights, and six week vacations instead of the measly two weeks Americans get.
The people in the LP will also be paid in Euros not the weak and declining dollar. So, better food, better wine, better cheese, better movies (you can’t beat the art house French movie industry instead the violent shoot em up Hollywood junk), better love making, better working conditions, better health, better money, etc., etc.
I think the case has been made that the population of the LP will be 100% better off if they are French and they should now organize, demand that France return the $27,267,622 they were paid for the LP, they should also demand the right of return so that any present day citizen in the LP can go to France and be instantly given French citizenship. American French people, the time has come to break out the Chardonnay, start singing the Marseillaise, raise the Tricolor and tell the US government au revoir.
Saturday, June 17, 2006
THE PLOT AGAINST THE POOR
The Plot Against the Poor [Archival materials from PA [http://www.politicalaffairs.net/article/articleview/538/1/65/]
By Thomas Riggins
Federal programs to benefit the poor and elderly have been targeted by the Bush administration and its allies in Congress according to a recent article in The New York Times by Robert Pear ("Applying Brakes to Benefits Gets Wide G.O.P. Backing: Bush to Seek Firm and Enforceable Curbs" 1-9-05).
It seems that President Bush has decided that one of the ways he can carry out the teachings of his favorite philosopher (Jesus) is to stick it to the poor, elderly and sick. Perhaps he has taken to heart Matthew 13:12 "For whosoever hath, to him shall be given more abundance: but whosoever hath not, from him shall be taken away even that he hath."
Although I don’t think Jesus was speaking as an economist, this little maxim aptly sums up what the President and the Republican leaders in the House and Senate have in mind for whosoever hath not.
What the President wants to do is reign in benefit programs paid for by the federal government. We have more important things to spend our money on than the hath nots of the country – tanks, helicopter gun ships, and cluster bombs for instance.
He does want to increase funding for "military operations and domestic security." What should we cut? Social welfare measures are the prime targets. An example is "housing assistance for low-income families." There just isn’t enough homelessness in the United States and with the influx of poor families to streets and parks after the cuts go into effect there will be plenty more people to help with faith based initiatives and Christian caring.
The President will have the help of Republican Senator Judd Gregg of New Hampshire (what’s he doing in a Blue State?) the chairman of the Senate Budget Committee. Herr Gregg is quoted as saying he wants to help "put the breaks on the growth of entitlements" that is of the nonmilitary kind.
The National Science Foundation will be underfunded in the new budget being prepared by the President (it goes to Congress in early February). The Bushies wanted to cut the science budget – who needs science anyway? It gets in the way of the President’s views on global warming, stem cell research, pollution levels and environmental problems. But after a stink from the scientific community and Republican Senator Chris Bond of Missouri, they decided to flatline it instead. If science gets with the program it might get more money next year.
The National Institutes of Health were also on the chopping block. With the medical community warning that Asian avian flu could become a pandemic here in the U.S. killing thousands, it seems like the perfect time to curtail medical research. The flu might even have some Malthusian benefits if the streets and parks get too crowded with hath nots.
However, the Bushies are not completely insensitive to reality, especially since they now make their own. They won’t cut the health budget; they will even increase it 2 per cent "which would not be enough to keep pace with the rising costs of biomedical research." Well, we can afford to fall behind in that field since so many Americans don’t have the insurance to get the treatments that the research would come up with anyway.
The new Medicare Law has to be looked at too. This law "offers prescription drug coverage to all 41 million elderly and disabled beneficiaries." Herr Gregg voted against it because it was "fiscally irresponsible" – what do these elderly and disabled people want from the rest of us anyway. His fellow Republicans recognize that this law is actually a boondoggle benefiting insurance and drug companies not Medicare recipients so it will not, in all likelihood, be cut. But its the thought that counts.
Anyway Herr Gregg opines that spending a lot of extra money on Medicare will lead to a "a ‘massive tax increase’ on workers." It doesn’t occur to a Republican that some people other than workers might get a tax increase. As for Medicaid, "the health program for low-income people," the Bushies are reported to still be working on how to cut that one – we have faith that they will find a way.
The President also wants new legislation to "make it more difficult" for Congress in the future to increase benefits for Social Security and, listen up vets, "veterans disability benefits." So vets, please don’t get disabled while in the service. Not only won’t you get armor for your vehicles but don’t look forward to a whole lot of new disability benefits. Still, the Republicans love you – they just don’t want to spend a lot of money on you, after all you can’t buy love.
Well, I could go on but I think you get the point. If you voted for Bush and most other Republicans I hope you won’t ever become a hath not and need Social Security, affordable housing, state of the art medical care, prescription drugs or anything produced by science. You get what you vote for [unless the elections are rigged] so know what you want.
--Thomas Riggins is book review editor of Political Affairs and can be reached at pabooks@politicalaffairs.net.
By Thomas Riggins
Federal programs to benefit the poor and elderly have been targeted by the Bush administration and its allies in Congress according to a recent article in The New York Times by Robert Pear ("Applying Brakes to Benefits Gets Wide G.O.P. Backing: Bush to Seek Firm and Enforceable Curbs" 1-9-05).
It seems that President Bush has decided that one of the ways he can carry out the teachings of his favorite philosopher (Jesus) is to stick it to the poor, elderly and sick. Perhaps he has taken to heart Matthew 13:12 "For whosoever hath, to him shall be given more abundance: but whosoever hath not, from him shall be taken away even that he hath."
Although I don’t think Jesus was speaking as an economist, this little maxim aptly sums up what the President and the Republican leaders in the House and Senate have in mind for whosoever hath not.
What the President wants to do is reign in benefit programs paid for by the federal government. We have more important things to spend our money on than the hath nots of the country – tanks, helicopter gun ships, and cluster bombs for instance.
He does want to increase funding for "military operations and domestic security." What should we cut? Social welfare measures are the prime targets. An example is "housing assistance for low-income families." There just isn’t enough homelessness in the United States and with the influx of poor families to streets and parks after the cuts go into effect there will be plenty more people to help with faith based initiatives and Christian caring.
The President will have the help of Republican Senator Judd Gregg of New Hampshire (what’s he doing in a Blue State?) the chairman of the Senate Budget Committee. Herr Gregg is quoted as saying he wants to help "put the breaks on the growth of entitlements" that is of the nonmilitary kind.
The National Science Foundation will be underfunded in the new budget being prepared by the President (it goes to Congress in early February). The Bushies wanted to cut the science budget – who needs science anyway? It gets in the way of the President’s views on global warming, stem cell research, pollution levels and environmental problems. But after a stink from the scientific community and Republican Senator Chris Bond of Missouri, they decided to flatline it instead. If science gets with the program it might get more money next year.
The National Institutes of Health were also on the chopping block. With the medical community warning that Asian avian flu could become a pandemic here in the U.S. killing thousands, it seems like the perfect time to curtail medical research. The flu might even have some Malthusian benefits if the streets and parks get too crowded with hath nots.
However, the Bushies are not completely insensitive to reality, especially since they now make their own. They won’t cut the health budget; they will even increase it 2 per cent "which would not be enough to keep pace with the rising costs of biomedical research." Well, we can afford to fall behind in that field since so many Americans don’t have the insurance to get the treatments that the research would come up with anyway.
The new Medicare Law has to be looked at too. This law "offers prescription drug coverage to all 41 million elderly and disabled beneficiaries." Herr Gregg voted against it because it was "fiscally irresponsible" – what do these elderly and disabled people want from the rest of us anyway. His fellow Republicans recognize that this law is actually a boondoggle benefiting insurance and drug companies not Medicare recipients so it will not, in all likelihood, be cut. But its the thought that counts.
Anyway Herr Gregg opines that spending a lot of extra money on Medicare will lead to a "a ‘massive tax increase’ on workers." It doesn’t occur to a Republican that some people other than workers might get a tax increase. As for Medicaid, "the health program for low-income people," the Bushies are reported to still be working on how to cut that one – we have faith that they will find a way.
The President also wants new legislation to "make it more difficult" for Congress in the future to increase benefits for Social Security and, listen up vets, "veterans disability benefits." So vets, please don’t get disabled while in the service. Not only won’t you get armor for your vehicles but don’t look forward to a whole lot of new disability benefits. Still, the Republicans love you – they just don’t want to spend a lot of money on you, after all you can’t buy love.
Well, I could go on but I think you get the point. If you voted for Bush and most other Republicans I hope you won’t ever become a hath not and need Social Security, affordable housing, state of the art medical care, prescription drugs or anything produced by science. You get what you vote for [unless the elections are rigged] so know what you want.
--Thomas Riggins is book review editor of Political Affairs and can be reached at pabooks@politicalaffairs.net.
Friday, June 16, 2006
THE HOUSE OF WAR & THE FUTURE OF HEGEL
http://www.selvesandothers.org/article14672.html
Book Previews: The House of War & The Future of Hegel
Book Round Up #17
by Thomas Riggins
15th June 2006
Here is another of our book previews (reviews of reviews) of new books of interest to the progressive community. The previous 16 book round ups are archived on Political Affairs’ website. Any readers interested in writing a full review of one of these books should contact me at pabooks@politicalaffairs.net.
HOUSE OF WAR: THE PENTAGON AND THE DISASTROUS RISE OF AMERICAN POWER by James Carroll, Illustrated, 657 pages Houghton Mifflin, reviewed by William Grimes in The New York Times, Wednesday, June 7, 2006.
Grimes, a loyal supporter of the bourgeoisie, doesn’t really like this book. He calls it a "tendentious, morally incoherent account of how the United States has become, in [Carroll’s] words, ‘a garrison state,’ in thrall to the machinery of war and the doomsday thinking of paranoid generals and twisted defense intellectuals." Already this sounds like a good book!
The book covers the history of the Pentagon from its opening in 1943 until the present. What gets Grimes’ goat is that Carroll portrays the U.S. as basically warlike and an enemy of, or at least the major threat, to world peace. "Always," Grimes writes, "the Soviet Union is seen as a willing partner for peace, driven into a corner and forced to react defensively by an American government bent on gaining nuclear superiority. (Eastern Europe was acquired, in Mr. Carroll’s view, by accident, not design.)" Carroll is right about that. The Soviet Union didn’t start WW2 after all, nor the cold war for that matter.
Grimes doesn’t seem to like Carroll’s view that basically all U.S. foreign policy and arms control policies are "duplicitous." The author doesn’t consider Iran to be a serious threat. "When it comes to nuclear danger," he writes, "Washington is by far the graver problem." This seems pretty obvious. Who has the most atomic weapons, refuses to take a no first strike position, and wants to make a whole new generation of updated weapons? Iran hasn’t even got one atomic weapon yet!
This is enough to give you the tone of both the review and the book. Here is Grimes’ ending, putting the author down for basically blaming the U.S. for the "cold war." Grimes writes, "The cold war was a dreadful time but perhaps not as dreadful as the years 1914 to 1918 or 1939 to 1945. If you don’t like it cold, try it hot." What a false dichotomy! It was hot enough for the Koreans, the Vietnamese, and hundreds of thousands of murdered Central Americans, as well as thousands of disappeared and killed Chileans, Argentines and other South Americans— not to mention the 100,000 plus Iraqi civilians wiped out courtesy of Uncle Sam.
THE FUTURE OF HEGEL: PLASTICITY, TEMPORALITY AND DIALECTIC by Catherine Malabou, Routledge, 2004 reviewed by Peter Benson in Philosophy Now, February/March 2006.
While not an "intro" to Hegel, the reviewer thinks this book "offers brilliant clarifications of some of the more opaque aspects of Hegel’s thought." Good, people reading Hegel need all the help they can get! Let’s look at some of these clarifications. Hegel called his philosophy "speculative" but did not mean that it was just "speculation." Benson points out that Hegel distinguished two types of propositions: "predicative"— "in which predicates are externally attached to a fixed subject" and "speculative"— "in which predicates are gradually unfolded from the concept of the sentence’s subject." Attentive readers, by the way, will recognize this as the method used by Karl Marx in developing the notion of capitalism in his masterwork Capital. "This gradual unfolding," Benson says, "is the essence of Hegel’s philosophical method."
Hegel thought that we could find in language the preserved forms of previous thought which we needed to understand and pass through to arrive at the truth. His most famous word was "Aufheben" which means both to overcome and abolish something and yet at the same time preserve and develop it. There is no word for this in English. "The movement it names," Benson writes, "(each stage of thought both retained and transcended) is that of the Hegelian dialectic." It is also the basis of the Marxist dialectic. Socialism both abolishes capitalism as a system yet preserves the productive capacities and scientific advances that it created. This also allows us to understand how profoundly disastrous and un-Marxist the Chinese "Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution" was in attempting to destroy all vestiges of China’s cultural history as "feudal" and "bourgeois."
Malabou also stresses another word she found Hegel using a lot. This is the word "Plastiche" or, in English, "plastic" in German the word has two meanings, as Malabou points out, according to Benson, namely "capable of shaping" and "capable of being shaped." Benson says the key to Malabou’s interpretation of Hegel is to be found in how she relates the concept of plasticity to his thought.
Hegel, according to Benson, considered Greek sculpture the highest form of the plastic arts by its perfect molding of the human form. He also liked Aristotle’s ethics of "molding one’s character, as a sculptor shapes stone, by the deliberate adoption of habits which thereby become a second nature." He then gives a quote from the book: "Human characteristics are not a given, they emerge as the result of a process of formation of which art is the paradigm." Marxists would consider the labor process as the paradigm.
At this point the review begins to morph into theology as Malabou discusses Hegel’s ideas about ’God" and why Christian theologians reject them. The role of "God" in Hegel’s system is very complicated but I think it is safe to say Hegel’s "God" is very unlike anything normally religious people would recognize. In fact we can leave "God" out of Hegel’s system and thus avoid a lot of theological twaddle.
The review then discusses Hegel’s views of history and compares Hegel’s real opinions with those of Alexandre Kojeve who in the 1930s "inaugurated French Hegelianism" and who thought that history ended with Napoleon and also with those of Francis Fukuyama who thinks history ended with Ronald Reagan. Needless to say, history still seems to be clunking along.
Malabou, however, endorses " the view that ’history is over.’" She also thinks, as a consequence, that the major problem facing humanity in our time is that we have too much "free time" due to "technological simplification." Maybe the French do have too many vacation days! Benson says, "Perhaps only a highly-paid professor of philosophy at a prestigious French university (i.e., Malabou) could possibly imagine that the major problem facing most of the world’s population today is how to fill their endless free time!" No comment necessary.
Benson also faults the book for neglecting politics and Hegel’s views on this subject. Despite these criticisms he gives the book an overall positive evaluation— an "otherwise excellent book."
Thomas Riggins is the book review editor of Political Affairs and can reached at pabooks@politicalaffairs.net
Book Previews: The House of War & The Future of Hegel
Book Round Up #17
by Thomas Riggins
15th June 2006
Here is another of our book previews (reviews of reviews) of new books of interest to the progressive community. The previous 16 book round ups are archived on Political Affairs’ website. Any readers interested in writing a full review of one of these books should contact me at pabooks@politicalaffairs.net.
HOUSE OF WAR: THE PENTAGON AND THE DISASTROUS RISE OF AMERICAN POWER by James Carroll, Illustrated, 657 pages Houghton Mifflin, reviewed by William Grimes in The New York Times, Wednesday, June 7, 2006.
Grimes, a loyal supporter of the bourgeoisie, doesn’t really like this book. He calls it a "tendentious, morally incoherent account of how the United States has become, in [Carroll’s] words, ‘a garrison state,’ in thrall to the machinery of war and the doomsday thinking of paranoid generals and twisted defense intellectuals." Already this sounds like a good book!
The book covers the history of the Pentagon from its opening in 1943 until the present. What gets Grimes’ goat is that Carroll portrays the U.S. as basically warlike and an enemy of, or at least the major threat, to world peace. "Always," Grimes writes, "the Soviet Union is seen as a willing partner for peace, driven into a corner and forced to react defensively by an American government bent on gaining nuclear superiority. (Eastern Europe was acquired, in Mr. Carroll’s view, by accident, not design.)" Carroll is right about that. The Soviet Union didn’t start WW2 after all, nor the cold war for that matter.
Grimes doesn’t seem to like Carroll’s view that basically all U.S. foreign policy and arms control policies are "duplicitous." The author doesn’t consider Iran to be a serious threat. "When it comes to nuclear danger," he writes, "Washington is by far the graver problem." This seems pretty obvious. Who has the most atomic weapons, refuses to take a no first strike position, and wants to make a whole new generation of updated weapons? Iran hasn’t even got one atomic weapon yet!
This is enough to give you the tone of both the review and the book. Here is Grimes’ ending, putting the author down for basically blaming the U.S. for the "cold war." Grimes writes, "The cold war was a dreadful time but perhaps not as dreadful as the years 1914 to 1918 or 1939 to 1945. If you don’t like it cold, try it hot." What a false dichotomy! It was hot enough for the Koreans, the Vietnamese, and hundreds of thousands of murdered Central Americans, as well as thousands of disappeared and killed Chileans, Argentines and other South Americans— not to mention the 100,000 plus Iraqi civilians wiped out courtesy of Uncle Sam.
