Enough With the (Poisonous) Bullshit

Editor’s Note:(1)

In the essay we reproduce below, Bob Avakian and the revolutionary educators of the RCP, brilliantly dispose of all the ways in which belief in the Illuminati is a dangerous thing for individuals or groups seeking authentic paths to liberation.  The Illuminati is claptrap, insidious claptrap at that,  and it should be treated as such.—PG

The “Illuminati” Is a Myth!

By Bob Avakian, REVCOM.US

Why do we live in such a fucked-up world? Why are decisions so clearly out of the hands of the masses of people? And why do these decisions always run so sharply against the interests of these masses? Why do a few people control enormous amounts of wealth… while many more swim frantically to keep their heads above water… and the vast majority are ground down and chained to a life of misery, no matter what they do? And why are we lied to about all this?

People seek answers to these questions. Urgently. One of the biggest, most widespread answers out there pins all this on a shadowy group called the “Illuminati.” This small but virtually all-powerful group, we are told, is bent on world domination. They have supposedly manipulated and rigged every war, every revolution, every economic or political crisis in accord with a master plan for world domination. There are 57 varieties of this explanation to be found on the Internet, differing in this or that detail and degree, but this is the basic framework you get from them all. (See sidebar for the actual history of the Illuminati.)

These “Illuminati theorists” focus a great deal on manipulation of the banking system. They do not really talk about any problems with the capitalist system apart from that. Almost all of them are either openly or just-below-the-surface anti-Semitic—that is, they focus people’s hatred against what they portray as a cabal of Jewish financial families. They do not talk about the capitalist class as a whole. They string together a lot of facts, pseudo-facts, and lies that they claim to be grounded in deep research—while in reality, these are marshaled to serve a thoroughly unscientific and, indeed,anti-scientific theory. Many connect this to the biblical Book of Revelation, with its lurid visions of apocalypse and mumbo-jumbo talk of Antichrists, to say that this is Satan’s plan; and there are other equally mystical and anti-rational theories advanced in other variants of the theory.

There is only one word to describe these theories: wrong. Actually, there’s another word, too: poisonous. Totally poisonous. These Illuminati theorists point to the wrong problem and the wrong solution. To them, the problem is not capitalism; it is a small group of people who are supposedly controlling and perverting capitalism. To them, the solution is not revolution; it is returning to the “purity” of capitalism (a “purity” which never existed and never can exist and wouldn’t be any good even if it could!). In actual fact, these theories have served as the foundations for reactionary, fascist, and racist movements for over a century.

These theories are not “a little bit right.” Yes, they take advantage of people’s correct sense that the answers to the questions we started this article with are hidden. But that’s just the point—they “take advantage.” They exploit the sense that people have of being lied to and use that to train people in reactionary, backward thinking and mislead them into acting against their own interests. They are no more neutral or harmless than a quack doctor who gives you arsenic for a highly contagious, fatal disease.

Why Do Things Happen?

According to the Illuminati theorists, there is no real logic to history other than these quasi-Satanic forces trying to get domination. Everything you can name—the U.S. Civil War, the Russian Revolution—happened because the Illuminati manipulated it.

Do powerful forces attempt to control events? Yes, they do. But these forces, in this day and age, are political representatives of a class—the capitalist-imperialist class. And they do not have total control. First off, the power of these capitalist-imperialists does not come from Satan—who doesn’t exist in the first place! Nor does it come from “secret knowledge,” numerology, aliens, etc. No, these capitalist-imperialists derive their power from something much more everyday. They own the vast material forces that create wealth in this society—the factories and mines, the agriculture, the means of transportation and communication, the banks and other instruments of finance, and so on. This ownership enables the capitalists to amass wealth through exploiting the labor of those who possess no means of creating wealth—the proletariat—which today numbers billions of people around the world. Exploitation means that the capitalists take what these billions create each day through their labor and pay them in return enough to survive (and sometimes barely that). This exploitation is where they get their profit.

And this capitalist class is the embodiment of the capitalist SYSTEM. As Bob Avakian breaks down in the Revolution Talk,¹ a system is like a game with certain rules. So think of capitalism as a game with three rules:

1. profit comes from exploiting people’s labor—therefore you must exploit to the maximum;
2. if you are a capitalist and you don’t grow bigger, then your competitor will and drive you under—therefore, you must expand or die; and
3. profit over everything—therefore you must plunder the earth and all its inhabitants and subordinate everything to the pursuit of profit.

On the basis of the wealth that they have amassed from exploitation, the capitalist class shapes and controls the official use of force in society (armies, police, prisons, courts) and decision-making (mainly through the executive branch of government, like the presidency). They wield this machinery—the state—to defend and enforce their interests. But because different capitalists have conflicting interests (see rule 2, above), they fight each other for control and advantage—even as they collaborate to keep down the masses.

In today’s world, where capitalism has developed into a global system of imperialism, this takes place on an international scale. They are like gangsters in a turf war, though the scale of their viciousness and destruction far exceeds what any gangster even dreams of. All this—thissystem—leads to horrific, widespread, and totally unnecessary suffering for billions of people. But all this is driven forward by the rules at the heart of the system that demand that the capitalists, in order to survive, exploit the vast majority of people ever more extremely as part of their cutthroat competition with other capitalists.

So what is the root of the problem? Not a tiny band of superhumanly evil beings. Not a small group of Jewish financiers. But a system in which a class of capitalists 1) controls the means of production and exploits the labor of many, 2) on that basis wields tremendous military force to dominate people, and 3) also uses that power to control and shape the media, education systems, etc. to influence and dominate the ways that people think. So long as this is the system, we will face the problems—exploitation of the billions, plunder of the environment, oppressive institutions, and ways that keep that exploitation going—that we face today.

Superhuman Masterminds—Or an Enemy That Is Powerful, but Riddled with Contradiction?

In the Illuminati version of the world, you have masterminds in near-total control of events. In the real world, the one in which we actually live, no one group of capitalists has total control; they fight with each other, and they also fight with the masses, trying to keep them suppressed and, when those masses rebel, trying to put them back into chains. Horrific, destructive wars go on as the concentration of all this. And sometimes, against tremendous odds, the masses break through the madness and make revolution.

No single capitalist or group of capitalists can predict the course of events; they cannot even predict whether this or that business will succeed. They try to, but they face a world of antagonistic forces and unintended consequences. The capitalist-imperialists fight for one reason: to defend, extend and expand their ability to accumulate capital in a world full of uncertainty and chaos. And they MUST fight—they are driven to do so by the “rules of the game.”

This gives rise to huge crises in society, where things seem to unravel. These crises can mean great and even deeper horrors… but they can also contain the openings, if there is leadership and a revolutionary people, to make huge, positive changes—to make revolution.

What Is Really Behind the Lies and Hidden Agendas?

Do these powerful forces—these capitalists—try to hide their real motives and their real interests? Yes… because their interests are against those of the masses of people. Let’s take war. The imperialists will never say that their wars are in the interests of defending and extending an empire which they control. Remember the U.S. war against Iraq? Hundreds of thousands died as a result of that war, and millions of people were violently uprooted. That war was labeled “Operation Iraqi Freedom,” not “Operation Extend and Deepen U.S. Imperial Domination of the Middle East in Order to Edge Out Rivals and Keep the Masses Suppressed.” The capitalist-imperialists will always invent pretexts or excuses for going to war, sometimes with absolutely no basis in reality—and this is true of Iraq, Vietnam, and almost every war you can name—because if they came out with the real reasons, it would incur much more opposition from the masses of people.

