How the CIA Created the EU

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Eric Zuesse

Jean Monnet on TIME's cover. US media are always ready to flatter figures the empire needs to enlist. (Oct 6, 1961)

The details are supplied in an exhaustive 1,000-page biography of Jean Monnet by Éric Roussel, which was published only in France in 1996, and which seems to have been successfully suppressed. It has never been translated, and has no reviews even at Amazon. However, Ambrose Evans-Pritchard of UK’s Telegraph newspaper has provided some of the core information from it. Furthermore, Richard J. Aldrich’s 2003 The Hidden Hand also provides key details, such as by Aldrich’s saying, on page 366, about the American Committee for a United Europe:

ACUE, more than any other American front organization of the Cold War, was a direct creature of the leading lights of the CIA. Indeed, it was so replete with famous CIA figures that its ‘front’ was very thin. Its early years seemed to have formed something of a laboratory for figures such as [Bill] Donovan, [Allen] Dulles, [Walter] Bedell Smith and [Tom] Braden, before they moved on to other projects in the mid-1950s. Over its first three years of operations, 1949-51, ACUE received $384,650, the majority being dispersed to Europe. This was a large sum, but from 1952 ACUE began to spend such sums annually. The total budget for the period 1949-60 amounted to approximately $4 million. As the quantity of money flowing across the Atlantic began to increase, ACUE opened a local Paris office to monitor more closely groups that had received grants. By 1956, the flood of increased funding was prompting fears among the Directors of ACUE that its work would be publicly exposed. …

The emerging European Economic Community (EEC) and the growing Western intelligence community overlapped to a considerable degree. This is underlined by the creation of the Bilderberg Group, an informal and secretive transatlantic council of key decision-makers [representatives of the billionaires who controlled U.S. and U.S.-allied international corporations]. Bilderberg was founded by Joseph Retinger and Prince Bernhard of the Netherlands in 1952 in response to the rise of anti-Americanism in Europe. … Retinger secured support from Averell Harriman, David Rockefeller and Walter Bedell Smith. The formation of the American wing of Bilderberg was entrusted to Eisenhower’s psychological warfare chief, C.D. Jackson, and the funding for the first meeting, held at the Hotel de Bilderberg in Holland in 1954, was provided by the CIA.

Funds for these CIA operations came not only from the U.S. Treasury but from private sources, America’s super-rich, and, also from organized gangsters, as was revealed in the 1998 classic by Alexander Cockburn and Jeffrey St. Clair, Whiteout: The CIA, Drugs and the Press. This off-the-books funding comes from narcotics kingpins throughout the world, as protection-money, which is essential to keep them in business. So, the EU was financially fueled from all of these sources, and, basically, was a bribing-operation (to end up getting the ‘right’ people into the EU’s Parliament, etc.), in addition to be receiving funds from what might be considered idealistic philanthropic donors (because the dream of a united Europe had long preceded the grubby version of it that the CIA created for Europeans). The EU was a Cold War operation, from the very start. Though the Cold War was allegedly ideological, it was actually the result of a decision that U.S. President Harry S. Truman made on 26 July 1945, for the post-WW-II U.S. to achieve, ultimately, the world’s first all-encompassing global empire. The EU was designed to serve the political aspects of that, and NATO the military aspects, for America’s European ‘allies’ (America’s European vassal nations). The aim was for the Soviet Union (subsequently only Russia) to become surrounded by enemies, so that, in the final analysis, the U.S. and its ‘allies’ would be offering the U.S.S.R. “a deal they can’t refuse.” This deal (quite fitting to come from an international gangland operation such as America’s Deep State) would be inclusion in the U.S. empire, on terms that are set solely by the U.S. Government — either this, or else conquest. Then, the same thing would be done to China.

Pritchard issued two important articles about this, the first being his 19 September 2000 “Euro-federalists financed by US spy chiefs”:

DECLASSIFIED American government documents show that the US intelligence community ran a campaign in the Fifties and Sixties to build momentum for a united Europe. It funded and directed the European federalist movement. … One memorandum, dated July 26, 1950, gives instructions for a campaign to promote a fully fledged European parliament. It is signed by Gen William J Donovan, head of the American wartime Office of Strategic Services, precursor of the CIA.