THE FUTURE OF HEGEL: PLASTICITY, TEMPORALITY AND DIALECTIC by Catherine Malabou, Routledge, 2004 reviewed by Peter Benson in Philosophy Now, February/March 2006.
While not an "intro" to Hegel, the reviewer thinks this book "offers brilliant clarifications of some of the more opaque aspects of Hegel’s thought." Good, people reading Hegel need all the help they can get! Let’s look at some of these clarifications. Hegel called his philosophy "speculative" but did not mean that it was just "speculation." Benson points out that Hegel distinguished two types of propositions: "predicative"— "in which predicates are externally attached to a fixed subject" and "speculative"— "in which predicates are gradually unfolded from the concept of the sentence’s subject." Attentive readers, by the way, will recognize this as the method used by Karl Marx in developing the notion of capitalism in his masterwork Capital. "This gradual unfolding," Benson says, "is the essence of Hegel’s philosophical method."
Hegel thought that we could find in language the preserved forms of previous thought which we needed to understand and pass through to arrive at the truth. His most famous word was "Aufheben" which means both to overcome and abolish something and yet at the same time preserve and develop it. There is no word for this in English. "The movement it names," Benson writes, "(each stage of thought both retained and transcended) is that of the Hegelian dialectic." It is also the basis of the Marxist dialectic. Socialism both abolishes capitalism as a system yet preserves the productive capacities and scientific advances that it created. This also allows us to understand how profoundly disastrous and un-Marxist the Chinese "Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution" was in attempting to destroy all vestiges of China’s cultural history as "feudal" and "bourgeois."
Malabou also stresses another word she found Hegel using a lot. This is the word "Plastiche" or, in English, "plastic" in German the word has two meanings, as Malabou points out, according to Benson, namely "capable of shaping" and "capable of being shaped." Benson says the key to Malabou’s interpretation of Hegel is to be found in how she relates the concept of plasticity to his thought.
Hegel, according to Benson, considered Greek sculpture the highest form of the plastic arts by its perfect molding of the human form. He also liked Aristotle’s ethics of "molding one’s character, as a sculptor shapes stone, by the deliberate adoption of habits which thereby become a second nature." He then gives a quote from the book: "Human characteristics are not a given, they emerge as the result of a process of formation of which art is the paradigm." Marxists would consider the labor process as the paradigm.
At this point the review begins to morph into theology as Malabou discusses Hegel’s ideas about ’God" and why Christian theologians reject them. The role of "God" in Hegel’s system is very complicated but I think it is safe to say Hegel’s "God" is very unlike anything normally religious people would recognize. In fact we can leave "God" out of Hegel’s system and thus avoid a lot of theological twaddle.
The review then discusses Hegel’s views of history and compares Hegel’s real opinions with those of Alexandre Kojeve who in the 1930s "inaugurated French Hegelianism" and who thought that history ended with Napoleon and also with those of Francis Fukuyama who thinks history ended with Ronald Reagan. Needless to say, history still seems to be clunking along.
Malabou, however, endorses " the view that ’history is over.’" She also thinks, as a consequence, that the major problem facing humanity in our time is that we have too much "free time" due to "technological simplification." Maybe the French do have too many vacation days! Benson says, "Perhaps only a highly-paid professor of philosophy at a prestigious French university (i.e., Malabou) could possibly imagine that the major problem facing most of the world’s population today is how to fill their endless free time!" No comment necessary.
Benson also faults the book for neglecting politics and Hegel’s views on this subject. Despite these criticisms he gives the book an overall positive evaluation— an "otherwise excellent book."
Thomas Riggins is the book review editor of Political Affairs and can reached at pabooks@politicalaffairs.net
Thursday, June 15, 2006
"COLLAPSE": A PREVIEW
A Preview of Jared Diamond's "Collapse"
By Thomas Riggins
Jared Diamond, the Pulitzer Prize winning author of Guns, Germs and Steel, is coming out with a new book called Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed. PA will provide, hopefully, a full review when we receive it. Now we have a preview based on Diamond’s huge op-ed summary ("The Ends of the World as We Know Them") – taking up almost the whole page – published in The New York Times on 1-1-05.
Why do some societies thrive and last for thousands of years (Japan) while others die off (the Maya)? This is the question that Diamond sets out to answer. We shall see what he has to say and, most importantly, how relevant it is to our own society.
Reviewing civilizational collapses throughout history (he mentions Easter Island, the Maya, the Polynesian culture on Pitcairn and Henderson Islands, the Anasazi in the American Southwest, the Greenland Norse, Ancient Middle Eastern societies, the Khmer of Angkor Wat, and the Moche of Peru among others), Diamond comes up with five dialectically related factors responsible for the demise of these cultures.
It is important to stress that he is dealing with cultures that died out on their own and not with those that fell victim primarily to conquest or destruction by their neighbors. I say primarily because conquest or destruction could be a secondary factor ending a once prosperous society that became weakened by inherent degenerating factors within the doomed culture itself.
What are these five factors? They are 1) not protecting and taking care of the environment; 2) change in the climate; 3) enemies; 4) problems with your trade partners; and 5) how the culture deals with the irst four factors.
In some cases all five factors will be at work, in others a lesser combination two or three or even one. The Easter Island culture fell primarily due to bad environmental practices, for example. We all know about the giant statues of heads on Easter Island. There was a powerful agricultural society that produced them based on fertile soil protected by thousands of trees covering the island. Over the centuries the islanders cut down all the trees and denuded the island. The fertile soil was lost and the society collapsed.
This was not rational behavior from our point of view – but neither is ignoring the Kyoto Treaty and allowing the ozone layer to deteriorate, or allowing air pollution to increase. We understand that capitalism strives to maximize profits and grow and increase its capacity and markets and will do this because its the nature of the system – it can’t help but destroy our environment because it is motivated solely by the profit motive. What factors were at work on Easter Island? Surely the people recognized that destroying all the trees, leaving only a rocky landscape was fatal to their society yet they did it anyway!
The Maya did the same thing. They denuded their forests in the Yucatan Peninsula of Mexico and other areas of Central America. The environmental destruction resulted in droughts, soil erosion and the collapse of their civilization. The Maya rulers insulated themselves from the masses whom they exploited. Diamond says the rulers "were able to insulate themselves from the problems afflicting the rest of society." By so doing," the elite merely bought themselves the privilege of being among the last to starve."
There is a lesson here for us as well. The elites of today in their gated communities, their private schools, their private protection agencies are isolated from the rest of society and increasingly uninterested in the public funding of schools, hospitals and police and fire departments.
Diamond gives us a "blueprint" for social collapse. That is if the ruling elite cuts itself off from "the consequences if its actions." Global warming, for example, and other attacks on the environment currently being pursued by US and other capitalist forces may not have ultimately fatal consequences for many decades, or even generations so that by ignoring them now present day elites are ultimately laying the bases for the future collapse of our civilization.
Diamond is more optimistic than this. He sees that America is not responding rationally to the long term problems facing the world. "Historically," he writes, "we viewed the United States as a land of unlimited plenty, and so we practiced unrestrained consumerism, but that’s no longer viable in a world of finite resources." Nevertheless, we have not changed our habits and behavior. The war in Iraq is a case in point. It is driven by the desire to control the world’s oil supplies so we can maintain cheap fuel prices to support an ever increasing pollution based economy.
Why is Diamond optimistic for the future? Because he says that these problems are entirely human made. We can solve all the social problems leading to collapse if we only have the "political will." We can learn from the mistakes of others. This is very optimistic indeed. History may actually be teaching us that the most difficult problems to solve are exactly those that are "man made."
--Thomas Riggins writes a regular column for Political Affairs and can be reached at pabooks@politicalaffairs.net.
By Thomas Riggins
Jared Diamond, the Pulitzer Prize winning author of Guns, Germs and Steel, is coming out with a new book called Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed. PA will provide, hopefully, a full review when we receive it. Now we have a preview based on Diamond’s huge op-ed summary ("The Ends of the World as We Know Them") – taking up almost the whole page – published in The New York Times on 1-1-05.
Why do some societies thrive and last for thousands of years (Japan) while others die off (the Maya)? This is the question that Diamond sets out to answer. We shall see what he has to say and, most importantly, how relevant it is to our own society.
Reviewing civilizational collapses throughout history (he mentions Easter Island, the Maya, the Polynesian culture on Pitcairn and Henderson Islands, the Anasazi in the American Southwest, the Greenland Norse, Ancient Middle Eastern societies, the Khmer of Angkor Wat, and the Moche of Peru among others), Diamond comes up with five dialectically related factors responsible for the demise of these cultures.
It is important to stress that he is dealing with cultures that died out on their own and not with those that fell victim primarily to conquest or destruction by their neighbors. I say primarily because conquest or destruction could be a secondary factor ending a once prosperous society that became weakened by inherent degenerating factors within the doomed culture itself.
What are these five factors? They are 1) not protecting and taking care of the environment; 2) change in the climate; 3) enemies; 4) problems with your trade partners; and 5) how the culture deals with the irst four factors.
In some cases all five factors will be at work, in others a lesser combination two or three or even one. The Easter Island culture fell primarily due to bad environmental practices, for example. We all know about the giant statues of heads on Easter Island. There was a powerful agricultural society that produced them based on fertile soil protected by thousands of trees covering the island. Over the centuries the islanders cut down all the trees and denuded the island. The fertile soil was lost and the society collapsed.
This was not rational behavior from our point of view – but neither is ignoring the Kyoto Treaty and allowing the ozone layer to deteriorate, or allowing air pollution to increase. We understand that capitalism strives to maximize profits and grow and increase its capacity and markets and will do this because its the nature of the system – it can’t help but destroy our environment because it is motivated solely by the profit motive. What factors were at work on Easter Island? Surely the people recognized that destroying all the trees, leaving only a rocky landscape was fatal to their society yet they did it anyway!
The Maya did the same thing. They denuded their forests in the Yucatan Peninsula of Mexico and other areas of Central America. The environmental destruction resulted in droughts, soil erosion and the collapse of their civilization. The Maya rulers insulated themselves from the masses whom they exploited. Diamond says the rulers "were able to insulate themselves from the problems afflicting the rest of society." By so doing," the elite merely bought themselves the privilege of being among the last to starve."
There is a lesson here for us as well. The elites of today in their gated communities, their private schools, their private protection agencies are isolated from the rest of society and increasingly uninterested in the public funding of schools, hospitals and police and fire departments.
Diamond gives us a "blueprint" for social collapse. That is if the ruling elite cuts itself off from "the consequences if its actions." Global warming, for example, and other attacks on the environment currently being pursued by US and other capitalist forces may not have ultimately fatal consequences for many decades, or even generations so that by ignoring them now present day elites are ultimately laying the bases for the future collapse of our civilization.
Diamond is more optimistic than this. He sees that America is not responding rationally to the long term problems facing the world. "Historically," he writes, "we viewed the United States as a land of unlimited plenty, and so we practiced unrestrained consumerism, but that’s no longer viable in a world of finite resources." Nevertheless, we have not changed our habits and behavior. The war in Iraq is a case in point. It is driven by the desire to control the world’s oil supplies so we can maintain cheap fuel prices to support an ever increasing pollution based economy.
Why is Diamond optimistic for the future? Because he says that these problems are entirely human made. We can solve all the social problems leading to collapse if we only have the "political will." We can learn from the mistakes of others. This is very optimistic indeed. History may actually be teaching us that the most difficult problems to solve are exactly those that are "man made."
--Thomas Riggins writes a regular column for Political Affairs and can be reached at pabooks@politicalaffairs.net.
Wednesday, June 14, 2006
THE GRINCH IN THE WHITE HOUSE
The Grinch in the White House [Archival Materials]
By Thomas Riggins
Christmas has come and gone and we may have all been amused by the story of the Grinch who stole Christmas and other holiday tales. But in looking over the press I found several stories in real life that make the Grinch look not so bad. After all he only stole one day out of the year while the Grinch who lives in the White House is planning to steal the very lives of millions of children around the world, all of their days, in order to continue to enrich the ultra-wealthy millionaires he calls his base.
Recently Oxfam reported that an estimated 47 million children are expected to die over the next decade due to poverty and lack of food (that's around 13,000 kids a day – all preventable by the way).
This is backed up by a recent Unicef report (New York Times 12/10/04) which says one billion children (ie., over half of all the children on the planet) are suffering "extreme deprivation" due to war, HIV and poverty.
Since 1990 3.6 million people have been killed in war – almost half of them children. (How many of the 100,000 people murdered by the Pentagon in Iraq were children?) Girls suffer disproportionately more than boys. Most of the 120 million children denied primary school education are girls.
Of the developed countries, we in the United States can take pride that our God-fearing leaders still allow us to have the highest child poverty rate – 21.9 percent left behind. It's not that we can’t eliminate child poverty, both here and in the rest of the world. It's that we lack the will to do so.
Our President, who calls Jesus his favorite "philosopher," doesn’t seem to have his priorities in the right order. The Times had an article I saw on 12/22 headed "U.S. cuts aid to world food programs" – a perfect response to the Oxfam and Unicef reports.
We should note that global military spending is $956 billion per year (the U.S. spends the most by the way) vs. the $65 billion or so that it would take to get rid of poverty. Nevertheless our fearless leader wants to cut back what we give to the world food program.
As a result of the U.S. cuts about 6 million people will loose food aid. There are more hungry people than ever before. The Times of 12/8/04, in an article by Elizabeth Becker ("Number of Hungry Rising, U.N. Says"), reports that at least 5 million children die of hunger every year – this is from the the food and agriculture agency and is higher than the Unicef estimate.
The Times says "the number of chronically hungry people rose to nearly 852 million, an increase of 18 million since 2000." This is happening while the world itself is collectively getting richer and producing enough food to feed everyone.
It is of course the capitalist economic relations, so praised by the pundits of globalization, that prevent the proper distribution of food to the hungry. Even when people are working they can’t afford food. One half of the workers of the world "earn less than $2 a day."
In the face of all this human misery and suffering, Oxfam also reported that the wealthy nations are now giving one half of what they gave in 1960 for aid to the poor countries. So its not just the U.S. but the capitalist world as such that is ignoring and perpetuating poverty and starvation.
Let's return to the 6 million people affected by U.S. cuts in food aid. How much money are we talking about? The U.S. is cutting $100 million. That is a paltry amount considering the government in the last seven years alone has given $147 billion to one defense contractor, Lockheed – let alone what it gives to Boeing and the others!
We can’t give less than 1 percent of what we toss out to a defense contractor every few years in order to provide food to six million people? I don’t think Jesus would like this philosophy.
The six million have to starve because we have to lower our deficit – which was created by giving enormous tax cuts to the rich by the Bush administration. Well, so much for the Grinch in the White House. I wonder if he remembers what his favorite philosopher had to say about the rich man getting into Heaven?
--Thomas Riggins can be reached at pabooks@politicalaffairs.net.
By Thomas Riggins
Christmas has come and gone and we may have all been amused by the story of the Grinch who stole Christmas and other holiday tales. But in looking over the press I found several stories in real life that make the Grinch look not so bad. After all he only stole one day out of the year while the Grinch who lives in the White House is planning to steal the very lives of millions of children around the world, all of their days, in order to continue to enrich the ultra-wealthy millionaires he calls his base.
Recently Oxfam reported that an estimated 47 million children are expected to die over the next decade due to poverty and lack of food (that's around 13,000 kids a day – all preventable by the way).
This is backed up by a recent Unicef report (New York Times 12/10/04) which says one billion children (ie., over half of all the children on the planet) are suffering "extreme deprivation" due to war, HIV and poverty.
Since 1990 3.6 million people have been killed in war – almost half of them children. (How many of the 100,000 people murdered by the Pentagon in Iraq were children?) Girls suffer disproportionately more than boys. Most of the 120 million children denied primary school education are girls.
Of the developed countries, we in the United States can take pride that our God-fearing leaders still allow us to have the highest child poverty rate – 21.9 percent left behind. It's not that we can’t eliminate child poverty, both here and in the rest of the world. It's that we lack the will to do so.
Our President, who calls Jesus his favorite "philosopher," doesn’t seem to have his priorities in the right order. The Times had an article I saw on 12/22 headed "U.S. cuts aid to world food programs" – a perfect response to the Oxfam and Unicef reports.
We should note that global military spending is $956 billion per year (the U.S. spends the most by the way) vs. the $65 billion or so that it would take to get rid of poverty. Nevertheless our fearless leader wants to cut back what we give to the world food program.
As a result of the U.S. cuts about 6 million people will loose food aid. There are more hungry people than ever before. The Times of 12/8/04, in an article by Elizabeth Becker ("Number of Hungry Rising, U.N. Says"), reports that at least 5 million children die of hunger every year – this is from the the food and agriculture agency and is higher than the Unicef estimate.
The Times says "the number of chronically hungry people rose to nearly 852 million, an increase of 18 million since 2000." This is happening while the world itself is collectively getting richer and producing enough food to feed everyone.