People sense this—but here come the Illuminati theorists and their ilk to say that the real motives of these wars were to further enrich “Jewish financial interests,” or to cement control of the so-called “Bilderberg group,” or to bring in one-world government under the United Nations.² No! The real reasons for the wars mentioned above were 1) to impose U.S. domination over rival imperialists (or to risk being edged out or even subordinated by those imperialists)… or 2) to crush liberation struggles of the people in the nations which they have been oppressing, as was the case in Vietnam, or 3) some combination of the first two. But if the imperialists just came out and said that, people would be far less likely to go along with these wars. And if the Illuminati theorists just said that, it would imply that there is something wrong with the system of capitalismand not just the behavior of this or that capitalist or group of capitalists. So think about it—why do the Illuminati theorists invent all kinds of explanations which lead you awayfrom looking at the forces within the system’s functioning? And remember—the “normal” functioning of the capitalist system must mean the untold suffering of billions, and this has been true since its earliest days.

Are we taught the real motive forces of history? No, we are not. We are taught in school that “Abraham Lincoln fought the U.S. Civil War to free the slaves and to realize the true promise of America.” We sense there is more to it than that. So here come the Illuminati theorists once more to say that the Civil War happened as a result of the Rothschilds—again, a family of Jewish bankers in Europe—egging both sides on against each other so that they could take over the U.S. financial system. Oooh, sounds heavy… sounds deep.

Just one problem: this is totally wrong… and dangerously misleading. The Civil War, in fact, arose out of deep contradictions at the very heart and foundation of the capitalist system as it developed in the U.S., namely the enslavement of millions of Africans. The northern capitalists and southern slaveholders waged an extremely bitter and bloody struggle. Why? Because as the northern capitalists grew in strength over the first decades of this country, they increasingly ran up against constraints imposed on their expansion by the southern slave system. They needed to control the whole economy and nation in order to fully consolidate capitalism. The southern slaveholders needed to dig in and not just consolidate slavery but expand its reach and power. All this is shown in some depth in our current series on the U.S. Constitution,³ as well as in Communism and Jeffersonian Democracy⁴ by Bob Avakian and “The Oppression of Black People, the Crimes of This System and the Revolution We Need.”⁵Those two antagonistic claims could finally only be settled by war.

Now, did a lot of capitalists—including banker-capitalists—make huge fortunes, and extend their individual power and influence off the Civil War? Of course! But to claim that was thecause of the Civil War is like saying that umbrella salesmen are the cause of the rain because they make extra money during downpours.

But there’s actually more that this Illuminati theory hides. The northern capitalists, who eventually triumphed, quickly decided NOT to grant the newly free slaves the rights that they had fought for. Instead, they decided that it was more in their class interests to bring back the former slaveholders as “junior partners” and to put the African-American people into a new set of chains as sharecroppers tied to plantations (and convict-laborers—slavery in a new name—to build roads and industry in the South). This fit in with their interests—to politically “stabilize the home base” and extract super-profits from sharecropping agriculture, while they conquered the remaining Native American peoples in the West and prepared to contend as a world power.

This oppression of African-Americans, though going through many changes, has been the red thread running through the whole history of the U.S. and the colonies before it. It continues to be at the heart of U.S. society today. And the further development of this contradiction at the heart of America could still lead to, or certainly be a big part of, a major crisis in U.S. society, on the order of the Civil War, or the 1960s… or even beyond those earth-shaking days of change.

That fact has tremendous implications. It shows the depth of the oppression of the African-American people in this society. It shows the critical importance of the struggle against this oppression in a revolution to actually get free of this capitalist-imperialist madness. It shows how the capitalist-imperialist class in the U.S. has continually been driven to restore and rebuild institutions of white supremacy, even as these institutions go through changes. Understanding the true causes of the Civil War lets people see how there are times when these contradictions can come to a head in such a way so as to plunge all of society into crisis… and open up opportunities for huge and even truly revolutionary change.

But Illuminati theory covers up that understanding. It opposes that understanding. It leads people away from that understanding. According to it, the problem is not the deep-seated white supremacy built into the very heart of this system, which periodically leads to crisis and conflict and, yes, opportunity for radical and even revolutionary change; it is some comic book demon who “just happens” to have a Jewish name. Why do you suppose the Illuminati theorists want people to believe that the whole thing could have been settled were it not for the Jews (or in more “polite versions” some nameless financial capitalists)—instead of showing people the real reasons that go to the roots of the matter, with all the implications for the present and future that we just laid out?

Imperialism and Illuminati Theory… and Why Illuminati Theory HATES Revolution

Some people get taken in because these theorists talk about “big financial groups” and “hidden agendas.” But where do those big financial groups come from and what drives their agendas? Their agendas are nothing but the expansion and extension of their particular bloc of capital or, on the international plane, their home nation. And why did these blocs of finance capital arise? This was actually explained by Lenin, in his analysis of imperialism.

Now this leads to another question: who is Lenin? V.I. Lenin was the person who carried on and carried further Marx’s great insights into the workings of capitalism and the need for revolution. On the basis of these further advances in theory, Lenin led the first great revolution against capitalism in 1917. Lenin led this revolution against tremendous opposition and tremendous odds.

You wanna talk about conspiracies? Okay, how about this one: 14 capitalist powers all banded together to send their armies to crush this revolution. But the masses of people, in a terrible war that cost millions of lives, defeated this counter-revolution and went on to build socialism for four decades. This was a tremendous victory, unparalleled in human history up to that point. There was nothing pre-determined or neat about it.

But not if you listen to the Illuminati-types. According to them, Lenin—who led this incredible and heroic achievement of the masses—was nothing but a tool of… you guessed it… the Jewish financiers, once again… who were supposedly using him to implant total domination by the Illuminati.

Sorry, Illuminati theorists, you’re wrong again—Lenin was a great revolutionary, a great champion for humanity, someone who gave us insight into how the modern world works and what it takes to fundamentally change it, for real. Lenin should be cherished and learned from by everyone who really wants to understand the world and change the world for the better. (And to those of you taken in by this other, lying shit, including those of you in the world of hip-hop who don’t want to go along with the system: maybe you should ask yourselves whatclass interests are served by getting people who are searching for change to hate or at least have a totally false understanding of Lenin… and wake up to the fact that you are being played for something really vile and that your influence is being used to mislead others.⁶ )

To return to the point we started with—what is imperialism—before Lenin led the revolution, he developed a theory that explained several big changes in how capitalism functioned. First, the small, individual capitalists of prior times, through the process of relentless competition that is built into capitalism and “makes it run,” so to speak, had been mainly wiped out. Big monopolies—one or a few capitalists, or blocs of capital, controlling huge industries—arose in their place. Second, banking and industrial capital had merged into “finance capital.” The capitals of what had been different and smaller capitalists were now pooled into huge blocs which shifted capital in and out of different industries, different regions, etc. Third, capital itself began to be exported to the oppressed regions of Asia, Africa, and Latin America. The capitalist states of Europe, North America and Japan began to militarily occupy these countries and fight with each other over “spheres of influence,” to defend the interests of the capitalist-imperialists of their respective countries. This in turn led to wars on a scale never before seen: wars between the imperialists as well as wars of liberation and revolution waged by the oppressed masses. All this meant that capitalism had emerged into a new stage: imperialism.