The documents were found by Joshua Paul, a researcher at Georgetown University in Washington. They include files released by the US National Archives. Washington's main tool for shaping the European agenda was the American Committee for a United Europe, created in 1948. The chairman was Donovan, ostensibly a private lawyer by then.

The vice-chairman was Allen Dulles, the CIA director in the Fifties. The board included Walter Bedell Smith, the CIA's first director, and a roster of ex-OSS figures and officials who moved in and out of the CIA. The documents show that ACUE financed the European Movement, the most important federalist organisation in the post-war years. In 1958, for example, it provided 53.5 per cent of the movement's funds.

The European Youth Campaign, an arm of the European Movement, was wholly funded and controlled by Washington. The Belgian director, Baron Boel, received monthly payments into a special account. When the head of the European Movement, Polish-born Joseph Retinger, bridled at this degree of American control and tried to raise money in Europe, he was quickly reprimanded.

The leaders of the European Movement — Retinger, the visionary Robert Schuman and the former Belgian prime minister Paul-Henri Spaak — were all treated as hired hands by their American sponsors. The US role was handled as a covert operation. ACUE's funding came from the Ford and Rockefeller foundations as well as business groups with close ties to the US government.

Then, on 27 April 2016, he bannered “The European Union always was a CIA project, as Brexiteers discover” and reported:

It was Washington that drove European integration in the late 1940s, and funded it covertly under the Truman, Eisenhower, Kennedy, Johnson, and Nixon administrations. … The US has relied on the EU ever since as the anchor to American regional interests alongside NATO. …

It is odd that this magisterial 1000-page study found only a French-language publisher. [That’s the book by Eric Roussel, Jean Monnet. The French Wikipedia’s article on Roussel says “En 1995, il écrit une biographie consacrée à Jean Monnet2 qui reçoit le prix de l'Essai de l'Académie française, le prix Guizot, et le prix européen de l’histoire.” Despite all of those awards, the work is little-known, even in France.] Nor are many aware of declassified documents from the State Department archives showing that US intelligence funded the European movement secretly for decades, and worked aggressively behind the scenes to push Britain into the project. …

[The CIA] treated some of the EU’s ‘founding fathers’ as hired hands, and actively prevented them finding alternative funding that would have broken reliance on Washington. … The American ‘deep state’ was in up to its neck. …

Since that newspaper (like all major news-media in the U.S. and in its vassal-nations are) is both neoliberal and neoconservative, Pritchard approved of all this. He did it by saying: “There is nothing particularly wicked about this. The US acted astutely in the context of the Cold War. The political reconstruction of Europe was a roaring success.” However, obviously, no authentic democracy can exist in a nation that’s governed by means of deceiving its public; nor can any democracy be an empire, either the imperialistic nation itself, or one of its vassal-nations, because that is merely a “Deep State” rule, behind the scenes, by its billionaires — it’s an aristocracy, and not a democracy, which reigns there. Though all of the country’s major news-media will support the aristocracy — since they’ll all be owned by the aristocracy — anyone who calls it a ‘democracy’ is transparently either a fool or a liar, because such a nation is the exact opposite of a democracy: it is an aristocracy.

Furthermore, that “roaring success” which was praised by Pritchard, depended upon the U.S. bribing West-European leaders with Marshall Plan reconstruction aid money for their countries, conditional upon their allying with the U.S. against the Soviet Union. U.S. taxpayers funded those countries’ reconstruction; and the owners of Lockheed, Exxon, and other U.S. international corporations, also benefited enormously from their expanded markets; but all allies of Russia were barred from receiving any U.S. reconstruction aid, though the Soviet Union was the nation chiefly responsible for defeating Hitler and which suffered vastly the most casualties and destruction in World War II. So: the U.S. Government was squeezing-out the very country that had done the most to defeat Hitler.