It is of course the capitalist economic relations, so praised by the pundits of globalization, that prevent the proper distribution of food to the hungry. Even when people are working they can’t afford food. One half of the workers of the world "earn less than $2 a day."
In the face of all this human misery and suffering, Oxfam also reported that the wealthy nations are now giving one half of what they gave in 1960 for aid to the poor countries. So its not just the U.S. but the capitalist world as such that is ignoring and perpetuating poverty and starvation.
Let's return to the 6 million people affected by U.S. cuts in food aid. How much money are we talking about? The U.S. is cutting $100 million. That is a paltry amount considering the government in the last seven years alone has given $147 billion to one defense contractor, Lockheed – let alone what it gives to Boeing and the others!
We can’t give less than 1 percent of what we toss out to a defense contractor every few years in order to provide food to six million people? I don’t think Jesus would like this philosophy.
The six million have to starve because we have to lower our deficit – which was created by giving enormous tax cuts to the rich by the Bush administration. Well, so much for the Grinch in the White House. I wonder if he remembers what his favorite philosopher had to say about the rich man getting into Heaven?
--Thomas Riggins can be reached at pabooks@politicalaffairs.net.
Tuesday, June 13, 2006
WHO JOHN STOTT IS
Who John Stott Is [Archival Material]
By Thomas Riggins
This people draweth nigh unto me
with their mouth, and honoureth me
with their lips; but their heart is far
from me.-- Matthew 15:8
David Brooks, my favorite ultra-right New York Times op-eder, asked "Who is John Stott" in his 11-30-04 column. John Stott is an Anglican evangelical homophobic bigot of whom Mr. Brooks recommends politicians, "especially Democrats," take note. Brooks is upset with Tim Russert for having Jerry Falwell and Al Sharpton on "Meet the Press" ("these two bozos") to talk about religion and politics. Later he includes Pat Robertson (a third bozo?).
These people do not represent the real world of evangelical Christians, according to Brooks. If the blue staters want to open up to "people of faith," to appeal to them, they will have to concern themselves with someone like John Stott who is "actually important."
The Rev. Mr. Stott is an important evangelical voice – with over 40 (nonsense) books to his credit. Brooks finds his voice "humble and self-crtitical, but also confident, joyful and optimistic."
Brooks evidently finds of some of Stott’s teachings, such as his rejection of homo-sexuality "as a legitimate life style", his support for the death penalty, his anti-choice and anti-abortion positions, examples of optimistic humility. With views like these it is no wonder Stott maintains "that the central message of the gospel is not the teachings of Jesus." Not the teachings of Jesus? No indeed! What is important is the Passion, the life and sacrifice of Jesus. We don’t want to be burdened with any inconvenient teachings. The golden rule might get in the way of good Christian homophobia, or make our hands shake when we need to administer a lethal injection.
The most important part of Stott’s teaching may be his rejection of any idea that he could not know just what the Truth is (yes, with a capital T). Down with the notion that different religious traditions or other faiths could have a share of the Truth. "Truth has been revealed."
How lucky for us. Was it revealed in the Koran? Don’t even ask!
Confronted with these views, Brooks has the nerve to exclaim that there has "been a lot of twaddle written recently about the supposed opposition between faith and reason."
But the "thoughtful" Rev. Stott belies this. Twaddle? What is the difference between Stott’s homophobia, anti-woman and pro-death penalty positions and those of Falwell and Robertson. I leave out Al Sharpton because he is definitely not in this company.
In his 1958 book Basic Christianity, Stott writes that God "is altogether beyond our comprehension." This didn’t stop the good reverend from writing forty books about him, but it takes "reason" off the table. You can’t reason about the incomprehensible. Stott still claims that "The Christian doctrine of revelation is essentially reasonable." More reasonable than the Islamic or Jewish? We are not in the house of reason when we make statements about religious fundamentalism.
Stott doesn’t want to submit religion to the scientific approach, but he does want to use the religious approach in science. "The empirical method is largely inappropriate in the sphere of religion," he writes. But what about science. There the empirical method has its rightful place – unless it contradicts revelation. Stott will go along with the "theory of evolution" – some type of evolution, but not Darwin! In Understanding the Bible he writes"any theory of evolution which is presented as a blind and random process must be rejected by Christians as incompatible with the biblical revelation...."
This is twaddle and implies that regardless of where the "empirical method" takes you in scientific investigation an extra-scientific dimension ("revelation") is the ultimate judge of truth.
So, enough of John Stott and and David Brooks’ twaddle. The point is that Christian fundamentalism in its conservative dress is what is being pushed. No one on the left should fall for Brooks’ position that by polishing up the rough edges of the Falwells and Robertsons with a classy substitute (the very British Mr. Stott) the attitudes and political consequences of evangelical fundamentalism are in any way changed.
There are plenty of progressive and mainstream Christians and even evangelicals who can be won over to left political programs. The notion, sanctioned by Brooks and proclaimed by Stott that "the teachings of Jesus" are not what is important should be a wedge issue for the Christian left. Those teachings are much more congruent with the socialist and communist world outlooks than they are with the capitalist world globalization movement that is being pushed by writers such as David Brooks.
--Thomas Riggins can be reached at pabooks@politicalaffairs.net.
By Thomas Riggins
This people draweth nigh unto me
with their mouth, and honoureth me
with their lips; but their heart is far
from me.-- Matthew 15:8
David Brooks, my favorite ultra-right New York Times op-eder, asked "Who is John Stott" in his 11-30-04 column. John Stott is an Anglican evangelical homophobic bigot of whom Mr. Brooks recommends politicians, "especially Democrats," take note. Brooks is upset with Tim Russert for having Jerry Falwell and Al Sharpton on "Meet the Press" ("these two bozos") to talk about religion and politics. Later he includes Pat Robertson (a third bozo?).
These people do not represent the real world of evangelical Christians, according to Brooks. If the blue staters want to open up to "people of faith," to appeal to them, they will have to concern themselves with someone like John Stott who is "actually important."
The Rev. Mr. Stott is an important evangelical voice – with over 40 (nonsense) books to his credit. Brooks finds his voice "humble and self-crtitical, but also confident, joyful and optimistic."
Brooks evidently finds of some of Stott’s teachings, such as his rejection of homo-sexuality "as a legitimate life style", his support for the death penalty, his anti-choice and anti-abortion positions, examples of optimistic humility. With views like these it is no wonder Stott maintains "that the central message of the gospel is not the teachings of Jesus." Not the teachings of Jesus? No indeed! What is important is the Passion, the life and sacrifice of Jesus. We don’t want to be burdened with any inconvenient teachings. The golden rule might get in the way of good Christian homophobia, or make our hands shake when we need to administer a lethal injection.
The most important part of Stott’s teaching may be his rejection of any idea that he could not know just what the Truth is (yes, with a capital T). Down with the notion that different religious traditions or other faiths could have a share of the Truth. "Truth has been revealed."
How lucky for us. Was it revealed in the Koran? Don’t even ask!
Confronted with these views, Brooks has the nerve to exclaim that there has "been a lot of twaddle written recently about the supposed opposition between faith and reason."
But the "thoughtful" Rev. Stott belies this. Twaddle? What is the difference between Stott’s homophobia, anti-woman and pro-death penalty positions and those of Falwell and Robertson. I leave out Al Sharpton because he is definitely not in this company.
In his 1958 book Basic Christianity, Stott writes that God "is altogether beyond our comprehension." This didn’t stop the good reverend from writing forty books about him, but it takes "reason" off the table. You can’t reason about the incomprehensible. Stott still claims that "The Christian doctrine of revelation is essentially reasonable." More reasonable than the Islamic or Jewish? We are not in the house of reason when we make statements about religious fundamentalism.
Stott doesn’t want to submit religion to the scientific approach, but he does want to use the religious approach in science. "The empirical method is largely inappropriate in the sphere of religion," he writes. But what about science. There the empirical method has its rightful place – unless it contradicts revelation. Stott will go along with the "theory of evolution" – some type of evolution, but not Darwin! In Understanding the Bible he writes"any theory of evolution which is presented as a blind and random process must be rejected by Christians as incompatible with the biblical revelation...."
This is twaddle and implies that regardless of where the "empirical method" takes you in scientific investigation an extra-scientific dimension ("revelation") is the ultimate judge of truth.
So, enough of John Stott and and David Brooks’ twaddle. The point is that Christian fundamentalism in its conservative dress is what is being pushed. No one on the left should fall for Brooks’ position that by polishing up the rough edges of the Falwells and Robertsons with a classy substitute (the very British Mr. Stott) the attitudes and political consequences of evangelical fundamentalism are in any way changed.
There are plenty of progressive and mainstream Christians and even evangelicals who can be won over to left political programs. The notion, sanctioned by Brooks and proclaimed by Stott that "the teachings of Jesus" are not what is important should be a wedge issue for the Christian left. Those teachings are much more congruent with the socialist and communist world outlooks than they are with the capitalist world globalization movement that is being pushed by writers such as David Brooks.
--Thomas Riggins can be reached at pabooks@politicalaffairs.net.
Monday, June 12, 2006
THANKSGIVING IN RETROSPECT (ARCHIVAL MATERIALS)
Thanksgiving in Retrospect
By Thomas Riggins
"Thanksgiving" has come and gone. Let’s look at last week’s news and views, some of it at any rate, to see who should be thankful for what. David Brooks, the ultra right op-eder for the New York Times was thankful for "Globalization" which he thinks is reducing global poverty. His article of 11/27/04 is headed "Good News About Poverty." He cites a World Bank Report that shows that "extreme poverty" (living on less that $1 a day) is down in East Asia and the Pacific region – 271 million people in 2001 vs. 472 in 1990. Brooks would like to see Bono or Springsteen tell this truth to their fans. He implies if they really cared about reducing poverty they should be "cheering on those guys in pinstripe suits at the free-trade negotiations and those investors jetting around the world."
A beautiful sentiment. He does admit a problem in sub-Saharan Africa where the pinstripers haven’t helped the locals too well – but that is because of "bad governments and AIDS." How could anyone be so low as to think globalization (or maybe profit hungry pharmaceutical companies, or American and European "free-trade" subsidies to their own agricultural sectors which destroy domestic markets in Africa and elsewhere) could be responsible?
While Brooks was waxing eloquent over the happy prospects of Asians moving up the capitalist ladder a rung (to regular old everyday poverty from its more extreme form) he must have missed an article in his own paper about the "good news" regarding New York State’s poverty. An article of 11/11 by Leslie Kaufman ("New York’s Working Poor Are Losing Ground, Report Says"), reveals that 32% of NY working families are "poor" – i.e., make less that $18,979 for a family of four. This is an increase of 2.7% since the 1990s. These families don’t make enough to pay their bills according to the Center for an Urban Future which released the report. The Center complains that the state doesn’t do enough to make education available to poor people and immigrants so that they can learn English and become literate and thus able to contend for better paying jobs. Nobody is too thankful about this – except the employers.
The people over at Morgan Stanley were being thankful as well – for the decline of the dollar. In the same issue of the Times in which Brooks is grousing about the Bono/Springstein lack of praise for the pinstripers, the chief economist for the Wall Street firm, Stephen S. Roach, wrote an article ("When Weakness Is a Strength").
Its true, he says, the dollar could tank causing a big problems around the world, but if the world’s central banks team up to "carefully manage a gradual and significant depreciation of the dollar" over time this would be a good thing for the US and the other countries.
He lists four ways we would all benefit from a lower dollar. 1) Interest rates would go up so that foreign banks will continue to buy our Treasury Bonds, etc., and provide money to the US to help its trade and investment deficit. These rates would also "suppress" parts of the domestic market – housing, autos, capital spending, etc., thus encouraging savings at home. Americans don’t save enough and they buy too much – one of the reasons for the deficit in trade, etc., [the current account deficit] is running about $665 billion a year. But if we "suppress" the market we also lose jobs and those workers won’t be thankful, and they won’t have savings either. 2) As the dollar goes down other people’s money goes up, and this 3) makes the US more competitive – our stuff is now cheaper and theirs more expensive in the market place.
Europe and Asia will have to make up for this by stimulating their home markets to make up for what they will lose over here. This will be unpleasant for them as they will have to "loosen" their labor markets "to unshackle internal demand." I’m not sure what Roach is getting at here. Some economic code word that does not bode well for the working class I fear. He calls this a "painful structural reform" – but I am unclear as to whom it will be "painful." It probably won’t be painful for the capitalists – at lease not the US variety.
4) The weak dollar could "defuse" the global trade problems. Our exports go up, our saving go up, our imports go down and, and – what is being "defused" here? This is all going one way – to benefit the US trade deficit. The rest of the world won’t be in the same thankful mood as the folks over at Morgan Stanley. They may even become nasty bout it and become not only protectionist but stop buying our dollars – i.e., investing in our treasury bonds and allowing us to live beyond our means. The motive of the central banks to manage this decline of our dollar is to prevent a precipitous collapse that will take the whole system down with it. This will hardly "defuse global trade tensions." It may even plunge the poor in parts of the world right back into the extreme poverty Brooks’ pinstripers are so concerned about.
--Thomas Riggins writes regularly for Political Affairs online and can be reached at pabooks@politicalaffairs.net.
By Thomas Riggins
"Thanksgiving" has come and gone. Let’s look at last week’s news and views, some of it at any rate, to see who should be thankful for what. David Brooks, the ultra right op-eder for the New York Times was thankful for "Globalization" which he thinks is reducing global poverty. His article of 11/27/04 is headed "Good News About Poverty." He cites a World Bank Report that shows that "extreme poverty" (living on less that $1 a day) is down in East Asia and the Pacific region – 271 million people in 2001 vs. 472 in 1990. Brooks would like to see Bono or Springsteen tell this truth to their fans. He implies if they really cared about reducing poverty they should be "cheering on those guys in pinstripe suits at the free-trade negotiations and those investors jetting around the world."
A beautiful sentiment. He does admit a problem in sub-Saharan Africa where the pinstripers haven’t helped the locals too well – but that is because of "bad governments and AIDS." How could anyone be so low as to think globalization (or maybe profit hungry pharmaceutical companies, or American and European "free-trade" subsidies to their own agricultural sectors which destroy domestic markets in Africa and elsewhere) could be responsible?
While Brooks was waxing eloquent over the happy prospects of Asians moving up the capitalist ladder a rung (to regular old everyday poverty from its more extreme form) he must have missed an article in his own paper about the "good news" regarding New York State’s poverty. An article of 11/11 by Leslie Kaufman ("New York’s Working Poor Are Losing Ground, Report Says"), reveals that 32% of NY working families are "poor" – i.e., make less that $18,979 for a family of four. This is an increase of 2.7% since the 1990s. These families don’t make enough to pay their bills according to the Center for an Urban Future which released the report. The Center complains that the state doesn’t do enough to make education available to poor people and immigrants so that they can learn English and become literate and thus able to contend for better paying jobs. Nobody is too thankful about this – except the employers.
The people over at Morgan Stanley were being thankful as well – for the decline of the dollar. In the same issue of the Times in which Brooks is grousing about the Bono/Springstein lack of praise for the pinstripers, the chief economist for the Wall Street firm, Stephen S. Roach, wrote an article ("When Weakness Is a Strength").
Its true, he says, the dollar could tank causing a big problems around the world, but if the world’s central banks team up to "carefully manage a gradual and significant depreciation of the dollar" over time this would be a good thing for the US and the other countries.
He lists four ways we would all benefit from a lower dollar. 1) Interest rates would go up so that foreign banks will continue to buy our Treasury Bonds, etc., and provide money to the US to help its trade and investment deficit. These rates would also "suppress" parts of the domestic market – housing, autos, capital spending, etc., thus encouraging savings at home. Americans don’t save enough and they buy too much – one of the reasons for the deficit in trade, etc., [the current account deficit] is running about $665 billion a year. But if we "suppress" the market we also lose jobs and those workers won’t be thankful, and they won’t have savings either. 2) As the dollar goes down other people’s money goes up, and this 3) makes the US more competitive – our stuff is now cheaper and theirs more expensive in the market place.
Europe and Asia will have to make up for this by stimulating their home markets to make up for what they will lose over here. This will be unpleasant for them as they will have to "loosen" their labor markets "to unshackle internal demand." I’m not sure what Roach is getting at here. Some economic code word that does not bode well for the working class I fear. He calls this a "painful structural reform" – but I am unclear as to whom it will be "painful." It probably won’t be painful for the capitalists – at lease not the US variety.
4) The weak dollar could "defuse" the global trade problems. Our exports go up, our saving go up, our imports go down and, and – what is being "defused" here? This is all going one way – to benefit the US trade deficit. The rest of the world won’t be in the same thankful mood as the folks over at Morgan Stanley. They may even become nasty bout it and become not only protectionist but stop buying our dollars – i.e., investing in our treasury bonds and allowing us to live beyond our means. The motive of the central banks to manage this decline of our dollar is to prevent a precipitous collapse that will take the whole system down with it. This will hardly "defuse global trade tensions." It may even plunge the poor in parts of the world right back into the extreme poverty Brooks’ pinstripers are so concerned about.