In addition to the effects briefly outlined above, imperialism also means that the huge blocs of finance capital exert power over the smaller capitalists. Imperialist capital controls credit, they make large decisions about economic priorities and practices that affect these smaller capitalists, etc. These smaller capitalists feed off the imperialist system for their very existence but are also extremely vulnerable to getting wiped out, and resent all this. At the same time, their class interests and position can set them in opposition to the people on the bottom of society—the proletariat, who in many cases they exploit. They can feel “caught in the middle.”⁷

Illuminati theory reflects the position of this class of small capitalists. And this theory can also take root among others “in the middle”—including small business people who employ a few people, professionals and managers, self-employed, etc. This is NOT to say that every person in this class position thinks this way—many do not and many can be and have been won to be allies and partisans of the revolution. But this theory crystallizes and represents the fantasies and aspirations that spontaneously arise out of the social conditions of this class. As a class it can not envision and lead the way to a world without exploitation; it can only dream of a “more level playing field” in which to carry out that exploitation.

There Are No “Good Old Days”—Either We Make a Whole New World or Humanity Remains Stuck in a World of Horrors

The Illuminati theorists want to bring back the “good old days” of early capitalism. Now, you remember the “good old days,” don’t you? The days of slavery… the days of the extermination of the Indians…the days when women had no rights whatsoever… the days of… well, you get the picture. The “good old days of America” were no fucking good in the first place! Yet these are what these people want to bring back! This is why so many of these theoreticians are fixated on the founding of the Federal Reserve Bank in 1913, which was put into place in order to facilitate the abilities of finance capital. These Illuminati theorists are not against capitalism. They’re against the ways that other capitalists—in this case, certain financial interests—hamper them and hold them back, or at least seem to hamper them.

But even if these theories ultimately reflect the position and aspirations of the petty-capitalist class, their influence goes broader into society. And in recent years these kinds of explanations have gained a hearing among the oppressed. Why is this so? For a long time now, a lot of people have been discouraged about the prospects of revolution in the U.S. The defeat of the first socialist revolutions—with counter-revolutions taking place in the Soviet Union in the mid-’50s, and then in China in 1976—has enabled the ruling class to wildly distort and suppress history, to slander revolution, and to proclaim themselves to be all-powerful. The defeat of the heroic struggles of the 1960s within the U.S. has also had a huge effect. In particular, there is the fact that African-Americans were lied to, and lied about. They, along with Latinos, have been targeted by a “war on drugs” that has served as a pretext to institute a new form of Jim Crow, mass incarceration—while all around the official line was that “racism is over, if you can’t make it now it’s because of your own bad choices.” People often feel hopeless—and helpless—in the face of all this.

Illuminati theory reflects part of this reality—the part about people being lied to, about hidden forces with hidden agendas determining the real shape of people’s lives. At the same time, Illuminati theory also represents going along with and reinforcing this ideological offensive against the people. It is NOT in any way, shape or form a way out of it. It slanders and lies about revolution. It spreads contempt for the masses and their ability to change history, especially through revolution. It directs people’s anger against other ethnic groups that have supposedly “made it,” while at the same time accepting that “making it” under capitalism should be people’s highest goal. It spreads lies about and antagonism against communism and science, while it promotes mysticism and religion. How is ANY of that any good? It is NOT—it is poison.

Illuminati theory can seem to reflect a part of reality, but it does so like the fun-house mirrors in a carnival, giving you a distorted view. It does so in the service of a very unreal, very false and extremely reactionary explanation. The ruling class is powerful, but it is not all-powerful; as Bob Avakian (BA) recently has pointed out, “they are powerful, but their system is riddled with contradictions.”⁸ History is not the plaything of a handful of men with secret knowledge; most of all, it is the struggle between contending classes, representing different ways to organize the production of what humans need to live, and different social and political and cultural lives that correspond to those different ways. There never was a golden age to go back to. Humanity will either remain locked in the endless horrors of capitalism-imperialism or go forward to something far better… communism, a society in which people carry out their lives without exploitation or oppression or antagonistic social conflict, a society in which people can rise to their full heights.

So how about instead of trying to go back to “good old days” that never existed and that we should certainly never go back to… how about we go forward? How about we quit getting taken in, or letting others get taken in, by people who worship capitalism and whose ultimate agenda is fascist and white supremacist? How about we call out the bullshit fantasy theories and worse that get people to focus on something other than the REAL source of the problem: capitalism? How about we eliminate the REAL source of the problem, capitalism, and bring in the REAL solution: socialism, as a transition to communism? And how about we promote and build a movement for revolution to bring in that new society, whenever the conditions emerge?

And how about, as a big step toward doing all that, we get with and deeply check out someone who actually has gone deeply into the problem, with REAL science… someone who has put forward a visionary and viable solution… who’s developed a strategy to get there… and who leads a party that is bound and determined to lead millions on that road?

How about we get with BA?

NOTES

1. Revolution: Why It’s Necessary, Why It’s Possible, What It’s All About, a film of a talk by Bob Avakian, revolutiontalk.net. [back]

2. Many also say that the war was waged at the behest of Israel. While Israel certainly supported the war and in some ways benefited from it, they were not the motive force in it. For more on the relation between Israel and the world imperialist system, see the box on anti-Semitism. [back]

3. “The U.S. Constitution and the Constitution for the New Socialist Republic in North America (Draft Proposal): Two Constitutions, Two Different Systems, Two Different Futures for African-American People.” “Part 1: A Slaveholders’ Union,”Revolution #270, May 27, 2012; Part 2: “Reconstruction, and the First Great Betrayal, 1867-1896,” Revolution #271, June 10, 2012; and Part 3: “Battleground Over Segregated Education in the 1950s and 1960s,” Revolution #272, June 17, 2012. [back]

4. Communism and Jeffersonian Democracy, Bob Avakian, RCP Publications, 2008. Also available at revcom.us. [back]

5. The Oppression of Black People, the Crimes of This System and the Revolution We Need,” Revolution #144, October 5, 2008. [back]

6. To learn the true history of the 20th century’s socialist revolutions, see thisiscommunism.org. [back]

7. This used to get expressed when such theorists would say that “there is an international conspiracy of finance capital and communists working together to rule the world.” Despite the fact that imperialism and the communist movement are actually deadly antagonists, from the narrow view of the representative of the small capitalist (who has contradictions with both of these classes, but for diametrically opposed reasons) they seem to be in alliance—against him. [back]

8. “What Humanity Needs: Revolution, and the New Synthesis of Communism,” an interview with Bob Avakian, revcom.us. [back]

9. Special Issue on Israel: “Bastion of Enlightenment… or Enforcer for Imperialism: The Case of ISRAEL,” Revolution #213, October 10, 2010. [back]

Source: Revolution #272, June 17, 2012
_____________

^₍₁₎ See God’s Illuminati

Barry Grey, wsws.org

With the imposition of a state of siege in Boston, a historical threshold has been crossed. For the first time ever, a major American city has been placed under the equivalent of martial law. The already frayed veneer of a stable democracy based on constitutional principles is in shreds.