Here is how the EU has thanked Russia for that: by blaming Russia, right along with Nazi Germany, as having been their enemy during WW II. The U.S.-regime-created EU’s European Parliament voted on 19 September 2019 for a resolution condemning both Hitler and Stalin for having started World War II, which is a lie — and an especially outrageous one, considering that the Soviet Union did more than any other country to defeat Hitler and to enable all of those countries to not now be controlled by a Nazi regime. (Shortly after I published that article, another, by Max Parry, independently came to the same conclusion: that the EU is fascist.) That Big-Lie Resolution, which the EU’s Parliament passed on 19 September 2019, said that,

Whereas it has become commonplace for Russia to deny responsibility and blame hostilities on the West in its official rhetoric, creating a reliable propaganda base upon which it can rely to justify its disregard of international law and continue its aggression against Eastern Partnership countries; [the EU]

1. Stresses that the Second World War, the most devastating war in Europe’s history, was caused by the notorious Nazi-Soviet Treaty of Non-Aggression of 23 August 1939, also called the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact, and its secret protocols, which allowed two totalitarian regimes that shared the goal of world conquest to divide Europe into two zones of influence.

The actual history is: Stalin had been begging the UK to ally with the Soviet Union to defeat Hitler; and, after being snubbed each time, joined with Hitler in order to prevent an expected invasion by Hitler against the Soviet Union. It was an act of desperation by Stalin, which was forced upon him by the UK. And, now, the U.S. and its allies rewrite ‘history’ to make the Soviet Union their enemy during WW II, instead of their savior — as they actually were.

The U.S., in a sense, has adopted not only many ‘former’ Nazis, but the mantle of German Nazism —

All of this goes back to the plan which was first stated in the 1877 version of the Will that was written by the racistly English aristocrat and champion of English imperialism, Cecil Rhodes. The plan was for England to retake the U.S. through subversive means and then use U.S. power in order to expand the U.S.-UK empire throughout the world. Taking control of Europe would be an important step. There is a good summary presentation, on the Web, of this Deep State background to Monnet, which is titled “The New World Order And the European Union”. In at least a general sense, Rhodes seems to have seen it all coming, and he very skillfully set up the Rhodes Trust and (less directly) other organizations, so as to bring it about. It’s as if he was a super-master chess-player on the global political chessboard, and the public are mere pawns to the global aristocracy that he organized during the late 1800s.

They’re Not Even Close: The Democratic vs. Republican Economic Records, 1910-2010, and of CHRIST’S VENTRILOQUISTS: The Event that Created Christianity.

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This Russian sailor convinced an enemy garrison to surrender – after they took him prisoner

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Fighting the Nazis, Leonov led missions that covertly took out anti-aircraft batteries, captured hundreds of prisoners, and even led a two-day march overland to capture Nazi gun emplacements and use them against other German artillery positions.

Soviet special forces, wearing 3.5 mil metal vests. They were called "crayfish."

After the Nazi surrender in May 1945, the Soviet Union declared war against the Japanese Empire in the East and Soviet special operators were first to the theater. That's where Viktor Leonov browbeat the enemy into submission.

Leonov is pictured at right.

He landed at a Japanese airfield near the Korean port of Wonsan with a force of 140 men, led by a higher-ranking officer. The airfield, supposedly lightly defended, was actually manned by 3,500 Japanese defenders. Horribly outnumbered, 10 Spetsnaz officers were forced to surrender.

The commander of the Russian force asked to speak with the Japanese garrison commander. As the negotiations started, Leonov angrily interrupted, saying:

"We've been fighting in the West throughout the war and we have enough experience to assess our situation. We will not allow ourselves to be taken hostage! You will die like rats when we break out of here!"

Leonov in dress uniform, shortly after WWII.

He then pulled out a grenade and threatened to kill everyone, including his fellow Russians. The Japanese surrendered on the spot. The Russians captured2,200 troops, three artillery batteries, five aircraft, and a lot of ammunition. For that outburst, Senior Lieutenant Viktor Leonov received his second Gold Star Medal.

Appendix

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Viktor Leonov

21. 11. 1916 - 7. 10. 2003

Viktor Leonov - commanded individual intelligence units of the Northern and Pacific fleets.

He was born on November 21, 1916 in Zaraisk, Moscow region in a working class family. Russian. A member of the CPSU (B) since 1942. From 1931 to 1933 he studied at a factory school at Moscow plant “Caliber”, after he worked as a gage maker, combining his work with social activities: Member of the factory committee of the Komsomol, chairman of the shop committee of inventors, head of the youth brigade.

In the ranks of the Navy since 1937. Was drafted to the Northern Fleet, where took a course in teaching scuba diving squad named after S. Kirov in Polyarny, Murmansk region, and was sent to further service on the “Shch-402” submarine.