--Thomas Riggins writes regularly for Political Affairs online and can be reached at pabooks@politicalaffairs.net.
Sunday, June 11, 2006
FREE-MARKET RELIGION OR IGNORANCE?
Free-market Religion or Ignorance?
By Thomas Riggins
Eduardo Porter, writing in the Sunday (11/21/04) New York Times "Week In Review" section seeks to explain the theory that religion is so popular in the US due to supply-side economics. Just like any commodity competition the commodity of religion is so wide spread due to the competition between its suppliers. This is a new view, Porter says, replacing, perhaps, the older view that the more educated the more secular a country becomes.
The US, Porter maintains, is an exception to this rule which applies to Europe and Japan rather than to us. Studies show that for 80% of Germans, 88% of Japanese, and 89% of French people religion doesn’t play a very important part in their lives. As for the Dutch – 25% describe themselves as atheists. Porter quotes David Voas (University of Manchester) as saying, "If you take the United Nations’ Human Development Index and look at the top 20 countries 19 of those are very secular. We must be the 20th – with only 40% of Americans not thinking of religion as very important.
The question Porter asks is "Why is the United States, the world’s most prosperous and educated democracy, so religious?" I’m not even going to go into the "free-market" theory because there is, I think, a fundamental problem with the assumptions of the question itself.
The idea that the US is the most "educated" democracy is ludicrous. Compared to other developed countries, the American educational system is a sorry joke.
I want to consider the following facts, all from the Chapter "The Sorry State of Education" in Valdas Anelauskas’ Discovering America As It Is (Atlanta, Clarity Press, 2003). Valdas points out that a baby born in the US has a 20% chance of ending as an illiterate adult. This means a fifth of American adults can’t read! The US ranks 49th in adult literacy among the world’s countries
Also note that when American students are compared to students in other countries in the developed world they usually end up at the bottom of the barrel. "Americans are at or near the bottom in most international surveys measuring educational achievement." Even our best students come well behind those of the top ten countries when test scores are compared. We come in around 16th.
What this reflects is the appalling poverty rates for children in this country coupled with a blatant disregard by national, state, and local governments of the needs of schools and students. Valdas refers to studies by Richard Jaeger at the University of North Carolina that revealed "America’s rising childhood poverty rate, breakdown of families and all other social problems account for all of the disparity between American and foreign students’ achievement." So we are not only not the most "educated" we are not the most "prosperous" either.
Here is how "educated" our kids are. Number of forth graders who think the world is FLAT: 40% Number of sixth graders who can’t find the USA on a map: 20% Number of high school seniors lacking the most basic knowledge of American history (forget world history): 57%. Number of seventeen year old students who don’t know when the Civil War took place: 66% – 33% didn’t know who Abraham Lincoln was!
There is one encouraging result here, and that is that 25% of college seniors think that the slogan "from each according to his ability to each according to his need" is from the Constitution. This is no doubt due to effective campus propaganda by the Young Communist League.
Who benefits from the bad education given to American students? And its really bad. The US ranks 28th out of the 29 counties in the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (we beat out Mexico) in the number of students who graduate from school (72%, compare Germany at 91%). The beneficiaries of this education system are the forces on the right and the religious fundamentalists who thrive in conditions of educational deficiency.
I therefore conclude that the "old-school" sociology, as Porter calls it, was correct in holding "that as nations become more prosperous, healthy, and educated, demand for the support that religion provides declines." The fact that so many of our citizens are religious is a mark of how backward the US is. So I’ll end with another quote from Anelauskas’ book, from a gentleman even more obscure than Abraham Lincoln, namely Maximilien Robespierre: "The secret of freedom lies in educating people, whereas the secret of tyranny is in keeping them ignorant."
--Thomas Riggins writes a weekly column for this web site and can be reached at pabooks@politicalaffairs.net.
By Thomas Riggins
Eduardo Porter, writing in the Sunday (11/21/04) New York Times "Week In Review" section seeks to explain the theory that religion is so popular in the US due to supply-side economics. Just like any commodity competition the commodity of religion is so wide spread due to the competition between its suppliers. This is a new view, Porter says, replacing, perhaps, the older view that the more educated the more secular a country becomes.
The US, Porter maintains, is an exception to this rule which applies to Europe and Japan rather than to us. Studies show that for 80% of Germans, 88% of Japanese, and 89% of French people religion doesn’t play a very important part in their lives. As for the Dutch – 25% describe themselves as atheists. Porter quotes David Voas (University of Manchester) as saying, "If you take the United Nations’ Human Development Index and look at the top 20 countries 19 of those are very secular. We must be the 20th – with only 40% of Americans not thinking of religion as very important.
The question Porter asks is "Why is the United States, the world’s most prosperous and educated democracy, so religious?" I’m not even going to go into the "free-market" theory because there is, I think, a fundamental problem with the assumptions of the question itself.
The idea that the US is the most "educated" democracy is ludicrous. Compared to other developed countries, the American educational system is a sorry joke.
I want to consider the following facts, all from the Chapter "The Sorry State of Education" in Valdas Anelauskas’ Discovering America As It Is (Atlanta, Clarity Press, 2003). Valdas points out that a baby born in the US has a 20% chance of ending as an illiterate adult. This means a fifth of American adults can’t read! The US ranks 49th in adult literacy among the world’s countries
Also note that when American students are compared to students in other countries in the developed world they usually end up at the bottom of the barrel. "Americans are at or near the bottom in most international surveys measuring educational achievement." Even our best students come well behind those of the top ten countries when test scores are compared. We come in around 16th.
What this reflects is the appalling poverty rates for children in this country coupled with a blatant disregard by national, state, and local governments of the needs of schools and students. Valdas refers to studies by Richard Jaeger at the University of North Carolina that revealed "America’s rising childhood poverty rate, breakdown of families and all other social problems account for all of the disparity between American and foreign students’ achievement." So we are not only not the most "educated" we are not the most "prosperous" either.
Here is how "educated" our kids are. Number of forth graders who think the world is FLAT: 40% Number of sixth graders who can’t find the USA on a map: 20% Number of high school seniors lacking the most basic knowledge of American history (forget world history): 57%. Number of seventeen year old students who don’t know when the Civil War took place: 66% – 33% didn’t know who Abraham Lincoln was!
There is one encouraging result here, and that is that 25% of college seniors think that the slogan "from each according to his ability to each according to his need" is from the Constitution. This is no doubt due to effective campus propaganda by the Young Communist League.
Who benefits from the bad education given to American students? And its really bad. The US ranks 28th out of the 29 counties in the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (we beat out Mexico) in the number of students who graduate from school (72%, compare Germany at 91%). The beneficiaries of this education system are the forces on the right and the religious fundamentalists who thrive in conditions of educational deficiency.
I therefore conclude that the "old-school" sociology, as Porter calls it, was correct in holding "that as nations become more prosperous, healthy, and educated, demand for the support that religion provides declines." The fact that so many of our citizens are religious is a mark of how backward the US is. So I’ll end with another quote from Anelauskas’ book, from a gentleman even more obscure than Abraham Lincoln, namely Maximilien Robespierre: "The secret of freedom lies in educating people, whereas the secret of tyranny is in keeping them ignorant."
--Thomas Riggins writes a weekly column for this web site and can be reached at pabooks@politicalaffairs.net.
Saturday, June 10, 2006
CHE GUEVARA: THE MOTORCYCLE DIARIES-- BOOK REVIEW
Easy Riding to Revolution – Review of The Motorcycle Diaries
By Thomas Riggins
The Motorcycle Diaries: Notes on a Latin American Journey has also been made into a major motion picture. I am only dealing with the book. It was written by Ernesto Guevara (he had not yet become "Che") from notes he made when he was 23 years old and traveling from Cordoba in Argentina to Caracas in Venezuela in late 1951 through the summer of 1952 with his friend Alberto Granado on the latter’s motorcycle La Poderosa II – which vehicle broke down and was discarded early in the trip (in the south of Chile) leaving both young men as vagabonds for the remainder of their journey.
The book is an enjoyable and brisk read. The adventures of the two young men, Guevara, a year away from graduating from medical school, and the slightly older Granado, a biochemist specializing in the study of leprosy, as they make their way up the Pacific coast through Chile to Peru and then inland to Cusco, the Amazon and on up to Bogota and finally Caracas by means of hitching rides, buses, steamships, a raft on the Amazon, and various other modes of transport, is an engaging tale.
But what makes it particularly interesting is the hints the book contains of the future "Che." It is this aspect on which I want to comment. The first seventy or so pages are devoted to describing the journey and the problems encountered along the way. But social commentary then begins. It first turns up when Guevara encounters a dying women in Valparaiso in early March of 1952 – three months into the trip. The woman is poor and suffering from diseases she cannot afford to treat, and of course, she can no longer work.
In her plight, Guevara sees "the profound tragedy circumscribing the life of the proletariat the world over." This leads him to the following reflection, somewhat mild considering what will come later. "How long this present order, based on the absurd idea of caste, will last is not within my means to answer, but it’s time that those who govern spent less time publicizing their own virtues and more money, much more money, funding socially useful works."
The two leave Valparaiso for Antofagasta by sea as stowaways on the freighter San Antonio. A hint of the travels of the future Che may be read into Guevara’s musings during this trip: "There we understood that out vocation, our true vocation, was to move for eternity along the roads and seas of the world. Always curious, looking into everything that came before our eyes, sniffing out each corner but only ever faintly – not setting down roots in any land or staying long enough to see the substratum of things: the outer limits would suffice." I wonder if a clue to the tragedy of Quebrada del Yuro is here foreshadowed?
A few days after they arrive in Antofagasta they make it to the great copper mine of Chuquicamata. Here Guevara meets communist workers. At this time the Communist Party was illegal and repressed. Communists were imprisoned, denied the right to vote and many had just disappeared "and said to be somewhere at the bottom of the sea."
"It’s a great pity," Guevara writes with reference to a worker he had met, "that they repress people like this. Apart from whether collectivism, the ‘communist vermin,’ is a danger to decent life, the communism gnawing at his entrails was no more than a natural longing for something better, a protest against persistent hunger transformed into a love for this strange doctrine, whose essence he could never grasp but whose translation, "bread for the poor," was something he understood and, more importantly, that filled him with hope." Needless to say, workers at Chuquicamata were in a living Hell.
It is interesting to note that the 1952 Chilean Presidential elections were about to take place. One of the candidates was Salvadore Allende. The winner was Carlos Iba̱ez del Campo who was progressive and said he would legalize the Communist Party Рwhich happened in 1958. "The biggest effort Chile should make," Guevara notes, "is to shake its uncomfortable Yankee friend from its back, a task that for the moment at least is Herculean, given the quanity of dollars the United States has invested here and the ease with which it flexes its economic muscle whenever its interests seem threatened."
I wonder if there may not be something subconsciously autobiographical in Guevara’s comments about the conquistador Valdivia. "Valdivia’s actions symbolize man’s indefatigable thirst to take control of a place where he can exercise total authority. That phrase, attributed to Caesar, proclaiming he would rather be first-in-command in some humble Alpine village than second-in-command in Rome, is repeated less pompously, but no less effectively, in the epic campaign that is the conquest of Chile." Caesar aut nihil.
From Chile the two friends head into Peru where they encounter the problems of the indigenous peoples. They soon make it to Bogota and find Colombia, then as now, the most repressive country of their tour. They finally end up in Caracas where they go their separate ways. Guevara flies to Miami for a few days and then flies back Buenos Aires and returns to his family in Cordoba. He is almost, but not quite yet "Che" – but he does see the future. "I see myself," he notes on the last page of his diary, "immolated in the genuine revolution, the great equalizer of individual will, proclaiming the ultimate mea culpa."
The Motorcycle Diaries
By Ernesto Guevara
New York, Ocean Press, 2004.
--Thomas Riggins is book review editor of Political Affairs and can be reached at pabooks@politicalaffairs.net.
By Thomas Riggins
The Motorcycle Diaries: Notes on a Latin American Journey has also been made into a major motion picture. I am only dealing with the book. It was written by Ernesto Guevara (he had not yet become "Che") from notes he made when he was 23 years old and traveling from Cordoba in Argentina to Caracas in Venezuela in late 1951 through the summer of 1952 with his friend Alberto Granado on the latter’s motorcycle La Poderosa II – which vehicle broke down and was discarded early in the trip (in the south of Chile) leaving both young men as vagabonds for the remainder of their journey.
The book is an enjoyable and brisk read. The adventures of the two young men, Guevara, a year away from graduating from medical school, and the slightly older Granado, a biochemist specializing in the study of leprosy, as they make their way up the Pacific coast through Chile to Peru and then inland to Cusco, the Amazon and on up to Bogota and finally Caracas by means of hitching rides, buses, steamships, a raft on the Amazon, and various other modes of transport, is an engaging tale.
But what makes it particularly interesting is the hints the book contains of the future "Che." It is this aspect on which I want to comment. The first seventy or so pages are devoted to describing the journey and the problems encountered along the way. But social commentary then begins. It first turns up when Guevara encounters a dying women in Valparaiso in early March of 1952 – three months into the trip. The woman is poor and suffering from diseases she cannot afford to treat, and of course, she can no longer work.
In her plight, Guevara sees "the profound tragedy circumscribing the life of the proletariat the world over." This leads him to the following reflection, somewhat mild considering what will come later. "How long this present order, based on the absurd idea of caste, will last is not within my means to answer, but it’s time that those who govern spent less time publicizing their own virtues and more money, much more money, funding socially useful works."
The two leave Valparaiso for Antofagasta by sea as stowaways on the freighter San Antonio. A hint of the travels of the future Che may be read into Guevara’s musings during this trip: "There we understood that out vocation, our true vocation, was to move for eternity along the roads and seas of the world. Always curious, looking into everything that came before our eyes, sniffing out each corner but only ever faintly – not setting down roots in any land or staying long enough to see the substratum of things: the outer limits would suffice." I wonder if a clue to the tragedy of Quebrada del Yuro is here foreshadowed?
A few days after they arrive in Antofagasta they make it to the great copper mine of Chuquicamata. Here Guevara meets communist workers. At this time the Communist Party was illegal and repressed. Communists were imprisoned, denied the right to vote and many had just disappeared "and said to be somewhere at the bottom of the sea."
"It’s a great pity," Guevara writes with reference to a worker he had met, "that they repress people like this. Apart from whether collectivism, the ‘communist vermin,’ is a danger to decent life, the communism gnawing at his entrails was no more than a natural longing for something better, a protest against persistent hunger transformed into a love for this strange doctrine, whose essence he could never grasp but whose translation, "bread for the poor," was something he understood and, more importantly, that filled him with hope." Needless to say, workers at Chuquicamata were in a living Hell.
It is interesting to note that the 1952 Chilean Presidential elections were about to take place. One of the candidates was Salvadore Allende. The winner was Carlos Iba̱ez del Campo who was progressive and said he would legalize the Communist Party Рwhich happened in 1958. "The biggest effort Chile should make," Guevara notes, "is to shake its uncomfortable Yankee friend from its back, a task that for the moment at least is Herculean, given the quanity of dollars the United States has invested here and the ease with which it flexes its economic muscle whenever its interests seem threatened."
I wonder if there may not be something subconsciously autobiographical in Guevara’s comments about the conquistador Valdivia. "Valdivia’s actions symbolize man’s indefatigable thirst to take control of a place where he can exercise total authority. That phrase, attributed to Caesar, proclaiming he would rather be first-in-command in some humble Alpine village than second-in-command in Rome, is repeated less pompously, but no less effectively, in the epic campaign that is the conquest of Chile." Caesar aut nihil.
From Chile the two friends head into Peru where they encounter the problems of the indigenous peoples. They soon make it to Bogota and find Colombia, then as now, the most repressive country of their tour. They finally end up in Caracas where they go their separate ways. Guevara flies to Miami for a few days and then flies back Buenos Aires and returns to his family in Cordoba. He is almost, but not quite yet "Che" – but he does see the future. "I see myself," he notes on the last page of his diary, "immolated in the genuine revolution, the great equalizer of individual will, proclaiming the ultimate mea culpa."
The Motorcycle Diaries
By Ernesto Guevara
New York, Ocean Press, 2004.
--Thomas Riggins is book review editor of Political Affairs and can be reached at pabooks@politicalaffairs.net.
Friday, June 09, 2006
THE RED MENACE
The Red Menace [Archival Material 2004]
By Thomas Riggins
Many liberals think that a new "Red Menace" is facing America – not that there ever was an old one. Waking up Wednesday morning (Nov. 3) and seeing the map of the red versus the blue states was pretty depressing. If there were any election the Democrats should have swept to victory in it was the 2004 election.
The war, the deficit, health care, civil rights and liberties, jobs, the environment, education – you name it – any issue effecting the lives and well being of the American people has been, in the last four years, ground down and ignored by the Bushoids who favored an agenda to help the big corporations and the ultra wealthy at the expense of everyone else.