On Monday, April 15, two bombs exploded near the finish line of the Boston Marathon in the city’s center. Three people were killed and over 170 were injured, some seriously. This was a criminal act with tragic consequences. But violence, including acts of mass homicide and disasters resulting in major loss of life, is a regular feature of American society. Even as the events in Boston were unfolding, a factory explosion in Texas, to all appearances linked to safety hazards, took far more lives than the bombs detonated at the end of the marathon.

There is no precedent for the massive mobilization of military, police and intelligence forces carried out April 19 in Boston and its environs, which encompass more than 1 million people. Thousands of heavily armed police and National Guard troops occupied the streets, backed up by machine gun-mounted armored vehicles, Humvees and Black Hawk helicopters. As the WSWS noted, the scene resembled the US occupation of Baghdad.

The people were told to remain indoors while police, with automatic weapons drawn, conducted warrantless house-to-house searches. Some of those who strayed out of doors were surrounded by police and ordered to go home. The mass transit system was shut down; passenger train service along the northeastern corridor was halted; businesses, universities and other public facilities were closed.

Boston—the cradle of the American Revolution, one of the most liberal cities in one of the most liberal states in the US, the country’s premier center of higher education—was turned into an armed camp. This staggering mobilization of federal, state and local police power was deployed to track down a 19-year-old youth.

So far, there has been no protest from within the political or media establishment to the lockdown.

Following the capture of alleged bomber Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, President Obama issued a late-night statement from the White House in which he stressed the role of his administration in the police-state mobilization, boasting that he had “directed the full resources of the federal government…to increase security as needed.” Ignoring the presumption of innocence, he referred to the captured suspect and his dead brother as “these terrorists.”

Obama’s Justice Department quickly announced that it would not read the suspect his “Miranda right” to remain silent and obtain legal counsel before speaking to police investigators. It would instead question the seriously injured youth “extensively” not just on matters related directly to public safety, but more broadly on “intelligence matters.” This sets a precedent for denying these rights to anyone arrested under antiterrorism statutes, which, under Obama, has already included political dissidents such as Occupy Wall Street and anti-NATO protesters.

Encouraged by the police-military mobilization, Republican senators Lindsey Graham and John McCain and New York Congressman Peter King, all of whom have close ties to the military and intelligence agencies, demanded that Tsarnaev be declared an enemy combatant and turned over to the military.

The events in Boston have laid bare the modus operandi for the establishment of dictatorial forms of rule in the US. One or another violent act carried out by disoriented or disaffected individuals, perhaps with the help of elements within the state, is declared a terrorist event. A state of siege is imposed suspending democratic rights and establishing military-police control.

So deeply implicated are all of the organs of the state in these plans that little in the outer trappings of political life would have to be changed. It would not be necessary to overthrow the president or shut down Congress. These institutions would readily play their assigned role, and the imposition of a military dictatorship would be sanctioned by the US Supreme Court.

The media would simply continue to do what it normally does—functioning as a de facto arm of the state and providing the necessary pretexts, while whipping up the requisite fear and panic within the public.

The very fact that the entire establishment agrees that democratic norms cannot be maintained in the face of violence by a handful of people testifies to the advanced stage of the breakdown of American democracy.

So disproportionate was the scale of the response to the actual level of the threat that the conclusion cannot be avoided that the Boston bombings were the pretext for, not the cause of, the lockdown. The police-state mobilization was the culmination of more than a decade of intensive planning and the ceaseless buildup of the repressive forces of the state since 9/11, carried out under the cover of the “war on terror.”

The operation is not an expression of strength or confidence on the part of the American ruling class. On the contrary, it reflects the near panic of the corporate-financial elite in the face of mounting social discontent, exacerbated by extreme nervousness over the precarious state of global financial markets. What haunts the ruling class is not the fear of a terrorist attack, but dread of a new financial collapse, with the likely consequence of massive social upheavals.

The breakdown of American democracy has profound causes, the first of which is the staggering level of social inequality. Democracy cannot be maintained when the richest 5 percent of the population controls over 60 percent of the wealth. In the moves to police-military dictatorship, the forms of rule are coming into conformance with the underlying social reality of American capitalism.

Another fundamental cause of the crisis of democracy is the eruption of US militarism. The power of the military/intelligence apparatus has grown immensely, particularly since the end of the Soviet Union, as the American ruling class has turned to military aggression as a means of offsetting the decline in its global economic position. The professional military, segregated from society at large and hostile to it, has acquired ever-greater influence over political affairs and civilian authority. As always, imperialist war is incompatible with democracy.

American liberalism as a distinct political tendency has ceased to exist. The lining up of the Democratic Party behind the “war on terror,” and the external aggression and internal repression carried out in its name, has made clear that there is no section of the ruling elite that will defend democratic rights. The Obama administration, which has expanded the right-wing, antidemocratic policies of the Bush administration, is without question the most reactionary in US history.

As always, the filthiest role is played by the media and its leading personnel. From day one, they turned the airwaves into a continual rumor mill, making one unsubstantiated claim after another in an effort to sow fear and panic and justify the police-state measures being taken. They readily agreed to self-censor their reports in accordance with the demands of the police agencies. As CNN anchor Chris Cuomo, son of the former Democratic governor of New York and brother of the state’s current governor, told viewers, “We’ve only been showing the feeds that authorities are comfortable with.”

The media seeks to create an aura of popular support for martial law-type measures. But the initial confusion will give way to mounting disquiet. The abrupt shift in the forms of rule will create opposition in the population, above all in the working class.

The appropriate conclusions need to be drawn. Social inequality and war—the inevitable outcome of capitalism—are incompatible with democracy. One or the other—capitalism or democracy—must go. That is the issue confronting the working class.

Barry Grey is a senior political analyst with the World Socialist Web Site, an information resource of the Social Equality Party. 

anti-war activist, veteran and writer who was paralyzed in the Vietnam War. He is best known as the author of the memoir Born on the Fourth of July, which was made into an Academy Award–winning movie directed by Oliver Stone, with Tom Cruise playing Kovic.^[1]

Kovic received the Golden Globe Award for Best Screenplay on January 20, 1990, exactly 22 years to the day that he was wounded in Vietnam. Ron Kovic was also nominated for an Academy Award for best screen play.^[2] Bruce Springsteen wrote the song “Shut Out The Light” after reading Kovic’s memoir and then meeting him. Tom Paxton, the folk singer/political activist, wrote the song “Born on the Fourth of July”, which is on his “New Songs from the Briarpatch” album. Academy Award winning actress Jane Fonda has stated that Ron Kovic’s story was the inspiration for her film Coming Home. (Source: Wikipedia)

Mr. Kovic contributed this letter for the American people to the MY HERO website on Sept. 14, 2001.

Dear Friends,

Kovic thanking Tom Cruise for his moving portrayal in Born on the 4th of July.

With love and a sincere hope for peace!

Ron Kovic

___________

 addendum

NEW INTRODUCTION TO
BORN ON THE 4th OF JULY
re-released by Akashic Books

Cruise as Kovic

I had been beaten by the police and arrested twelve times for protesting the war, and I had spent many nights in jail in my wheelchair. I had been called a Communist and a traitor, simply for trying to tell the truth about what had happened in that war, but I refused to be intimidated. I loved the night and I would write for hours as if no time had passed at all. I was exhausted and my back ached, but none of that seemed to matter. I felt wonderful inside, tired but completely consumed by my writing.