When the Great Patriotic War started senior sailor V. Leonov applied for enrollment in the 181^st separate reconnaissance unit of the Northern Fleet. From July 18, 1941 he held about 50 combat operations behind the enemy lines as part of the unit. From December 1942, after assigning the officer rank, Junior Lieutenant V. Leonov was Deputy commander for political affairs, and a year later, in December 1943 - Commander of the 181^st special intelligence unit of the Northern Fleet. In April 1944 he was promoted to the rank of Lieutenant.

In October 1944, during the Petsamo-Kirkenes offensive operation, the Soviet troops and the scouts under V. Leonov’s command landed on the coast occupied by the enemy and for two days made their way to the designated point of the off-road conditions. On October, 12, in the morning they suddenly attacked an enemy 88-millimeter battery at Cape Crusade; captured it and a large number of Nazis as well. When the boat with Hitler’s paratroopers appeared, along with a detachment of Captain I. Barchenko-Emelyanov they repulsed the attack of the enemy, having captured about 60 Nazis. Thus, Leonov’s his actions detachment created a favorable environment for the landing of the Soviet troops in the ice-free port of Liinakhamari and subsequent release of Petsamo (Pechenga) and Kirkenes.

By the Decree of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet on November 5, 1944, for the exemplary performance of command assignments behind the enemy lines and for his courage and heroism as well, Lieutenant Viktor Leonov was awarded the title of Hero of the Soviet Union, the Order of Lenin and the Gold Star medal (№ 5058).

Upon completion of the defeat of Nazi Germany the war for the front scout V. Leonov was not ended yet. It continued in the Far East, where a separate reconnaissance detachment of the Pacific Fleet under his command, first landed in the ports of Racine, Cacine and Genzon... One of the most “high profile” cases of Leonov’s detachment was the capture of about three thousand and a half Japanese soldiers and officers in the Korean port of Wonsan. And in Genzon port the scouts disarmed and captured about two hundred thousand soldiers and officers, seized three artillery batteries, 5 planes and several ammunition depots.

By the Decree of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet on September 14, 1945 Lt. Viktor Leonov was awarded a second Gold Star medal.

After the war, V. Leonov continued military service in the Northern Fleet and the Central Office of the USSR Navy. In 1950, he graduated from the Higher Naval College. In 1952, he was promoted to captain of the 2nd rank. He studied at the Naval Academy, graduating two courses. From July 1956 - in reserve.

Twice Hero of the Soviet Union, Captain of the 1^st Rank on the bench, Viktor Leonov died in Moscow on October 7, 2003. But neither the officials nor the Russian mass media expressed their condolences to the deceased hero, or reported the country of his death - neither the day of his death, or the funeral day on October 12, 2003 at Leonov Cemetery in Moscow, nor in a month after his death ...

He was awarded the Order of Lenin, two Orders of the Red Banner, the Order of Alexander Nevsky, the 1^st Class Order of the Great Patriotic War, the Order of the Red Star, and medals, as well as the Order of the DPRK. He was awarded the title of Honorary Citizen of Polyarny.

Children and Youth Sports School of Polyarny is named after double-Hero of the Soviet Union, V. Leonov in 1998.

The Navy Magazine “Sea Collection” (2004, № 5 (1890), p. 6), said, “In conjunction of the Northern Fleet ships ... the ceremony to rename the vessel connection “Odograph” took place. From now on, the ship to be named after the legendary double-Hero of the Soviet Union, Viktor Leonov.”

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Corona proving the loser of the Cold War was both the USSR & the USA

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This is part of a series of dispatches by correspondent Ramin Mazaheri

It is often boasted in the US that they forced the implosion of the USSR via military overspending, as if recklessly creating a dangerous and useless arms race was something to brag about. However, the spoiled American rich kid is about to get his comeuppance and learn that money does not equal virtue.

The coronavirus hysteria, the West’s foolish Great Lockdown and the West’s looming transition from the “Great Recession” to the “Great Depression 2” is revealing that the delayed consequences of this overspending - and the hyperfinancialised economy that effort entailed - is causing a second implosion of historic consequences.

When “the Chinese century” is writing the history books they will correctly say it like this: the decades of success and persistence of the USSR forced the US to take the economic measures which ultimately caused its own demise.