How could the Republicans have won this election? Nicholas Kristof, writing in The New York Times (Nov. 3) in an article entitled "Living Poor, Voting Rich" speaks of the "millions of farmers, factory workers, and waitresses who ended up voting – utterly against their own interests – for Republican candidates."
This is a big problem. How to infuse class consciousness into a large segment of workers who consider themselves "middle class" and identify with the values not of their own class but of the bourgeoisie? Kristof recommends everyone read what he calls "the best political book of the year," namely, What’s the Matter With Kansas: How Conservatives Won the Heart of America, by Thomas Frank.
Yes, that is a good book to read – but the politically savvy will also subscribe to the People’s Weekly World and Political Affairs.
Kristof quotes the Democratic governor of Oregon (Ted Kulongoski) who says the Republicans have succeeded in misdirecting masses of people away from considering their economic conditions and to vote on social issues concocted by the right wingers instead. "What we once thought," Kulongoski says, "that people would vote in their economic self-interest – is not true...."
That has to be looked at a little closer. I think if, a big if, people know what their economic interests are they will vote in accordance with them. Our job, as progressives, is to make sure that the minority of the working class and its allies that don’t vote in accordance with their interests begin to do so.
The statistics published by the Times on Nov. 7 ("How Americans Voted’), show that most workers and poor people (as well as the rich) do vote in accordance with their interests. The majority of people making under $30,000 voted solidly against the Republicans – 63% of people living on $15,000 or less; 57% of those between 15 and $30,000 (23% of the electorate – basically the bottom fourth).
Unfortunately the 55% of the electorate living on $50,000 or more per year went for Bush by 56% – and the percentage increases with the amount earned – topping at 63% for Bush with those making $200,000 and more. So there is a correlation.
Minority groups are also aware of their interests by and large. African-Americans were against Bush by 88%, Hispanics by 56% and Asians by 58%. The white vote, however, 79% of the electorate – went for Bush by 58%. Amongst some working class whites there is no doubt that an element of racism was at work and this prevented them from seeing what their real interests are.
Amongst the age sets – only the youth, ages 18-29, went for the Democrats – 54% to 45% for Bush. The majority of the other age groups (39-44, 45-59, 60+) voted for Bush.
Finally, the gender gap: 55% of men went for Bush and 51% of women (down from 54% for Gore in 2000) went for Kerry.
What can we conclude from all these figures? First, my conclusion will be provisional as the figures are the result of a poll – i.e., interviews with 13,600 voters carried out for the big news networks (ABC, NBC, CBS, etc.) and I didn’t see a margin of error given. The Times considers this an accurate poll, evidently, but it leaves out of account 40% of the potential electorate – those who didn’t vote at all and we must reach these people as well.
Having said that, I think these figures show that most people – even if, in some cases, only a bare majority – are voting on what they perceive to be their economic interests. But not enough are. People making from 30 to $49,000 – which is not a lot of money considering what the corporate class rakes in – are split evenly between the Bushoids and the Democrats. They represent 22% of the electorate and getting them to make a major shift towards the center-left or left would be a significant achievement.
We should spend the next two years in an intense propaganda war on the right wingers and Bushoids to see what victories can be gained in the 2006 Congressional elections – besides the House, a third of the Senate will be up for grabs. We should also engage in independent political activity to keep the Democrats, as much as possible, from shifting more and more to the right.
--Thomas Riggins is book review editor of Political Affairs and can ne reached at pabooks@politicalaffairs.net.
By Thomas Riggins
Many liberals think that a new "Red Menace" is facing America – not that there ever was an old one. Waking up Wednesday morning (Nov. 3) and seeing the map of the red versus the blue states was pretty depressing. If there were any election the Democrats should have swept to victory in it was the 2004 election.
The war, the deficit, health care, civil rights and liberties, jobs, the environment, education – you name it – any issue effecting the lives and well being of the American people has been, in the last four years, ground down and ignored by the Bushoids who favored an agenda to help the big corporations and the ultra wealthy at the expense of everyone else.
How could the Republicans have won this election? Nicholas Kristof, writing in The New York Times (Nov. 3) in an article entitled "Living Poor, Voting Rich" speaks of the "millions of farmers, factory workers, and waitresses who ended up voting – utterly against their own interests – for Republican candidates."
This is a big problem. How to infuse class consciousness into a large segment of workers who consider themselves "middle class" and identify with the values not of their own class but of the bourgeoisie? Kristof recommends everyone read what he calls "the best political book of the year," namely, What’s the Matter With Kansas: How Conservatives Won the Heart of America, by Thomas Frank.
Yes, that is a good book to read – but the politically savvy will also subscribe to the People’s Weekly World and Political Affairs.
Kristof quotes the Democratic governor of Oregon (Ted Kulongoski) who says the Republicans have succeeded in misdirecting masses of people away from considering their economic conditions and to vote on social issues concocted by the right wingers instead. "What we once thought," Kulongoski says, "that people would vote in their economic self-interest – is not true...."
That has to be looked at a little closer. I think if, a big if, people know what their economic interests are they will vote in accordance with them. Our job, as progressives, is to make sure that the minority of the working class and its allies that don’t vote in accordance with their interests begin to do so.
The statistics published by the Times on Nov. 7 ("How Americans Voted’), show that most workers and poor people (as well as the rich) do vote in accordance with their interests. The majority of people making under $30,000 voted solidly against the Republicans – 63% of people living on $15,000 or less; 57% of those between 15 and $30,000 (23% of the electorate – basically the bottom fourth).
Unfortunately the 55% of the electorate living on $50,000 or more per year went for Bush by 56% – and the percentage increases with the amount earned – topping at 63% for Bush with those making $200,000 and more. So there is a correlation.
Minority groups are also aware of their interests by and large. African-Americans were against Bush by 88%, Hispanics by 56% and Asians by 58%. The white vote, however, 79% of the electorate – went for Bush by 58%. Amongst some working class whites there is no doubt that an element of racism was at work and this prevented them from seeing what their real interests are.
Amongst the age sets – only the youth, ages 18-29, went for the Democrats – 54% to 45% for Bush. The majority of the other age groups (39-44, 45-59, 60+) voted for Bush.
Finally, the gender gap: 55% of men went for Bush and 51% of women (down from 54% for Gore in 2000) went for Kerry.
What can we conclude from all these figures? First, my conclusion will be provisional as the figures are the result of a poll – i.e., interviews with 13,600 voters carried out for the big news networks (ABC, NBC, CBS, etc.) and I didn’t see a margin of error given. The Times considers this an accurate poll, evidently, but it leaves out of account 40% of the potential electorate – those who didn’t vote at all and we must reach these people as well.
Having said that, I think these figures show that most people – even if, in some cases, only a bare majority – are voting on what they perceive to be their economic interests. But not enough are. People making from 30 to $49,000 – which is not a lot of money considering what the corporate class rakes in – are split evenly between the Bushoids and the Democrats. They represent 22% of the electorate and getting them to make a major shift towards the center-left or left would be a significant achievement.
We should spend the next two years in an intense propaganda war on the right wingers and Bushoids to see what victories can be gained in the 2006 Congressional elections – besides the House, a third of the Senate will be up for grabs. We should also engage in independent political activity to keep the Democrats, as much as possible, from shifting more and more to the right.
--Thomas Riggins is book review editor of Political Affairs and can ne reached at pabooks@politicalaffairs.net.
Thursday, June 08, 2006
HAVE A GLASS OF METHYL TERTIARY BUTYL ETHER
Have a Glass of Methyl Tertiary Butyl Ether [Archival Material 2004]
By Thomas Riggins
Marx tells us that our class position should dictate how we see the world. This is certainly true for the bourgeoisie – they never fail to recognize what will best further their class interests. Unfortunately this isn’t always true of the working class which, infected with false consciousness, often ends up, contrary to its own class interests, in the camp of its enemies.
Here is an example. According to The New York Times of October 31, 2004, New York State has "one of the worst cases of drinking water pollution in the nation." This is because a gasoline additive called M.T.B.E. (methyl tertiary butyl ether) was in the gasoline supply starting about 12 years ago. It was supposed to cut down on air pollution. But after six years it was discovered that M.T.B.E. causes cancer and that it had gotten into the water supply. The Times says there are over 13,000 spills. The spills are primarily from trucks and gas storage facilities. Your local gas station has big tanks under it full of gasoline waiting to be pumped into your car. But these tanks leak and so the M.T.B.E. gets into the ground and from there to the water table, and then into you.
Besides New York, 27 other states have this problem, and it would cost around $100 billion to clean all this mess up. Who should pay? The working people or the oil companies? The working people will pay if the government cleans up using tax revenues as most of the taxes are paid by working people.
In 2003 the Bushoids backed a bill in Congress that "would have protected the oil companies from having to pay for the clean up." This sounds like par for the course. Tom Delay’s office (he is the Bushoid majority leader in the House) claims its not the oil companies fault. They put the M.T.B.E. in the gasoline because it was Congress that passed a law requiring them to use additives that cut down on air pollution. Delay’s district just happens to have a lot of big M.T.B.E. manufactures in it. (The bill hasn’t been passed).
So are the Republicans right? Were the oil companies innocently trying to do their civic duty under the law? Were they simply obeying Congress as Rep. Delay’s office says? "Those who produced it [M.T.B.E.] were fulfilling this%
By Thomas Riggins
Marx tells us that our class position should dictate how we see the world. This is certainly true for the bourgeoisie – they never fail to recognize what will best further their class interests. Unfortunately this isn’t always true of the working class which, infected with false consciousness, often ends up, contrary to its own class interests, in the camp of its enemies.
Here is an example. According to The New York Times of October 31, 2004, New York State has "one of the worst cases of drinking water pollution in the nation." This is because a gasoline additive called M.T.B.E. (methyl tertiary butyl ether) was in the gasoline supply starting about 12 years ago. It was supposed to cut down on air pollution. But after six years it was discovered that M.T.B.E. causes cancer and that it had gotten into the water supply. The Times says there are over 13,000 spills. The spills are primarily from trucks and gas storage facilities. Your local gas station has big tanks under it full of gasoline waiting to be pumped into your car. But these tanks leak and so the M.T.B.E. gets into the ground and from there to the water table, and then into you.
Besides New York, 27 other states have this problem, and it would cost around $100 billion to clean all this mess up. Who should pay? The working people or the oil companies? The working people will pay if the government cleans up using tax revenues as most of the taxes are paid by working people.
In 2003 the Bushoids backed a bill in Congress that "would have protected the oil companies from having to pay for the clean up." This sounds like par for the course. Tom Delay’s office (he is the Bushoid majority leader in the House) claims its not the oil companies fault. They put the M.T.B.E. in the gasoline because it was Congress that passed a law requiring them to use additives that cut down on air pollution. Delay’s district just happens to have a lot of big M.T.B.E. manufactures in it. (The bill hasn’t been passed).
So are the Republicans right? Were the oil companies innocently trying to do their civic duty under the law? Were they simply obeying Congress as Rep. Delay’s office says? "Those who produced it [M.T.B.E.] were fulfilling this%
Wednesday, June 07, 2006
THE BUSH OIL WAR IN COLUMBIA
The Bush Oil War in Colombia [Archival Material, 2004]
By Thomas Riggins
Even as the US becomes more bogged down in an unwinnable war in Iraq – fueled by the desire to control Middle East oil, the Bush administration has stepped up the American military presence in Colombia.
For over forty years the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) have been fighting, in alliance with the Colombian Communist Party (CCP, founded in 1930), for what they perceive to be social justice for the down trodden rural masses.
The FARC came into existence in 1964 as a result of a full-fledged military attack on the peasant movement in Marquetalia, Tolima Department, by the Colombian armed forces in collusion with the US. The peasants had organized themselves outside of the framework of the landed oligarchy. The Colombian state was determined to bring them to heel.
Past attempts to bring about a peaceful solution to this long running revolution in the countryside have been systematically upset by the Colombian authorities backed by the US.
For example, a truce was reached in the 1980s, and the FARC, the CCP, and other left organizations as well as the labor movement founded the Patriotic Union (PU). The PU was created to contest in elections and the violence of the revolutionary war would be ended. All the PU members wanted was an opportunity to be fairly represented in the political process, heretofore monopolized by the elite and the bourgeoisie.
The electoral popularity of the PU was so great among the Colombian workers and peasants that the government, allied with right-wing paramilitaries, unleashed a reign of terror based on murder and high profile assassinations against members of the PU.
Two presidential candidates were murdered (1987, 1990), the only senator elected by the PU was also killed (1990) – and fighting resumed. In 2001 the newspaper Pravda reported that in 2000 another mass murder campaign was launched against the members of the PU who were not a part of the armed resistance. Union leaders, members of the Colombian Congress, and many leaders as well as regular members of the CCP were murdered both in Bogotá and throughout the rural areas of the country.
The war has simmered – but in the last ten months or so it has really heated up, as revealed by Juan Forero in an October 22 article in The New York Times ("Safeguarding Colombia’s Oil"--Business Section).
Bush has changed American policy in Colombia and, for the first time, Special Forces have been sent to Colombia to train units of the Colombian Army to protect the commercial interests of private oil companies.
Colombia is one of the top ten sources for crude oil imported into the US – but it needs to locate new untapped fields. Forero reports that backed by US helicopters, as well as by planning and surveillance assistance, the Colombian Army has attacked in four Colombian states (Putumayo, Caqueta, Meta and Guaviare) to wrest control from the FARC insurgents.
Although the bogus charge of "narco-terrorism" is the reason given by the US, the real reason, indicated by the Times, is "to make potentially oil rich regions safe for exploration by private companies and the government run oil company." If a soldier gets killed it sure looks better if he or she died fighting "narco-terrorists" than making regions safe for oil companies to explore.
Columbia President Alvaro Uribe (a former associate of deceased Drug King Pablo Escobar, according to a recent report in Time magazine) has contributed to the continuing weakening of the state oil company and changed the laws to benefit international oil interests, especially American oil interests. According to Forero, the state oil company has reduced from 50 per cent to 30 per cent its participation in joint ventures – this cedes authority and control to the oil companies. Also, the 20 percent royalty has been replaced by a "sliding scale" – it will most likely slide down!
So, our tax money, and now more of our soldiers too, are down in Colombia protecting the pipe line and oil wells of American companies. Which ones? Here are a few: Argosy Energy International (based in Houston), Occidental Petroleum, Exxon-Mobil (both with name changes from the Standard Oil cartel), Chevron (also from the Standard Oil cartel with a name change)-Texaco, and Harken Energy. Also benefiting are some British (BP), Canadian and Spanish companies among others.
I know we need oil – but its time to vote out the Bush administration and its war policies, and then put pressure on Kerry to find alternate sources of energy and to remove our troops and military equipment from Colombia. We have no business intervening in, and prolonging, a civil war in Colombia. Nor should the government become a private security agency for big American oil companies.
--Thomas Riggins is book review editor of Political Affairs and writes a weekly column for the online edition. He can be reached at pabooks@politicalaffairs.net.
By Thomas Riggins
Even as the US becomes more bogged down in an unwinnable war in Iraq – fueled by the desire to control Middle East oil, the Bush administration has stepped up the American military presence in Colombia.
For over forty years the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) have been fighting, in alliance with the Colombian Communist Party (CCP, founded in 1930), for what they perceive to be social justice for the down trodden rural masses.
The FARC came into existence in 1964 as a result of a full-fledged military attack on the peasant movement in Marquetalia, Tolima Department, by the Colombian armed forces in collusion with the US. The peasants had organized themselves outside of the framework of the landed oligarchy. The Colombian state was determined to bring them to heel.
Past attempts to bring about a peaceful solution to this long running revolution in the countryside have been systematically upset by the Colombian authorities backed by the US.
For example, a truce was reached in the 1980s, and the FARC, the CCP, and other left organizations as well as the labor movement founded the Patriotic Union (PU). The PU was created to contest in elections and the violence of the revolutionary war would be ended. All the PU members wanted was an opportunity to be fairly represented in the political process, heretofore monopolized by the elite and the bourgeoisie.
The electoral popularity of the PU was so great among the Colombian workers and peasants that the government, allied with right-wing paramilitaries, unleashed a reign of terror based on murder and high profile assassinations against members of the PU.
Two presidential candidates were murdered (1987, 1990), the only senator elected by the PU was also killed (1990) – and fighting resumed. In 2001 the newspaper Pravda reported that in 2000 another mass murder campaign was launched against the members of the PU who were not a part of the armed resistance. Union leaders, members of the Colombian Congress, and many leaders as well as regular members of the CCP were murdered both in Bogotá and throughout the rural areas of the country.
The war has simmered – but in the last ten months or so it has really heated up, as revealed by Juan Forero in an October 22 article in The New York Times ("Safeguarding Colombia’s Oil"--Business Section).
Bush has changed American policy in Colombia and, for the first time, Special Forces have been sent to Colombia to train units of the Colombian Army to protect the commercial interests of private oil companies.
Colombia is one of the top ten sources for crude oil imported into the US – but it needs to locate new untapped fields. Forero reports that backed by US helicopters, as well as by planning and surveillance assistance, the Colombian Army has attacked in four Colombian states (Putumayo, Caqueta, Meta and Guaviare) to wrest control from the FARC insurgents.