I dictated the very first page of the first chapter to my friend Roger at the Chateau Marmont Hotel in Hollywood, and the remainder of the chapter up in Mendocino where he and Mary were living at the time. I had driven all the way up in a used car I had just bought in L.A. and later abandoned in their driveway. It was deep in the woods, quiet and peaceful, so very different from the war and the hospitals and all that I had been through. The air was fresh and there was a pond behind their cottage where I dictated to Roger, and I remember feeling exhausted as he held me in his arms and I began to cry in the midst of all that stillness. It was a painful but beautiful birth.

The murderous and mendacious policies followed by the US Government since 9/11, magnified since the start of the Iraq/Afghan wars, makes Ron Kovic’s words prescient. But, at the official level, or even at the public level, has anyone learned any lessons?

The paraplegics, amputees, burn victims, the blinded and maimed, shocked and stunned, brain damaged and psychologically stressed, now fill our veterans hospitals. Most of them were not even born when I came home wounded to the Bronx V.A. in 1968. The same lifesaving medical-evacuation procedures that kept me alive in Vietnam are bringing home a whole new generation of severely maimed from Iraq.

Instead of being intimidated or frightened, many of us became more outraged and more determined than ever to stop these ignorant, arrogant men and women who never saw the things we saw, never had to grieve over the loss of their bodies or the bodies of their sons and daughters, never had to watch as so many friends and fellow veterans were destroyed by alcoholism and drugs, homelessness, imprisonment, neglect and rejection, torture, abandonment and betrayal, in the painful aftermath of the war. These leaders have never experienced the tears, the dread and rage, the feeling that there is no God, no country, nothing but the wound, the horrifying memories, the shock, the guilt, the shame, the terrible injustice that took the lives of more than 58,000 Americans and over two million Vietnamese.

We had to act. We had to speak.

I am no longer the 28-year-old man, six years returned from the war in Vietnam, who sat behind that typewriter in Santa Monica in the fall of 1974. I am nearly 60 now. My hair and beard are almost completely white. The nightmares and anxiety attacks have all but disappeared, but I still do not sleep well at night. I toss and turn in increasing physical pain. But I remain very positive and optimistic. I am still determined to rise above all of this. I know my pain and the horrors of my past will always be with me, but perhaps not with the same force and fury of those early years after the war.

I have learned to forgive my enemies and forgive myself. It has been very difficult to heal from the war while living in America, and I have often dreamed of moving to neutral ground, another country. Yet I have somehow made a certain peace, even in a nation that so often still seems to believe in war and the use of violence as a solution to its problems. There has been a reckoning, a renewal. The scar will always be there, a living reminder of that war, but it has also become something beautiful now, something of faith and hope and love.

I have been given an opportunity to move through that dark night of the soul to a new shore, to gain an understanding, a knowledge, an entirely different vision. I now believe I have suffered for a reason, and in many ways I have found that reason in my commitment to peace and nonviolence. My life has been a blessing in disguise, even with the pain and great difficulty that my physical disability continues to bring. It is a blessing to be able to speak on behalf of peace, to be able to reach such a great number of people.

Ron Kovic
Redondo Beach, California
March 2005

The Rot Within

by ANDREW LEVINE

 
The Clintons practically incarnate the corruption of the Democrats.

PATRICE GREANVILLE
(NOTE: This essay was originally published on CYRANO’S JOURNAL’s premier issue, print edition, 1982. Unfortunately none of its major criticisms have become obsolete, so the piece remains painfully relevant three decades later). 

[POF] Capitalism = human nature

This propaganda equation is one of the oldest and most effective ideological weapons utilized in defense of capitalism. It pays off handsomely in a number of important ways. First, if capitalism is congruent with “human nature,” then the capitalist system must be the most “natural” and “logical” form of social organization, as people will have a built-in tendency to observe its basic rules. Second, “human nature,” as defined in bourgeois terms (which the press of course follows) is characterized by two significant traits: immutability and unalterable egoism.

The first “fact” automatically discourages most efforts at seriously reforming, let alone revolutionizing, society. Why should anyone bother if in the end the stubborn intractability of human nature will render all schemes for change and improvement of social conditions worthless and utopian? It’s evident that when sufficient numbers of people are made to believe that an eternal, immutable and invincible “human nature” will time and again scuttle the best-laid plans and the costliest sacrifices for change, then most threats to the status quo will be defanged at the outset.

The second “fact,” addressing the supposed individualistic nature of people, provides a convenient justification for the harsh, dog-eat-dog conditions that prevail under the so-called free-enterprise system. In this vision, all human motivation is supposed to flow from the desire for pecuniary gain and self-aggrandisement. Individuals are perceived uni-dimensionally as simple atoms of unrelenting hedonism, constantly pursuing the calculus of profit and loss, pain and pleasure, as they irrepressibly “maximize” their options to fulfill the dictates of hopelessly greedy natures. This is the fabled “homo economicus” of free market literature; the heroic “rugged individualist” so dear to conservatives, and supposedly the creature on which all human progress and wealth depend. But why do the media–and especially the wilier corporate apologists– embrace this tack with so much fervor? As suggested above, the very possibility of changing things is a highly contested ideological area. Radicals argue that society can and should be drastically changed. Conservatives (and the media, which incorporates the mildly reformist liberal viewpoint) contend that nothing basic can or should be changed because our behavior is rooted in an unchanging human nature true for all epochs, systems, and states of human evolution, and, besides, the system is quite sound as it is. History, however, when properly read, is not very kind to conservative social science. As economists E.K. Hunt and Howard Sherman have pointed out, “human nature” seems quite adept at changing to reflect each new set of prevailing social circumstances.

Thus, “it’s no coincidence that the dominant view or ideology under slavery supports slavery; that under serfdom [it] supports serfdom; and that under capitalism [it] supports capitalism. (…) Since our ideology is determined by our social environment, radical economists contend that a change in our socioeconomic structure will eventually change the dominant ideology. Before the Civil War most Southerners (including their social scientists and religious leaders) believed firmly that slavery, an essentially pre-capitalist, agricultural system, was natural and good; but after 100 years of dominance by capitalist socioeconomic institutions, most Southerners (including their social scientists and religious ministers) now declare that capitalism is “natural and good”. So the dominant ideas of any epoch are not determined by “human nature” but by socioeconomic relations and can be changed by changes in these underlying relationships. There is thus hope for a completely new and better society with new and better views by most people.” (F.K. Hunt and Howard J. Sherman, Economics, Harper & Row, 1978, p. xxviii.)

Further, if “human nature” is inherently greedy, competitive and egoist, how do we explain altruism, sharing, selflessness and social cooperation, which can be readily observed to this day in many human institutions and societies throughout the world? It should be borne in mind that class-divided societies and private property made their appearance barely 10,000 years ago, roughly congruent with the rise of agriculture, food surpluses, sedentarism and animal-domestication, while the bulk of our time on earth as a species has been spent under tribal or primitive communitarianism which stressed familial bonds and a sharing of the commonwealth. Question for our pro-capitalist theoreticians: Did native Americans have a human nature?

[POF] Capitalism = Americanness, loyalty to the United States, “the American Way of Life,” etc.

This is the second major fraudulent equation in the conservative arsenal, and one that, as its predecessor, has been deliberately injected into the American political consciousness by the system’s mind managers. Noam Chomsky, Michael Parenti, among other leading political scientists, have amply documented that such notions do not materialize out of thin air, that they are deliberately manufactured.

Great political benefits can be reaped from this sleazy piece of political legerdemain. For by successfully equating loyalty to capitalism with loyalty to the motherland, the ruling orders can more easily whip up support and legitimacy for policies which chiefly safeguard their interests.The ploy has been particularly effective in the area of foreign policy (see below) where the global interests of American business and the native plutocracy have been sold to the public as those of the nation. This has often served to silence and isolate critics, who have been thus conveniently smeared with the brush of disloyalty, suspicion or even treason. In extreme cases, homespun dissidents have been carted away under charges of “sedition,” “intent to subvert the political system of the United States,” and similarly dubious statutes. There is little doubt that the American ruling class has carried the art of mass deception to truly unprecedented heights. No other western nation would have the audacity of requiring loyalty to capitalism–however camouflaged–as a prerequisite for good citizenship. Only in a nation where political illiteracy is high, and kept that way artificially by the powers that be, can such a fraud be propagated without too much challenge. Indeed, why should a historically transient system such as capitalism be equated with the more enduring essence of the nation, itself an extraordinarily elusive concept?

Questions for capitalism’s apologists: Will Americans be less “American” it they choose for themselves another social system? For that matter, were Russians certifiably less “Russian” after their October Revolution? Did the French revolution deny the French some of their precious “Frenchiness”? Are pro-Castro Cubans demonstrably “less” Cuban than those living in exile?

[POF] “Capitalism and economic freedom are inseparable from political freedom and democracy, indeed their historical guarantors.”

This claim, so readily bandied about by the media and capitalism’s apologists, can also be shown to be a sham. First, as the tragic situation in the Third World illustrates, capitalism simply thrives in many lands where democracy and the most elementary human and labor rights have been ruthlessly stamped out. In fact, in country after country where human rights have been brutally liquidated private investment is on the rise, and so is the support of’ the American government. The murderous repression of labor leaders, peasants, students, priests and anyone foolhardy enough to speak for the disenfranchised appears to be necessary to “improve the investment climate,” as it is clinically put by our diplomats, journalists and peripatetic businessmen. What is the reality admitted even in the American media? On December 1979, Juan de Onis, the New York Times correspondent in Buenos Aires filed the following report under this headline:

“ARGENTINE POLICIES PLEASE U.S. BUSINESS. Regime, Under fire for Repression, Is Acclaimed by Chamber of Commerce for Restoring Law and Order.”

The piece, a rare occurrence in the Times, goes on to explain that, “(A)s in Iran under the Shah, American business generally supports the authoritarian military regime in Argentina, which has violently repressed leftists and welcomed foreign investors.” Glossing over the thorny question of why Argentina’s conditions give rise to civilian sectors desperate enough to back up armed insurrection against the Army, a nearly suicidal choice in almost any country, de Onis proceeds to inform the reader that, “David Rockefeller, the banker, visited Argentina recently to give his support to the program of the Minister of the Economy, Jose Alfredo Martinez de Hoz. In the closing paragraphs we find that “United States investors are not deterred by the controversv over human rights. The Chamber of Commerce, led by Arthur Perry, a mining promoter, and Stanley Brons, a lawyer specializing in investment law, has conducted a campaign designed to emphasize achievements in law and order by the military regime, which crushed an armed subversive movement of left-wing Peronists and Marxists. In the Chamber’s view, publicity given to thousands of cases of people who disappeared after being arrested or kidnapped by security forces is part of an international campaign to weaken a Government that is doing what they believe is best for Argentina.”

We have used italics to underscore the totally unsympathetic and incompassionate manner in which de Onis describes the military’s victims. Is it an accident that he touches several bases likely to elicit a negative reaction in the thoroughly conditioned American reader? “Subversive,” “left-wing,” “Marxist,” “armed insurrection,” these are not exactly endearing terms in the American lexicon, despite the fact that every fourth of July the American nation loudly celebrates its own “armed insurrection.” When reinforced by a total lack of historical context, as it happens in this piece, the effect can only be to lead the reader to unwarranted assumptions. Here, the probable thought is: “They (the guerrillas) just got what they deserved.” This doesn’t hurt the image of the Argentinian junta, but it is a complete falsification and oversimplification of the hard and complex Argentinian struggle.

But what happened to the vaunted “inseparability” of economic freedom and political freedom? The fact is it never existed. “Economic freedom” has been sold in the U.S. as “inseparable from” and “indispensable to” political freedom and democracy because in that manner big business can better protect itself from the popular opinion. This is a high-handed lie worthy of Goebbels. “Economic freedom” is merely a felicitous euphemism of modern coinage for the market freedom of entrepreneurs, speculators and big property owners to do as they please, while the state piously withdraws to the minimalist function of’ “maintaining order, protecting private property, and enforcing contracts,” which is quite fine as far its the “haves” are concerned.

“Economic freedom ” and “political freedom”–at least in the historical epoch of capitalism–are neither inseparable nor indispensable to each other. Indeed, left to their own devices, they tend to move in profoundly antithetical directions. Real political and economic democracy represents a threat to concentrated economic and political power; the interests of the average working citizen simply do not jibe with those of the average oligarch. No amount of’ propaganda can deny that basic truth.

[POF/D,S,Di,Dn,Ah] “Capitalism is the most efficient, rational, and productive system of economic organization.”

The immense superiority of the free market over socialist planning is simply taken for granted by the American media. Socialist countries are routinely depicted as economically backward, problem-ridden, and filled with dour-faced citizens eager to defect to the marvelous West. Images of consumer penury are frequently trotted out, while the corresponding historical contexts, which go a long way to explain these scarcities, are carefully expunged. Who hasn’t seen photos of barren socialist stores, their empty shelves an eloquent testimony to that system’s putative incapacity to “deliver the goods”‘?

Comparisons between capitalism and socialism are by definition a complex and slippery matter, informed to say the least, by divergent values. It is therefore not surprising to find that the topic presents rich opportunities for propagandistic manipulation. The following parameters require attention. For example, the “traditional” failure of Soviet agriculture and Russia’s desire for western technology serve here as prima facie proof of socialism’s unreliable and disappointing performance. Yet several factors are routinely left out or insufficiently noted. Take geography, for instance. Russia is three times the size of the continental U.S., but its topsoil is of much inferior quality, and the arable land scarcely one-third the size of America’s, a situation compounded by far less mechanization than in the U.S., the result of a far less mature industrial base, and frequent dislocations caused by war and isolation.

These circumstances are apparently not worthy of mention when shouting about the “failure of communist agriculture.” (What about the horrendous failure of agriculture in the underdeveloped capitalist countries?) Then there are grave omissions concerning history. As the capitalist press burrows deep to unearth every possible problem–real or imagined–afflicting the new nations, they systematically fail to mention the incredible burden of poverty and backwardness (“underdevelopment”) which the new regimes inherited from the deposed old order–an unholy mixture of superexploitative capitalism, feudalism and colonialism supported to the bitter end by American power.

Further, it is rarely mentioned that the very real hostility of the encircling feudal-capitalist powers has often meant tremendous internal dislocations in the countries attempting to construct socialism, even mildly progressive structures (Cf. Guatemala, 1954-5; Chile, 1973, El Salvador in the 1970s/80s, etc.). Russia herself provides the classical example. By mid-1918, less than a year after the seizure of power by the revolutionists, it was evident that an alliance between the major western powers and the native whiteguard counter-revolutionaries was seeking ways to overthrow the new regime.