Although the bogus charge of "narco-terrorism" is the reason given by the US, the real reason, indicated by the Times, is "to make potentially oil rich regions safe for exploration by private companies and the government run oil company." If a soldier gets killed it sure looks better if he or she died fighting "narco-terrorists" than making regions safe for oil companies to explore.
Columbia President Alvaro Uribe (a former associate of deceased Drug King Pablo Escobar, according to a recent report in Time magazine) has contributed to the continuing weakening of the state oil company and changed the laws to benefit international oil interests, especially American oil interests. According to Forero, the state oil company has reduced from 50 per cent to 30 per cent its participation in joint ventures – this cedes authority and control to the oil companies. Also, the 20 percent royalty has been replaced by a "sliding scale" – it will most likely slide down!
So, our tax money, and now more of our soldiers too, are down in Colombia protecting the pipe line and oil wells of American companies. Which ones? Here are a few: Argosy Energy International (based in Houston), Occidental Petroleum, Exxon-Mobil (both with name changes from the Standard Oil cartel), Chevron (also from the Standard Oil cartel with a name change)-Texaco, and Harken Energy. Also benefiting are some British (BP), Canadian and Spanish companies among others.
I know we need oil – but its time to vote out the Bush administration and its war policies, and then put pressure on Kerry to find alternate sources of energy and to remove our troops and military equipment from Colombia. We have no business intervening in, and prolonging, a civil war in Colombia. Nor should the government become a private security agency for big American oil companies.
--Thomas Riggins is book review editor of Political Affairs and writes a weekly column for the online edition. He can be reached at pabooks@politicalaffairs.net.
Tuesday, June 06, 2006
BOOK REVIEW: BERTRAND RUSSELL IN 90 MINUTES
Bertrand Russell in 90 Minutes
By Thomas Riggins
This short book [Bertrand Russell in 90 Minutes by Paul Strathern, Chicago, Ivan R. Dee, 2001] of 92 pages is one of many (24 at the time it was published) in Strathern’s 90 Minutes series. If you know absolutely nothing about Russell, perhaps the greatest English speaking philosopher (bourgeois) of the 20th century, you could begin with this book – but you will need more than it provides to really understand Russell.
Russell (1872-1970) was both a technical philosopher in the empiricist tradition (Locke, Hume, Mill) and a socially engaged activist – most famously in the “Ban the Bomb Movement”, co-founded with Einstein, of the 1950s and 1960s. He also co-chaired, with Jean Paul Sartre, the war crimes tribunal that exposed the Nazi like criminal behavior of the US in Vietnam, although Strathern doesn’t mention this. Russell got the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1950. His best known popular works A History of Western Philosophy (1945), “Why I am Not A Christian” (1927), and The Problems of Philosophy (1912).
Strathern’s short introduction made me a little cautious since he refers to Wittgenstein as “the philosopher who succeeded to his mantle.” This is not an apt comment as Wittgenstein was the moving force behind a philosophical school not endorsed by Russell. No one really succeeded to Russell’s mantle.
Strathern does point out the three great passions that Russell always said drove his life, “the longing for love, the quest for knowledge, and heart-rending pity for the suffering of humanity.” He also points out that Russell’s philosophy was rooted in a scientific world outlook. I think, however, he misrepresents Russell when he writes that he “sought to establish a demonstrably certain logical philosophy....”
Russell always maintained that philosophy, like science, was always provisional and dealt with probabilities not “demonstrably certain” knowledge. I think Strathern confused Russell’s empirically based philosophy with his early attempt to deduce arithmetic from logic in Principia Mathematica (co-authored with A. N. Whitehead). Russell was one of the founders of modern mathematical logic.
The heart of this book is the 63 page essay “Russell’s Life and Works.” Strathern describes how Russell, who was educated at Cambridge, revolted against the prevailing neo-Hegelian idealism he found at the university and developed a philosophy based on logical analysis which he later called “logical atomism” because it stressed the discreteness of things rather than seeing them as all interrelated parts of the neo-Hegelian “Absolute.”
The best part of this book is Strathern’s explanation of Russell’s Paradox and his Theory of Types. He presents these technical topics that Russell dealt with in mathematical class theory in an easily understandable way so that lay readers can follow the arguments that took place in early 20th century philosophy of mathematics and logic.
Unfortunately, Strathern does not present Russell’s mature philosophy. After the excellent mathematical exposition he gives an overview of Russell’s thought based on works from which he later diverged. This is especially the case with the 1912 The Problems of Philosophy. Strathern should have consulted Russell’s 1959 My Philosophical Development where he gives his final views on many of the topics discussed in the 90 Minutes book. Russell may need more than ninety minutes!
Strathern barely mentions Russell’s political views just noting The Theory and Practice of Bolshevism, Russell’s diatribe against the Russian Revolution, and he never points out Russell’s misreading of Hegel and Marx which mar his reputation as an historian of philosophy.
He also relies too much on Ray Monk’s biography of Russell – which he calls “superb, possibility definitive” without pointing out that most Russell scholars react negatively to Monk’s work.
--Thomas Riggins is book review editor of Political Affairs and can be reached at pabooks@politicalaffairs.net.
By Thomas Riggins
This short book [Bertrand Russell in 90 Minutes by Paul Strathern, Chicago, Ivan R. Dee, 2001] of 92 pages is one of many (24 at the time it was published) in Strathern’s 90 Minutes series. If you know absolutely nothing about Russell, perhaps the greatest English speaking philosopher (bourgeois) of the 20th century, you could begin with this book – but you will need more than it provides to really understand Russell.
Russell (1872-1970) was both a technical philosopher in the empiricist tradition (Locke, Hume, Mill) and a socially engaged activist – most famously in the “Ban the Bomb Movement”, co-founded with Einstein, of the 1950s and 1960s. He also co-chaired, with Jean Paul Sartre, the war crimes tribunal that exposed the Nazi like criminal behavior of the US in Vietnam, although Strathern doesn’t mention this. Russell got the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1950. His best known popular works A History of Western Philosophy (1945), “Why I am Not A Christian” (1927), and The Problems of Philosophy (1912).
Strathern’s short introduction made me a little cautious since he refers to Wittgenstein as “the philosopher who succeeded to his mantle.” This is not an apt comment as Wittgenstein was the moving force behind a philosophical school not endorsed by Russell. No one really succeeded to Russell’s mantle.
Strathern does point out the three great passions that Russell always said drove his life, “the longing for love, the quest for knowledge, and heart-rending pity for the suffering of humanity.” He also points out that Russell’s philosophy was rooted in a scientific world outlook. I think, however, he misrepresents Russell when he writes that he “sought to establish a demonstrably certain logical philosophy....”
Russell always maintained that philosophy, like science, was always provisional and dealt with probabilities not “demonstrably certain” knowledge. I think Strathern confused Russell’s empirically based philosophy with his early attempt to deduce arithmetic from logic in Principia Mathematica (co-authored with A. N. Whitehead). Russell was one of the founders of modern mathematical logic.
The heart of this book is the 63 page essay “Russell’s Life and Works.” Strathern describes how Russell, who was educated at Cambridge, revolted against the prevailing neo-Hegelian idealism he found at the university and developed a philosophy based on logical analysis which he later called “logical atomism” because it stressed the discreteness of things rather than seeing them as all interrelated parts of the neo-Hegelian “Absolute.”
The best part of this book is Strathern’s explanation of Russell’s Paradox and his Theory of Types. He presents these technical topics that Russell dealt with in mathematical class theory in an easily understandable way so that lay readers can follow the arguments that took place in early 20th century philosophy of mathematics and logic.
Unfortunately, Strathern does not present Russell’s mature philosophy. After the excellent mathematical exposition he gives an overview of Russell’s thought based on works from which he later diverged. This is especially the case with the 1912 The Problems of Philosophy. Strathern should have consulted Russell’s 1959 My Philosophical Development where he gives his final views on many of the topics discussed in the 90 Minutes book. Russell may need more than ninety minutes!
Strathern barely mentions Russell’s political views just noting The Theory and Practice of Bolshevism, Russell’s diatribe against the Russian Revolution, and he never points out Russell’s misreading of Hegel and Marx which mar his reputation as an historian of philosophy.
He also relies too much on Ray Monk’s biography of Russell – which he calls “superb, possibility definitive” without pointing out that most Russell scholars react negatively to Monk’s work.
--Thomas Riggins is book review editor of Political Affairs and can be reached at pabooks@politicalaffairs.net.
Monday, June 05, 2006
REMEMBERING JACQUES DERRIDA (Archival Material)
Remembering Jacques Derrida (1930-2004)
By Thomas Riggins
One of the late 20th Century’s most influential thinkers died last Friday (Oct. 8) in Paris. Jacques Derrida’s philosophy of "deconstruction" has influenced religion, psychotherapy, feminism, law, Marxism, literary criticism, architecture, art and cultural studies.
Derrida’s deconstructionist career began in the 1960s, peaked in the 1980s, and is now, it seems, in decline. Deconstruction may turn out to have been only a fad that was nurtured by bourgeois "radicals" who were looking for solutions to the problems generated by the economic and social contradictions of late capitalism but shied away from traditional Marxist analysis.
What was Derrida’s deconstructionist philosophy? He began with a critique of Structuralism which was a wide spread philosophy popular in French intellectual circles in the 1950s and 60s-- displacing Existentialism as the dominant mode of thinking. Hegelians and Marxists can relate easily to the major premiss of Structuralism, namely that, as Franz Hugdahl writes, the "object under consideration is the system that is comprised of the reciprocal relations among a series of facts, as, opposed to the study of particular facts in isolation."
Structuralists believe that after a proper investigation of your subject matter (linguistics, anthropology or whatever) you can attain meaning and understanding by revealing the structural relationships of the concepts and ideas (and their real world counterparts) under consideration. This understanding is expressed in words with definite meanings put forth in speaking or writing.
This was challenged by Derrida who maintained that references associated with words are so numerous and even contradictory that any explanation, view or text can be "deconstructed" to show that whatever you might have thought the text was saying, you could find that it said something else as well and therefore there was no privileged interpretation, no canonical reading, to which you will be forced to adhere.
This way of thinking never caught on in philosophy, but was the rage, for a while, in English (and French) departments and in literary and cultural studies. The beginning of the end for "deconstruction" came in 1987. That year marked the fourth anniversary of the death of Derrida’s most important American proponent, Paul de Man, who had been a professor at Yale. De Man could take any text and argue (usually fallaciously by logic chopping, using puns and word play, taking words and phrases out of context, etc.)that it had more than one, and perhaps several, different (and even contradictory) interpretations none of which could be claimed to be the "correct" one.
De Man, four years after his death in 1983 was exposed in the New York Times as having been a Nazi sympathizer in his native Belgium during World War II. He wrote anti-semitic articles for a Nazi paper supporting the Nazi cause and proposed deportation as a "solution to the Jewish problem."
For Derrida and other deconstructionists this was a major embarrassment as they thought their new movement, poststructuralism, was radically progressive-- empowering marginalized elements of society by allowing them to read their own stories into the texts and traditions of Western civilization. As Jim Powell points out, "those given to deconstruction had always thought of themselves and their approach as revolutionary, iconoclastic and anti-totalitarian."
Derrida rose to the defense of de Man by publishing an article "deconstructing" the anti-semitic and pro-Nazi texts of De Man’s newspaper articles. Derrida claimed that while on the surface these texts looked Nazi, nevertheless, he could detect in them subtle anti-Nazi traces and meanings. This basically dishonest application of deconstruction (in an attempt to rehabiliate de Man not the Nazis) revealed that it was a useless method with which to try and discover "meaning" as it was only the subjective desires of its practitioners that were being projected onto the text and nothing revelatory was necessarily produced at all.
So what is left of "poststructuralism"? Not much I think. But neither should the foolishness of some of Derrida’s late productions ("Like the Sound of the Sea Deep within a Shell: Paul de Man’s War") obscure the importance of his early work. His 1967 Of Grammatology remains a classic critique, for better or worse, of Structuralism, and, as Christopher Johnson points out, its lesson "is that one cannot simply step outside of a philosophical tradition and reason independently of it." Well, maybe not "simply."
In closing I would be remiss not to point out that Derrida had progressive tendencies as a person and that he was a supporter of the anti-Apartheid movement and of the rights of North Africans living in France. R.I.P.
--Thomas Riggins is book review editor of Political Affairs and can be reached at pabooks@politicalaffairs.net.
By Thomas Riggins
One of the late 20th Century’s most influential thinkers died last Friday (Oct. 8) in Paris. Jacques Derrida’s philosophy of "deconstruction" has influenced religion, psychotherapy, feminism, law, Marxism, literary criticism, architecture, art and cultural studies.
Derrida’s deconstructionist career began in the 1960s, peaked in the 1980s, and is now, it seems, in decline. Deconstruction may turn out to have been only a fad that was nurtured by bourgeois "radicals" who were looking for solutions to the problems generated by the economic and social contradictions of late capitalism but shied away from traditional Marxist analysis.
What was Derrida’s deconstructionist philosophy? He began with a critique of Structuralism which was a wide spread philosophy popular in French intellectual circles in the 1950s and 60s-- displacing Existentialism as the dominant mode of thinking. Hegelians and Marxists can relate easily to the major premiss of Structuralism, namely that, as Franz Hugdahl writes, the "object under consideration is the system that is comprised of the reciprocal relations among a series of facts, as, opposed to the study of particular facts in isolation."
Structuralists believe that after a proper investigation of your subject matter (linguistics, anthropology or whatever) you can attain meaning and understanding by revealing the structural relationships of the concepts and ideas (and their real world counterparts) under consideration. This understanding is expressed in words with definite meanings put forth in speaking or writing.
This was challenged by Derrida who maintained that references associated with words are so numerous and even contradictory that any explanation, view or text can be "deconstructed" to show that whatever you might have thought the text was saying, you could find that it said something else as well and therefore there was no privileged interpretation, no canonical reading, to which you will be forced to adhere.
This way of thinking never caught on in philosophy, but was the rage, for a while, in English (and French) departments and in literary and cultural studies. The beginning of the end for "deconstruction" came in 1987. That year marked the fourth anniversary of the death of Derrida’s most important American proponent, Paul de Man, who had been a professor at Yale. De Man could take any text and argue (usually fallaciously by logic chopping, using puns and word play, taking words and phrases out of context, etc.)that it had more than one, and perhaps several, different (and even contradictory) interpretations none of which could be claimed to be the "correct" one.
De Man, four years after his death in 1983 was exposed in the New York Times as having been a Nazi sympathizer in his native Belgium during World War II. He wrote anti-semitic articles for a Nazi paper supporting the Nazi cause and proposed deportation as a "solution to the Jewish problem."
For Derrida and other deconstructionists this was a major embarrassment as they thought their new movement, poststructuralism, was radically progressive-- empowering marginalized elements of society by allowing them to read their own stories into the texts and traditions of Western civilization. As Jim Powell points out, "those given to deconstruction had always thought of themselves and their approach as revolutionary, iconoclastic and anti-totalitarian."
Derrida rose to the defense of de Man by publishing an article "deconstructing" the anti-semitic and pro-Nazi texts of De Man’s newspaper articles. Derrida claimed that while on the surface these texts looked Nazi, nevertheless, he could detect in them subtle anti-Nazi traces and meanings. This basically dishonest application of deconstruction (in an attempt to rehabiliate de Man not the Nazis) revealed that it was a useless method with which to try and discover "meaning" as it was only the subjective desires of its practitioners that were being projected onto the text and nothing revelatory was necessarily produced at all.
So what is left of "poststructuralism"? Not much I think. But neither should the foolishness of some of Derrida’s late productions ("Like the Sound of the Sea Deep within a Shell: Paul de Man’s War") obscure the importance of his early work. His 1967 Of Grammatology remains a classic critique, for better or worse, of Structuralism, and, as Christopher Johnson points out, its lesson "is that one cannot simply step outside of a philosophical tradition and reason independently of it." Well, maybe not "simply."
In closing I would be remiss not to point out that Derrida had progressive tendencies as a person and that he was a supporter of the anti-Apartheid movement and of the rights of North Africans living in France. R.I.P.
--Thomas Riggins is book review editor of Political Affairs and can be reached at pabooks@politicalaffairs.net.
Sunday, June 04, 2006
MARXISM AND CONFUCIAN RELEVANCE: BOOK REVIEW
Marxism and Confucian Relevance
By Thomas Riggins
"I have always heard that a gentleman helps the needy; he does not make the rich richer still."-- Confucius
Daniel A. Bell and Hahm Chaibong have edited a book called Confucianism for the Modern World (Cambridge, 2003). In their introduction the editors discuss the contemporary relevance of the Confucian tradition (the purpose of the book). The question is – is Confucianism a dead tradition or is it meaningful for the contemporary world?
There are five questions which they say must be addressed. I don’t think they are formulated quite rightly so I shall amend them slightly. The first is what Confucian values "should be promoted in contemporary East Asian societies?" This I think is too narrow. The "modern world" encompasses more than just East Asia. I would maintain that Confucianism has useful traditions that societies other than the traditional Asian ones can benefit from studying and applying.