Eventually, expeditionary forces from Great Britain, France, Japan, the U.S., and later Poland, made their way to Russian shores, and without even bothering to declare war, proceeded to intervene in that country’s civil war. American troops stayed on in Vladivostok until 1923, and the U. S. government refused diplomatic recognition until 1933, almost a decade after the rest of the other western powers had come to terms with the new reality. Cuba and Nicaragua provide more recent examples of all-out capitalist hostility and strategic economic and political warfare. The former has been the target of well-documented maneuvers to strangle its economy including a still-standing blockade; overt attempts at overthrow through military intervention and constant harassment by CIA-financed counter-revolutionary bands in and outside the country.

This policy against Cuba–the product not only of American inveterate anti-communist reflexes, but of allowing US foreign policy to be hijacked by a Frankenstein of their own creation, the rabidly reactionary Cuban exile lobby, has resulted in extraordinary dislocations in the Cuban economy, including a huge amount of money and manpower diverted to defense, serious problems in the healthy development of critical institutions, and a rather problematic dependence on the Soviet Union for sheer survival. For her part, Sandinista Nicaragua is confronted with similarly grave dislocations as the U.S. and its corrupt allies in the region openly threaten “destabilization,” while waging internal sabotage and even open war to keep her and the rest of Central America in the imperial fold. As usual, Nicaragua’s example might spread. It should be noted that capitalism itself never had to confront comparable enemies during its gradual development. First, because in its infancy technological capabilities did not permit rapid and devastating interventions by the feudal powers. Second, because the values of Capitalism were not, after all, so dramatically different from the ancien regime’s, and hence did not require the mammoth social and personal transformations necessitated by the socialist revolutions.

Feudalism and capitalism thought private property and its accompanying gross class and economic inequalities ”normal” and just, even though the justifications and the rhetoric differed at points. Both held surprisingly similar visions of human nature, philosophy, the march of history and other subjects. That is why–among other things–bourgeois revolutions failed to enfranchise all citizens, failed to liquidate the social roots of injustice. Moreover, capitalism took several centuries to reach the stage of institutional maturity where distinctly progressive fruits could be observed, and the capitalist record is still quite contradictory in many regions of the world where the economy is continually buffeted by recessions, high inflation, corruption and high unemployment. In fact, the U.S. itself, the citadel of world capitalism, is also a land of pervasive crime and corruption; of huge inequalities in economic and political power, (where poverty had to be “rediscovered,” however grudgingly, in the 1960s), and where tens of millions lack essentiall medical insurance, and where, on any given day, up to 18% of the population spend their lifetimes struggling against under- employment and unemployement, not to mention job and social insecurity in older age.

Of course, these blemishes, having been long ago imputed to the “inevitable” order of things do not provoke the kind of furor reserved for socialist experiments. In the midst of all the chaos and complexities involved in a thorough overhauling of social institutions, constantly besieged by enemies within and without, these hitherto backward countries are supposed to produce overnight perfect societies, with the kinds of economic goods and political graces that would satisfy the most exquisite sensibilities of critics in the capitalist metropolises. The media are thus happy to compare the market system performance with the harsh conditions of the past, or with that of half-asphyxiated socialist models–both of which, as in a game of crooked crapshoot, guarantee a flattering outcome. But what they will not do is to measure the US economy, for example, against its own potential under a much more egalitarian distribution of socioeconomic power.

4A. [S] Capitalism’s actual performance in the Third World.

BUT, even if we assume for a moment that all is well in the industrialized capitalist core (the U.S., Japan Western Europe, where unemployment and underemployment continue to defy solution), how do we explain the fact that the so-called Third World–the capitalist “periphery”–remains perversely bogged down in massive poverty, despair and political repression? Is it not capitalist enough? In reality, a reality the media carefully avoid or deny, this sorry state of affairs flows directly from capitalism’s inherent nature as a profoundly inequitable, class-divided system in which most power and wealth are hoarded at the top.

Perhaps inevitably, the same class division that afflicts the capitalist nation pervades the society of capitalist nations. The result is two sets of nations: the rich and the poor, with the latter greatly impeded in their development by lack of technology and political, cultural, and economic dependency or “colonization,” now assured by a “neocolonial” relationship that perpetuates unfair terms of trade between the two spheres. As the American media look away from this embarrasing picture, two stratagems are used to cushion whatever bad p.r. might manage to bubble up to the surface.

First–and simplest–is to avert the eyes from anything genuinely positive and encouraging taking place in the socialist world. Thus few Americans are aware that Cuba–despite unrelenting pressure from the world’s pre-eminent superpower–has managed to stamp out widespread illiteracy and malnutrition; childhood and adult prostitution (although these days, due to prolonged scarcities induced by the blockade, some women choose to prostitute themselves to complement their normal income. –eds), high infant mortality (it is ahead of the U.S.), rampant political corruption and repression, and dramatically reduced all forms of crime–from petty hooliganism and thievery to the organized variety, while offering its citizens guaranteed employment, free medical care and education at all levels, and the best income and wealth distribution in the hemisphere, certified by the OAS and UNO, not exactly socialists shills.

These impressive facts are simply not sufficiently “newsworthy” to most American editors. The second trick in the media book is to concentrate attention on GNP growth and the adoption of capitalist models of development (about which more later), trotting out, from time to time, the “economic miracles” that have supposedly taken place in Brazil, South Korea, Singapore, Taiwan, Hong Kong, and other capitalist showcases. Leaving aside for a moment the crucial fact that these “success stories” frequently have a pretty shabby underside of political repression and superexploitation, it should be noted that the bottom line is a notoriously inadequate indicator of economic conditions for the majority.

GNP figures, as normally peddled by American journalists, rarely shed light on a crucial aspect of economic performance: the manner in which the national income and wealth are distributed among different sectors of the population, and whether or not the goods and services produced are allocated to internal consumption or export.

As it turns out, while Brazil, for example, has indeed expanded its GNP, it has also concentrated a greater portion of the national wealth among a tiny minority at the top and most of its output is earmarked for exportation. The result: a larger GNP coupled with greater unemployment and misery among the masses, a fact amply documented by a recent UNO report on the Southern Cone countries (Chile, Brazil, Argentina, Uruguay), and a variety of reports published by none other than the Catholic Church’s office of social affairs.

4B. [IS] The best possible product?

While the system’s propagandists argue that the market system can and will give the consumer as good a product as the state of the art will allow, an essential contradiction of capitalist production is niftily overlooked. The consumers want, by and large, the best, longer-lasting product their money can buy. For instance, they may want to see razor blades capable of lasting 1,000 shaves or more; or cars which do not begin to self-destruct before they are fully paid off. The catch-22 is that the capitalist producer has something else in mind. The capitalist is in business not to meet society’s needs and maximize the “end use” of his products but simply to make as much money as possible. As the CEO of US Steel once proclaimed to an approving audience of shareholders, “We’re not in the business of making steel; we’re in the business of making profits.” (Since these frank words were spoken, US Steel has gone on to morph itself into an entirely different kind of company, with steel now only a relatively minor part of the portfolio of assets, all under the name of a new conglomerate rubric, the USX corporation. “In October 2001, USX Corporation shareholders voted to adopt a plan of reorganization.  The plan resulted in the tax-free spin-off of the steel and steel-related businesses of USX into a freestanding, publicly traded company known as United States Steel Corporation — the name of the corporation when it was established a century earlier. The remaining energy businesses of USX became Marathon Oil Corporation.”--eds.)

Thus, in his pursuit of maximum profits, the businessman will promote, as much as circumstances will permit (i. e., consumer knowledge, brand loyalty, competition, government oversight) a product that will insure the highest possible frequency of purchase. The two sides have therefore incompatible agendas. In a capitalist economy, however, the final decision of what to produce, and how, is left to the commercial corporation. Hence, under monopoly conditions, the “better,” “longer-lasting” features of products will be more often than not quietly scuttled. Indeed, as GM itself helped pioneer, at times it is necessary to inject “built-in” obsolescence in order to energize demand. It follows that if the capitalists, as a class, are not too sanguine about the introduction of genuinely better, longer-lasting products, they will not be too eager either to finance or introduce technologies that make these very products possible. (The world’s costly addiction to petroleum is a prominent example of this, but far from the only one. Humankind could have moved to pocket-friendly, environment-friendly non-petroleum sources of energy a long time ago but the industry’s clout has blocked any real moves in that direction.)

The upshot is a very erratic rate of technological innovation and one which is once again left entirely to the whims of profit maximization instead of social and ecological benefit.

4C. [Dn, S] Automation vs. jobs

This is a hugely important topic, and one that holds major clues to the supposed “riddle” of job creation and destruction, in other words, the actual level of employment we find in any society.

Despite the social and historical importance of this topic, the formidable American media continue to cover it for the most part inadequately. The typical treatment is an article that while dwelling on the various aspects that surround the introduction of a new, labor-saving technology, including the resistance and suspicion so often manifested by workers, fails miserably to make the essential connection: that automation need only cause unemployment and social strife under capitalism.

We should recall that machines were invented by humanity for three essential reasons: to liberate mankind from unnecessary, back-breaking toil; to increase social leisure; and to increase the quality and quantity of production (thus permitting improved social consumption). As a rule, however, the introduction of labor-saving devices under capitalism has curious, it not utterly perverse, repercussions.

Consider a new machine destined for shoe-manufacturing. Working with the old technology and a workforce of 100, Super-Capitalist Shoes, Inc. turns out 10,000 pairs of shoes per month. Now enter a new generation of machines. The firm in our example decides to purchase two new totally automatic machines that will increase production to 100,000 pairs, a tenfold increase in output, but will utilize only 60 workers, thereby laying off 40% of its labor force. Here we have a typical capitalist “contradiction.” On the one hand we have a much larger output and higher incomes for the few, chiefly connected with the private ownership and administration of the firm (and the machines). On the other we have unemployment and lowered consumption for the many, chiefly the workers’ side. And therefore less leisure time for the majority, unless we are prepared to call unemployment a form of holiday.

For society as a whole the contradiction may bode equally ill. For as automation spreads through the economy, more and more workers may be knocked out of the job market permanently or semi-permanently, depressing consumption precisely as more goods are being turned out! For, under capitalism, a fast rate of technological change and aggressive investment in labor-saving machines may actually help trigger recessions. (Question for capitalist purists: What would the corporate overseers do without socialistoid ideas such as unemployment insurance, federal retraining programs, income maintenance programs and other “built-in economic stabilizers?”) And by the way, keep this little fact in mind: No amount of retraining will guarantee a worker a job if the rate of job creation starts falling too far behind population growth.

4D. [Dn, Ah] Whose fruit? Capitalism’s or modern industrialism’s?

The rise of the capitalist mode of production is intimately linked to the spread of the industrial revolution and the modern methods of socialized production, but the time may have come to try to separate the fruits of each. Capitalism’s defenders are understandably eager to credit capitalism as the major, it not exclusive reason for today’s affluence, wherever it may be found. Accordingly they have fetishistically invested private property with magic qualities it doesn’t possess. Their position may be boiled down to the notion that society’s optimal use of resources can only be secured through the subjection of science and industrialism to the regime of private property. In their eyes, entrepreneurial self-seeking is the best engine for invention, exertion, and abundance. While this may be true of some very specific cases, it is hardly true with respect to the modern mega-corporation, wherein private ownership is retained by a relatively small circle of speculators or absentee owners generations removed from the actual day to day management and production. In fact, it is obvious that a modern factory or a plot of land can be put to work to maximum benefit under either private or collective ownership, as long as the proper inputs and techniques are observed. Further, it may be argued that precisely under private ownership many resources are wasted or lie idle, since production is only entertained if it promises profits.

4E. [Di, Dn] Selling us the rationality and efficiency of “Free Enterprise”

The American media have never given up singing the praises of the market system’s vaunted “efficiency,” its “democratic nature” (due, it is argued, to the notion of “consumer sovereignty” or “marketplace balloting”) and, above all, rationality. Despite an economy in which corporate giants such as GM, Ford, U.S. Steel, prominent banks and other Fortune 500 firms routinely post losses totalling billions of dollars (Chrysler necessitated a huge government bailout that continues to this date), the carefully-cultivated myth of private enterprise efficiency and superiority over public enterprise dies hard.

Three areas must be de-emphasized to accomplish this feat. First, the eyes must be averted from capitalism’s chronic underemployment, misemployment, and unemployment of human and capital resources (workers, land, machines, etc.) as this represents a total waste to society estimated by even mainstream economists at hundreds of billions of dollars per year, not to mention the unquantifiable suffering inflicted on people who must get by with totally inadequate incomes.

Second, the decision to allow the profit motive to control society’s production choices in quality, quantity and composition of output introduces further waste through the squandering of resources in luxury, frivolous, or “unnecessary” goods; entire categories of “throwaway” products designed ostensibly for consumer convenience (i.e. cheap cameras); or simply questionable production inherent in capitalism, such as, the paper spent every year on socially useless [and environmentally deleterious] advertising campaigns, glossy fashion magazines, catalogs, etc.

Third, there is a whole host of “social inefficiencies” or “externalities” inherent in the operation of a capitalist economy that go beyond the mere pollution of the air, land, and waterways. Capitalism’s selfish ethic and infamous rat race literally pollute people’s lives and decompose the social fabric which ought to hold the community together. Indeed, the colossal crime, mental health, and unemployment problems that plague the U.S. demand substantial social outlays everywhere for their mere control, let alone eradication. (Consider for a moment what the U.S. spends annually on prisons, rehabilitation, psychiatric counselling, courts, law-enforcement and welfare! These social costs, by the way, are counted in the GNP as “positive” gains). In fact, with alienation and mental dislocation running exceedingly high, the US easily outstrips all other industrialized nations in the incidence of serial and mass killings.

Lastly we can argue that there is also a very real, not merely metaphorical, waste of life–the average worker-consumer’s life, that is–as a result of deliberately shoddy products, monopolistic prices, and built-in obsolescence, all of which force people to work two, three or more times than necessary for the same standard of living. The lives and money wasted, the fear and alienation, the sense of powerlessness and constant insecurity that characterize a normal existence for a very large segment of the population–these are all hidden, unacknowledged, social taxes that we all pay for the privilege of living under capitalism.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Patrice Greanville is The Greanville Post’s editor in chief. He also serves as Cyrano’s Journal Today’s publisher, which he founded in 1982. He has advanced degrees in science and economics, and is (just to prove he knows the beast from within) a graduate of the Columbia University School of Journalism.