The second question is, "How should this be promoted?" The third is, "What are the political and institutional implications of ‘Confucian humanism’?" Confucian "humanism" can be summed up by saying that for a good Confucian the slogan "People Before Profits," that we on the left are very familiar with, would not sound out of place.
The fourth question is "How do the practical implications of modern Confucianism differ from the values and workings of liberal capitalist societies?" The editors have added "modern" as a modifier for good reason. The values of traditional Confucianism can, I think, be brought into line with those of socialist or communist humanism but they can only be adapted to the values of capitalism, liberal or otherwise, by doing violence to their core ethical commitments. I think this question also reveals one of the purposes of the book is to try and use a warped and mutated "Confucianism" as an apologetic for East Asian capitalism.
The last question deals with the adoption of Confucianism to this project (conformity to liberal capitalism) and if it can "be justified from a moral point of view." I don’t think that it can be, but I think the editors of this book think that it can. Here are two examples.
One of the contributors, Gilbert Rozman, argues that Confucianism can be adapted to support "decentralization," "regionalism" and "localism." But to what purpose? Some of his examples suggest that purpose is to further the interests of corporate globalization and not Confucian "humanism".
For example, his reading of modern "Confucianism" might convince China to respect "Taiwan’s right to autonomy." He also suggests that it is a good counter balance to "Anglo-Saxon liberalism" [Rozman’s term for monopoly capitalism] on the one hand, and "Soviet-launched socialism" on the other. The former represents "individualism," the latter "statism." He maintains East Asia has a third system – some type of "familyism." Actually, with the exception of China, Vietnam, the DPRK and Laos [statist in Rozman’s terminology], East Asia is firmly in the control of monopoly capitalism. Rozman thinks attempts to counter "U.S. influence endanger the gains achieved through trans-Pacific economic and security ties," The WTO is cited as a "gain." He forgot the IMF and the World Bank. This is, to my mind, merely using Confucianism as a cover for the trans-national imperialist exploitation of Asian peoples under the guise of "humanism" and decentralization.
Daniel Bell, one of the editors, in his contribution, explicitly states that he assumes "some form of capitalism is here to stay for the foreseeable future and any realistic defense of economic arrangements in East Asia needs to take this fact into account."
Since I am not interested in using Confucian philosophy in order to make a "defense of economic arrangements in East Asia" but rather to see what the logical implications of its humanistic values are, I cannot agree with Professor Bell’s use of Confucianism.
I agree with him that the material welfare of the people is one of, if not the main duty of the state according to Confucianism, but disagree completely when he says, "There is no doubt that Confucians would... oppose Soviet-style planned economies." I say this because the reason he gives for saying that, "Absolute private property rights" might be justified if they provided for "the basic means of subsistence." This argument from instrumental grounds also applies to a planned economy.
In fact, I think Confucian humanism is completely compatible with a Marxist interpretation and totally incompatible with the theoretical and practical functioning of capitalism with the possible exception of some capitalist inspired market reforms guided by a desire to strengthen a socialist state.
--Thomas Riggins is book review editor of Political Affairs and can be reached at pabooks@politicalaffairs.net.
By Thomas Riggins
"I have always heard that a gentleman helps the needy; he does not make the rich richer still."-- Confucius
Daniel A. Bell and Hahm Chaibong have edited a book called Confucianism for the Modern World (Cambridge, 2003). In their introduction the editors discuss the contemporary relevance of the Confucian tradition (the purpose of the book). The question is – is Confucianism a dead tradition or is it meaningful for the contemporary world?
There are five questions which they say must be addressed. I don’t think they are formulated quite rightly so I shall amend them slightly. The first is what Confucian values "should be promoted in contemporary East Asian societies?" This I think is too narrow. The "modern world" encompasses more than just East Asia. I would maintain that Confucianism has useful traditions that societies other than the traditional Asian ones can benefit from studying and applying.
The second question is, "How should this be promoted?" The third is, "What are the political and institutional implications of ‘Confucian humanism’?" Confucian "humanism" can be summed up by saying that for a good Confucian the slogan "People Before Profits," that we on the left are very familiar with, would not sound out of place.
The fourth question is "How do the practical implications of modern Confucianism differ from the values and workings of liberal capitalist societies?" The editors have added "modern" as a modifier for good reason. The values of traditional Confucianism can, I think, be brought into line with those of socialist or communist humanism but they can only be adapted to the values of capitalism, liberal or otherwise, by doing violence to their core ethical commitments. I think this question also reveals one of the purposes of the book is to try and use a warped and mutated "Confucianism" as an apologetic for East Asian capitalism.
The last question deals with the adoption of Confucianism to this project (conformity to liberal capitalism) and if it can "be justified from a moral point of view." I don’t think that it can be, but I think the editors of this book think that it can. Here are two examples.
One of the contributors, Gilbert Rozman, argues that Confucianism can be adapted to support "decentralization," "regionalism" and "localism." But to what purpose? Some of his examples suggest that purpose is to further the interests of corporate globalization and not Confucian "humanism".
For example, his reading of modern "Confucianism" might convince China to respect "Taiwan’s right to autonomy." He also suggests that it is a good counter balance to "Anglo-Saxon liberalism" [Rozman’s term for monopoly capitalism] on the one hand, and "Soviet-launched socialism" on the other. The former represents "individualism," the latter "statism." He maintains East Asia has a third system – some type of "familyism." Actually, with the exception of China, Vietnam, the DPRK and Laos [statist in Rozman’s terminology], East Asia is firmly in the control of monopoly capitalism. Rozman thinks attempts to counter "U.S. influence endanger the gains achieved through trans-Pacific economic and security ties," The WTO is cited as a "gain." He forgot the IMF and the World Bank. This is, to my mind, merely using Confucianism as a cover for the trans-national imperialist exploitation of Asian peoples under the guise of "humanism" and decentralization.
Daniel Bell, one of the editors, in his contribution, explicitly states that he assumes "some form of capitalism is here to stay for the foreseeable future and any realistic defense of economic arrangements in East Asia needs to take this fact into account."
Since I am not interested in using Confucian philosophy in order to make a "defense of economic arrangements in East Asia" but rather to see what the logical implications of its humanistic values are, I cannot agree with Professor Bell’s use of Confucianism.
I agree with him that the material welfare of the people is one of, if not the main duty of the state according to Confucianism, but disagree completely when he says, "There is no doubt that Confucians would... oppose Soviet-style planned economies." I say this because the reason he gives for saying that, "Absolute private property rights" might be justified if they provided for "the basic means of subsistence." This argument from instrumental grounds also applies to a planned economy.
In fact, I think Confucian humanism is completely compatible with a Marxist interpretation and totally incompatible with the theoretical and practical functioning of capitalism with the possible exception of some capitalist inspired market reforms guided by a desire to strengthen a socialist state.
--Thomas Riggins is book review editor of Political Affairs and can be reached at pabooks@politicalaffairs.net.
Saturday, June 03, 2006
IRAQ AND THE LOOMING AMERICAN DEFEAT
Iraq and the Looming American Defeat
By Thomas Riggins
The press reports that the Defense Department itself is calling upon the Pentagon to stop paying Iraqi reporters "to produce positive stories" about what is going on in Iraq and how the Americans are faring. Rear Adm. Scott Van Buskirk, who conducted the investigation for the Defense Department, thinks paying for good press "could damage American credibility." Duh! (New York Times 5/24/06). That story appears on page 19 of the Times.
The really important story that I want to analyze was front page news"-- "In Shadows, Armed Groups Propel Iraq Toward Chaos" by Dexter Filkins reporting from Baghdad. When properly parsed, this story reveals that the war in Iraq is all but over for the US troops. Democracy, however, has not been defeated since it has never existed in this occupied land. What has been defeated is the attempt by the US to set up a government under its control that would be able to police Iraq for the US while we controlled, directly or indirectly, the oil resources. This story reveals that it is only a matter of time before we see the. last US helicopter leaving the Green zone stuffed with our Ambassador, his staff and various Iraqi puppets.
The article opens with a description of the 16th Brigade (1000 men) of the Iraqi Defense Ministry. This brigade was assigned to the Dawra section of Baghdad to guard a section of oil pipeline. There was a death squad inside the brigade that was killing anyone helping or working with the Iraqi government. So the government's own brigade had a unit in it that was killing the government's own supporters. That is all you really need to know to figure out how this war is going to end and why the Pentagon is paying reporters to write nice things about the occupation. But it gets better (or worse as the case maybe).
Filkins indicates that this brigade is not all that unusual. "Indeed," he writes, "the 16th Brigade stands as a model for how freelance government violence has spread far beyond the ranks of the Shiite-backed police force and Interior Ministry to encompass other government ministries, private militias and people in the upper levels of the Shiite government." There is, he says, "a galaxy of armed groups" and they "are accelerating the country's slide into chaos." Meanwhile we have to hear Bush and the generals telling us how all is slowly improving, going as planned, etc. This chaos will eventually consume our forces as well and we should get them out as soon as possible and then toss all the war supporters out of office in the November election.
What about the brand new Iraqi government for which we have such high hopes? Well, with regard to the death squads, rogue government militias, army units secretly supporting the insurgency, etc., one of two vice presidents of Iraq, Adil Abul Mahdi (more about him later) says, "No one knows who is who right now." This sounds like a government on top of the situation. Better stay in the Green Zone for now.
Who are these armed groups, officially not part of the insurgency but on "our" side? According to the article (based on figures from the US Defense Department) they include 145,000 police officers and commandos "who have come under scrutiny for widespread human rights violations" (the US has set such a good example), thousands more of militia and other gunmen both Sunni and Shiite, also the 145,000 Facilities Protection Service, the Badr Brigade, the Iraqi Army, 105,000 (who with the Police "often carry out legitimate missions"), the Mahdi Army (which specializes in "torture, murder, kidnapping and the settling of scores for political parties") and other private groups including "contractors" (mercenaries). Remember these are supposed to be the "good guys."
The new Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki says he is going to "clamp down" and "disarm" the death squads and militias. But this is just talk. The major militias are supported by the major Shiite political parties that run the government. The usual anonymous American official tells Filkins, "I think they have the evidence now as to who is doing most of the killing. Its a question of political will to do what needs to be done. I have just not seen it yet." All this killing and mayhem is going on between the Shiites and Sunnis both independently of and in collusion with the insurgency. Meanwhile the US bumbles around killing innocent civilians and getting its troops killed.
In the Sunni areas of Baghdad Shiite death squads are on a rampage killing young men just because they are Sunnis. Who is doing it? Filkins quotes a human rights activist as saying "It's the Ministry of Interior." He also quotes Tariq al-Hashemi, the new government's Sunni Vice President (there is a Shiite one as well): "You ask me who is doing these things. The police, the militias, the political parties-- we don't know." He wants to purge the Ministry of Interior "saying," Filkins writes, "there are 'thousands' of corrupt and brutal officers who need to fired if the government ever hopes to secure the trust of Iraq's Sunnis." This is the kind of great democracy we are building in the Middle East. It should also be noted that most of the personnel in the Ministry of Interior were trained by the Americans or under their supervision.
The Shiite leaders, however, like the Ministry of Interior just as it is and "plan to resist any wholesale transformation" of it. Since the insurgency is largely Sunni, the Shiite politicians think what the Ministry is doing to Sunnis is justified. They are just "doing their jobs," says the Shiite Vice President Adil Abul Mahdi. The job of torture, murder and kidnapping-- ultimately paid for by US tax dollars! The reason the new government has two vice presidents, a Sunni and a Shiite, is so they both have a say in the killing of each others followers.
Bayan Jabr, who is finance minister in the new government, headed the Interior Ministry in the old government. He is also a leader of the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq, a right wing Shiite political outfit that runs its own terrorist network--the Badr Brigade. He was, in fact, one of Brigade's commanders. American officials are reported to believe that there are "rogue" elements committing atrocities in the Interior Ministry but think Jabr is more an incompetent than a sinister force-- a "man who lost control of his ministry." Anyway, the point of the Times report is that with all the different militias, private armies of the political parties, "rogue" elements within the government, the army and police infiltrated by the insurgency, etc., there is a clear trend towards chaos on the ground in Iraq.
With respect to the control that the Americans have, it is basically the Green Zone, and outside of the Green Zone-- looming chaos which is daily growing. This is the road towards a colossal political and military defeat for the Bush administration. Even the Marines are now implicated in terrorist activities against Iraqi civilians ("Iraqis' Accounts Link Marines To the Mass Killing of Civilians" New York Times, May 29, 2006). Miysar al-Dulaimi, a human rights lawyer who is part of the investigation of civilian killings by Marines in Haditha on November 19, 2005 is quoted by the Times as saying the situation on the ground is so bad and "People are so scared," that "They have lost confidence in the Americans." This is especially so after the killing rampage in which the Marines reportedly engaged.
The insurgency seems to be growing in intensity as well. Although we keep getting "progress" reports from the Pentagon propaganda machine Mr. Dulaimi told the Times "that outside their bases, the Americans controlled almost nothing." This after over three years of fighjting! With the military run by incompetent politicians and generals, Rumsfeld and Rice have to sneak into Iraq whenever they show up in the Green Zone, its definitely time to bring the troops home now and let the Iraqi's control their own oil and put an end to the farcical "War Against Terrorism."
--Thomas Riggins is the book review editor of Political Affairs and can be reached at pabooks@politicalaffairs.net
By Thomas Riggins
The press reports that the Defense Department itself is calling upon the Pentagon to stop paying Iraqi reporters "to produce positive stories" about what is going on in Iraq and how the Americans are faring. Rear Adm. Scott Van Buskirk, who conducted the investigation for the Defense Department, thinks paying for good press "could damage American credibility." Duh! (New York Times 5/24/06). That story appears on page 19 of the Times.
The really important story that I want to analyze was front page news"-- "In Shadows, Armed Groups Propel Iraq Toward Chaos" by Dexter Filkins reporting from Baghdad. When properly parsed, this story reveals that the war in Iraq is all but over for the US troops. Democracy, however, has not been defeated since it has never existed in this occupied land. What has been defeated is the attempt by the US to set up a government under its control that would be able to police Iraq for the US while we controlled, directly or indirectly, the oil resources. This story reveals that it is only a matter of time before we see the. last US helicopter leaving the Green zone stuffed with our Ambassador, his staff and various Iraqi puppets.
The article opens with a description of the 16th Brigade (1000 men) of the Iraqi Defense Ministry. This brigade was assigned to the Dawra section of Baghdad to guard a section of oil pipeline. There was a death squad inside the brigade that was killing anyone helping or working with the Iraqi government. So the government's own brigade had a unit in it that was killing the government's own supporters. That is all you really need to know to figure out how this war is going to end and why the Pentagon is paying reporters to write nice things about the occupation. But it gets better (or worse as the case maybe).
Filkins indicates that this brigade is not all that unusual. "Indeed," he writes, "the 16th Brigade stands as a model for how freelance government violence has spread far beyond the ranks of the Shiite-backed police force and Interior Ministry to encompass other government ministries, private militias and people in the upper levels of the Shiite government." There is, he says, "a galaxy of armed groups" and they "are accelerating the country's slide into chaos." Meanwhile we have to hear Bush and the generals telling us how all is slowly improving, going as planned, etc. This chaos will eventually consume our forces as well and we should get them out as soon as possible and then toss all the war supporters out of office in the November election.
What about the brand new Iraqi government for which we have such high hopes? Well, with regard to the death squads, rogue government militias, army units secretly supporting the insurgency, etc., one of two vice presidents of Iraq, Adil Abul Mahdi (more about him later) says, "No one knows who is who right now." This sounds like a government on top of the situation. Better stay in the Green Zone for now.
Who are these armed groups, officially not part of the insurgency but on "our" side? According to the article (based on figures from the US Defense Department) they include 145,000 police officers and commandos "who have come under scrutiny for widespread human rights violations" (the US has set such a good example), thousands more of militia and other gunmen both Sunni and Shiite, also the 145,000 Facilities Protection Service, the Badr Brigade, the Iraqi Army, 105,000 (who with the Police "often carry out legitimate missions"), the Mahdi Army (which specializes in "torture, murder, kidnapping and the settling of scores for political parties") and other private groups including "contractors" (mercenaries). Remember these are supposed to be the "good guys."
The new Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki says he is going to "clamp down" and "disarm" the death squads and militias. But this is just talk. The major militias are supported by the major Shiite political parties that run the government. The usual anonymous American official tells Filkins, "I think they have the evidence now as to who is doing most of the killing. Its a question of political will to do what needs to be done. I have just not seen it yet." All this killing and mayhem is going on between the Shiites and Sunnis both independently of and in collusion with the insurgency. Meanwhile the US bumbles around killing innocent civilians and getting its troops killed.
In the Sunni areas of Baghdad Shiite death squads are on a rampage killing young men just because they are Sunnis. Who is doing it? Filkins quotes a human rights activist as saying "It's the Ministry of Interior." He also quotes Tariq al-Hashemi, the new government's Sunni Vice President (there is a Shiite one as well): "You ask me who is doing these things. The police, the militias, the political parties-- we don't know." He wants to purge the Ministry of Interior "saying," Filkins writes, "there are 'thousands' of corrupt and brutal officers who need to fired if the government ever hopes to secure the trust of Iraq's Sunnis." This is the kind of great democracy we are building in the Middle East. It should also be noted that most of the personnel in the Ministry of Interior were trained by the Americans or under their supervision.
The Shiite leaders, however, like the Ministry of Interior just as it is and "plan to resist any wholesale transformation" of it. Since the insurgency is largely Sunni, the Shiite politicians think what the Ministry is doing to Sunnis is justified. They are just "doing their jobs," says the Shiite Vice President Adil Abul Mahdi. The job of torture, murder and kidnapping-- ultimately paid for by US tax dollars! The reason the new government has two vice presidents, a Sunni and a Shiite, is so they both have a say in the killing of each others followers.
Bayan Jabr, who is finance minister in the new government, headed the Interior Ministry in the old government. He is also a leader of the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq, a right wing Shiite political outfit that runs its own terrorist network--the Badr Brigade. He was, in fact, one of Brigade's commanders. American officials are reported to believe that there are "rogue" elements committing atrocities in the Interior Ministry but think Jabr is more an incompetent than a sinister force-- a "man who lost control of his ministry." Anyway, the point of the Times report is that with all the different militias, private armies of the political parties, "rogue" elements within the government, the army and police infiltrated by the insurgency, etc., there is a clear trend towards chaos on the ground in Iraq.
With respect to the control that the Americans have, it is basically the Green Zone, and outside of the Green Zone-- looming chaos which is daily growing. This is the road towards a colossal political and military defeat for the Bush administration. Even the Marines are now implicated in terrorist activities against Iraqi civilians ("Iraqis' Accounts Link Marines To the Mass Killing of Civilians" New York Times, May 29, 2006). Miysar al-Dulaimi, a human rights lawyer who is part of the investigation of civilian killings by Marines in Haditha on November 19, 2005 is quoted by the Times as saying the situation on the ground is so bad and "People are so scared," that "They have lost confidence in the Americans." This is especially so after the killing rampage in which the Marines reportedly engaged.
The insurgency seems to be growing in intensity as well. Although we keep getting "progress" reports from the Pentagon propaganda machine Mr. Dulaimi told the Times "that outside their bases, the Americans controlled almost nothing." This after over three years of fighjting! With the military run by incompetent politicians and generals, Rumsfeld and Rice have to sneak into Iraq whenever they show up in the Green Zone, its definitely time to bring the troops home now and let the Iraqi's control their own oil and put an end to the farcical "War Against Terrorism."
--Thomas Riggins is the book review editor of Political Affairs and can be reached at pabooks@politicalaffairs.net
Friday, June 02, 2006
SLAVOJ ZIZEK AND PERVERSE CHRISTIANITY- BOOK REVIEW
Slavoj Zizek and Perverse Christianity
By Thomas Riggins
In a recent book, The Puppet and the Dwarf: The Perverse Core of Christianity the Slovenian philosopher Slavoj Zizek puts forth the view that Marxists can no longer make a frontal attack on the institutions of imperialism, thus a feint under the cover of Christianity is necessary. Zizek calls himself "a materialist through and through" and believes that Christianity has a "subversive kernel" which can only be demonstrated by a materialist analysis. But he also holds that the relationship is so intimate that "to become a true dialectical materialist, one should go through the Christian experience."
Zizek maintains that for "intelligent Marxists" the most interesting questions are not those about change and development – but about permanence and stability. Why has Christianity persevered from ancient times? We "find it in feudalism, capitalism, socialism..." etc. The clue is to be found in the writings of the Catholic writer G.K. Chesterton who wrote that despite the rigid ethical and moral demands of the Church and its priests, an inhuman "outer ring" it actually protected the masses of people where one would find "the old human life dancing like children and drinking wine like men; for Christianity is the only frame for pagan freedom." Pagan freedom is here another term for joy in living.
This may explain the persistence of Christianity, but why must Marxists have the Christian experience? This is too unrealistic a claim. Do Asian Marxists from non-Christian cultural backgrounds have to convert to Christianity in order to have the "Christian experience" before fully understanding dialectical materialism?
Other religions have also been persistent. Hinduism, for example, is older than Christianity, as is Buddhism, and has adapted to the modern world. Zizek does discuss some of these other religions but is on shaky ground. He seems to think, for instance, that "Bodhisattva" is the name of a person rather than being a title used to describe Mahayana Buddhist deities.
Zizek’s "materialism" or at least his "Marxism" is also all mixed up with categories borrowed from Lacanian psychoanalysis. And here a digression based on W.L. Reese’s work. Jacques Lacan (1901-1981) was a French psychoanalyst who thought the unconscious Id expresses itself in language because it is structured like a language. The Ego should recognize the depth and plurality of meanings of the Id. This is hard to do as the Ego = our personal identity, our conscious self which is only composed of the info allowed through by the Censor. Lacan wants to subvert not strengthen the Ego. The Ego is a mess due to problems in infancy and it is this screwed up infantile Ego, surviving into adulthood, that must be subverted by the usual psychoanalytic methods.
Using this Lacanian world view plus "Marxism," Zizek decides that by using a "perverse" version of Christianity leftists can smuggle in, as it were, progressive ideas and put them into play in our society. Having concluded that Marxism cannot get a hearing in our culture this is really the only way that we can advance the revolutionary cause. Marxists in Christian clothing.
No doubt that because Christianity originated among oppressed national minorities and slaves there are many features of progressive social justice that can be deduced from it. The battle against the Christian right could be more easily waged by showing that its political and social formulations are contrary to Christian teachings and the logic of Christianity.
In this respect Zizek has a point. But it is not necessary for Marxists to go through a Christian moment themselves. By the way, the "puppet" in the book’s title is Christian theology – we will use theology to forward our secular ends – the dwarf will use the puppet.
People interested in philosophy and religion will want to read this book. I have only scratched the surface in this brief article. At the end, Zizek says the point of his book is to show that Christianity at its core reveals the secret of the passion of the Christ (one that Mel Gibson missed).
When Christ dies after asking his Heavenly Father why He has abandoned him, the historical secret is that there is no Heavenly Father. There is no "Other" to judge us. We are responsible. This is the perverse core of Christianity and Zizek takes us on an interesting tour of the history of Western thought to get there. You might not like all of the stops along the way, or even the final destination, but you will enjoy the trip.
--Thomas Riggins is book review editor of Political Affairs and can be reached at pabooks@politicalaffairs.net.
By Thomas Riggins
In a recent book, The Puppet and the Dwarf: The Perverse Core of Christianity the Slovenian philosopher Slavoj Zizek puts forth the view that Marxists can no longer make a frontal attack on the institutions of imperialism, thus a feint under the cover of Christianity is necessary. Zizek calls himself "a materialist through and through" and believes that Christianity has a "subversive kernel" which can only be demonstrated by a materialist analysis. But he also holds that the relationship is so intimate that "to become a true dialectical materialist, one should go through the Christian experience."
Zizek maintains that for "intelligent Marxists" the most interesting questions are not those about change and development – but about permanence and stability. Why has Christianity persevered from ancient times? We "find it in feudalism, capitalism, socialism..." etc. The clue is to be found in the writings of the Catholic writer G.K. Chesterton who wrote that despite the rigid ethical and moral demands of the Church and its priests, an inhuman "outer ring" it actually protected the masses of people where one would find "the old human life dancing like children and drinking wine like men; for Christianity is the only frame for pagan freedom." Pagan freedom is here another term for joy in living.
This may explain the persistence of Christianity, but why must Marxists have the Christian experience? This is too unrealistic a claim. Do Asian Marxists from non-Christian cultural backgrounds have to convert to Christianity in order to have the "Christian experience" before fully understanding dialectical materialism?
Other religions have also been persistent. Hinduism, for example, is older than Christianity, as is Buddhism, and has adapted to the modern world. Zizek does discuss some of these other religions but is on shaky ground. He seems to think, for instance, that "Bodhisattva" is the name of a person rather than being a title used to describe Mahayana Buddhist deities.
Zizek’s "materialism" or at least his "Marxism" is also all mixed up with categories borrowed from Lacanian psychoanalysis. And here a digression based on W.L. Reese’s work. Jacques Lacan (1901-1981) was a French psychoanalyst who thought the unconscious Id expresses itself in language because it is structured like a language. The Ego should recognize the depth and plurality of meanings of the Id. This is hard to do as the Ego = our personal identity, our conscious self which is only composed of the info allowed through by the Censor. Lacan wants to subvert not strengthen the Ego. The Ego is a mess due to problems in infancy and it is this screwed up infantile Ego, surviving into adulthood, that must be subverted by the usual psychoanalytic methods.
Using this Lacanian world view plus "Marxism," Zizek decides that by using a "perverse" version of Christianity leftists can smuggle in, as it were, progressive ideas and put them into play in our society. Having concluded that Marxism cannot get a hearing in our culture this is really the only way that we can advance the revolutionary cause. Marxists in Christian clothing.
No doubt that because Christianity originated among oppressed national minorities and slaves there are many features of progressive social justice that can be deduced from it. The battle against the Christian right could be more easily waged by showing that its political and social formulations are contrary to Christian teachings and the logic of Christianity.
In this respect Zizek has a point. But it is not necessary for Marxists to go through a Christian moment themselves. By the way, the "puppet" in the book’s title is Christian theology – we will use theology to forward our secular ends – the dwarf will use the puppet.
People interested in philosophy and religion will want to read this book. I have only scratched the surface in this brief article. At the end, Zizek says the point of his book is to show that Christianity at its core reveals the secret of the passion of the Christ (one that Mel Gibson missed).
When Christ dies after asking his Heavenly Father why He has abandoned him, the historical secret is that there is no Heavenly Father. There is no "Other" to judge us. We are responsible. This is the perverse core of Christianity and Zizek takes us on an interesting tour of the history of Western thought to get there. You might not like all of the stops along the way, or even the final destination, but you will enjoy the trip.
--Thomas Riggins is book review editor of Political Affairs and can be reached at pabooks@politicalaffairs.net.
Thursday, June 01, 2006
THE COMING ECONOMIC CRISIS
The Coming Economic Crises [Archival Material]
By Thomas Riggins
Recently Louis Uchitelle presented an economic analysis of the US deficit (NYT "Business Day" 9-18-04). Marxists should take note of a possible sudden collapse of the US economy that may well threaten the existence of the international capitalist system.
Uchitelle talked with C. Fred Bergsten, director of the Institute for International Economics, who thinks the deficit is a "disaster in the making."
The deficit results from the trade imbalance whereby we borrow and import more than we sell or lend abroad. The deficit has almost doubled under the Bush administration and now stands at about 4.4 trillion dollars – that’s a big debt.
What’s happening is that we are buying and consuming more goodies than we produce. The extra goodies are coming from China, Japan and other high export countries, and we are getting them on credit since we insist on living in consumer oriented society yet don’t produce the goodies we want ourselves.
Can we pay off the 4.4 (and growing) trillion we have run up? Think of it as a giant credit card debt – a credit card without a spending limit. Bergsten thinks the whole trading system "could unravel abruptly" with the dollar crashing and run away inflation breaking out – in other words, a big crisis.
But capitalism is supposed to have matured beyond the days of crisis – no more 1929s please!
Uchitelle points out that Bergsten’s view is not accepted by everyone at the Institute, Others hold that this is only what Marx would call a tendency. Uchitelle quotes Robert Blecker (American University) who says the deficit spending is "unsustainable" – it can’t keep going – but maybe a crisis can be avoided if "Americans slow their consumption" and other countries stop lending us so much in credit.
But wait a minute! Slowing down our consumption seems like voluntarism. Will we voluntarily give up our goodies to prevent a crisis? Did the capitalists "voluntarily" quit buying on margin in 1929? Not likely.
Here are some speculations about a way out. The Chinese grow their home market so don’t need to sell their products to the US anymore so they don’t sell to us on credit. No credit means faith in the dollar is gone and so down it goes in value making goodies more expensive. Americans have to become self-reliant. But will the "juche principle" really catch on in the US?
Meanwhile, the "global economic status" of the US is getting worse and worse with each passing day. This is how Uchitelle explains it. Other countries now own 40 percent of US Treasury bonds which they bought with the profits they made selling their goodies over here. Treasury bonds put us in debt to the holders.
But there still isn’t enough money to let us fulfill our desires for more goodies – so the government engages in deficit spending – putting more money in circulation so we can buy things. It also has to borrow to spend – so more Treasury bonds are offered and the debt goes up and up.
Not only that, the economies of China and Japan (and the Asian Tigers) are fueled by the American market so they eagerly buy these bonds (over $1.3 trillion held by China and Japan alone) and they strive to keep the dollar up so Americans won’t be tempted to make more of their own goodies.
However, to do this the Asians must "defy market forces" and like Mother Nature, you better not try to fool market forces or you risk the economic equivalent of Hurricane Ivan!
The winds of change are evident in the tendency towards decline in the net income flow (i.e., with all the problems more money still comes in than goes out of the US) it was $64 billion in the last quarter of 2003 but it has currently declined to only $10 billion. If this keeps up a serious crisis may be impossible to avoid.
Bourgeois analysts generally think this can be a chronic unsustainable problem (?) but Marxists who remember the dialectical principle that quantitative changes lead to qualitative changes should not be surprised if the current capitalist globalization enterprise finds itself sharing the dust bin of history with the former USSR.
--Thomas Riggins is book review editor of Political Affairs and can be reached at pabooks@politicalaffairs.net.
By Thomas Riggins
Recently Louis Uchitelle presented an economic analysis of the US deficit (NYT "Business Day" 9-18-04). Marxists should take note of a possible sudden collapse of the US economy that may well threaten the existence of the international capitalist system.
Uchitelle talked with C. Fred Bergsten, director of the Institute for International Economics, who thinks the deficit is a "disaster in the making."
The deficit results from the trade imbalance whereby we borrow and import more than we sell or lend abroad. The deficit has almost doubled under the Bush administration and now stands at about 4.4 trillion dollars – that’s a big debt.
What’s happening is that we are buying and consuming more goodies than we produce. The extra goodies are coming from China, Japan and other high export countries, and we are getting them on credit since we insist on living in consumer oriented society yet don’t produce the goodies we want ourselves.
Can we pay off the 4.4 (and growing) trillion we have run up? Think of it as a giant credit card debt – a credit card without a spending limit. Bergsten thinks the whole trading system "could unravel abruptly" with the dollar crashing and run away inflation breaking out – in other words, a big crisis.
But capitalism is supposed to have matured beyond the days of crisis – no more 1929s please!
Uchitelle points out that Bergsten’s view is not accepted by everyone at the Institute, Others hold that this is only what Marx would call a tendency. Uchitelle quotes Robert Blecker (American University) who says the deficit spending is "unsustainable" – it can’t keep going – but maybe a crisis can be avoided if "Americans slow their consumption" and other countries stop lending us so much in credit.
But wait a minute! Slowing down our consumption seems like voluntarism. Will we voluntarily give up our goodies to prevent a crisis? Did the capitalists "voluntarily" quit buying on margin in 1929? Not likely.
Here are some speculations about a way out. The Chinese grow their home market so don’t need to sell their products to the US anymore so they don’t sell to us on credit. No credit means faith in the dollar is gone and so down it goes in value making goodies more expensive. Americans have to become self-reliant. But will the "juche principle" really catch on in the US?
Meanwhile, the "global economic status" of the US is getting worse and worse with each passing day. This is how Uchitelle explains it. Other countries now own 40 percent of US Treasury bonds which they bought with the profits they made selling their goodies over here. Treasury bonds put us in debt to the holders.
But there still isn’t enough money to let us fulfill our desires for more goodies – so the government engages in deficit spending – putting more money in circulation so we can buy things. It also has to borrow to spend – so more Treasury bonds are offered and the debt goes up and up.
Not only that, the economies of China and Japan (and the Asian Tigers) are fueled by the American market so they eagerly buy these bonds (over $1.3 trillion held by China and Japan alone) and they strive to keep the dollar up so Americans won’t be tempted to make more of their own goodies.
However, to do this the Asians must "defy market forces" and like Mother Nature, you better not try to fool market forces or you risk the economic equivalent of Hurricane Ivan!
The winds of change are evident in the tendency towards decline in the net income flow (i.e., with all the problems more money still comes in than goes out of the US) it was $64 billion in the last quarter of 2003 but it has currently declined to only $10 billion. If this keeps up a serious crisis may be impossible to avoid.
Bourgeois analysts generally think this can be a chronic unsustainable problem (?) but Marxists who remember the dialectical principle that quantitative changes lead to qualitative changes should not be surprised if the current capitalist globalization enterprise finds itself sharing the dust bin of history with the former USSR.
--Thomas Riggins is book review editor of Political Affairs and can be reached at pabooks@politicalaffairs.net.
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