S I D E B A R

Matching the yanks: The Soviet Typhoon

The arms race with the US, while by no means as decisive a factor in the USSR collapse as the Americans proclaimed, caused substantial problems for the Soviet leadership. With a GDP about 1/6 that of America, they had to theoretically make an effort 6 times bigger to just reach expense parity. The SSBN Typhoon or Akula (Shark) class submarine was a Soviet/Russian nuclear ballistic missile submarine. A new type of the ships had been developed as a reaction to the United States Navy's new Ohio-class submarine. The Typhoons were the largest submarines ever built. In many areas of military hardware, the USSR astonished the world. Russia continues that tradition.

The USSR was not beaten by industrial capitalism - it was more than equal as a competitor there - but by financial capitalism. The coronavirus is but a minor malady compared to that disease, certainly. The USSR was certainly not constrained by rules of Islamic finance, but it certainly did not engage in any of the usurious, Ponzi scheme-like, fake-money amassing financial crimes which the West relied on to defeat the Soviets.

The creation of credit-fueled financial bubbles may have bought the Pentagon some fancy toys, but it also bankrupted the US economically, ideologically and culturally - how could virtue and success ever be the final result of an insane, sovereignty-violating, global-sized war on other people’s types of socialism?

Despite all the ignored democratic votes, the influence of money and lobbyists and a vast amount of other evidence, Western liberal democracy does not admit that it does indeed have a vanguard party and that this party is bankers. The US vanguard party is in the process of imploding the US system against the will of their people, exactly like the vanguard party of the USSR did in 1991.

Quantitative Easing economic-political policies will become the historical equivalent of perestroika economic-political policies - two steps which should have never been taken, and which will ultimately be seen as the cause of the demise of the 20th century’s two dominant powers.

When the West can’t honestly explain WWI, stagflation, the War on Terror, QE Infinity, etc. something is being repeatedly hidden about their system

In early April’s Corona rewrites capitalist bust-chronology & proves: It’s the nation-state, stupid I pointed out how the corona economic hysteria was giving us more crucial data about “capitalism with Western characteristics” - it was providing a bookend to a new Western economic era within the context of Marx’s correct analysis that capitalism lurches from boom to bust. I sketched five historical cycles, from Boom 1, beginning in 1865, up to the current era, the 2020 beginning of Bust 5.

On May 13, in Scarce jobs + revenue desperation = sure Western stagflation post-corona, I noted the current similarities between the near-term future of the US economy with the beginning of the Bust 3 era - the 1970s. I pointed out that not only was Western capitalist theory incapable of explaining how stagflation could occur, they were similarly unwilling to honestly explain what ended it. Western intellectuals and schoolchildren are also similarly dumbfounded regarding the start of World War One - I related the common leftist analysis on May 4: the cause was high finance collusion. It is to this stagflation era where we must return to, as it contains the seeds of modern QE.

Capitalist-imperialist economies require war to produce the profit and growth which their system is built around - they need stolen wages (slavery), the free resources provided by “new frontiers” (the imperialism-rationalising theory of “Manifest Destiny”), new markets (which must be governed by their own puppets), or a constant war machine. When the Vietnam War ended in 1975 the US economy ground to complete halt because their economy had lost these raisons d’être, and their intellectuals could not explain what to do economically.

Nobody could explain it, because nobody could be honest and say that the 20th century US economy was undoubtedly modelled on corporate fascism (which is why after World War II Washington immediately found a natural alliance with their brother corporate fascist states of Germany and Japan) and guided by the Pentagon in Eisenhower’s famous “military-industrial complex” analysis… but it now had no slaves, no frontiers left and no wars.

Vietnamese heroism had capped similar bravery by Cubans, North Koreans, Chinese and Soviets, and combined with the MAD of nuclear weapons the corporate fascist concept of “economy as war machine (in order to eradicate redistributing socialism)” had failed, thus the endemic stagnation of the 1970s.

End of story/end of history.

Not so: the long-awaited, never-seen open discrediting of “corporate fascism with American characteristics” was put off (for four decades) thanks to the massive, phony “Star Wars” armaments buildup under Reagan, which provided a new morning for the US corporate-fascist economy and culture.

The idea was to outspend the USSR and divert their resources from citizen happiness and stability, but we now see that Washington bureaucrats & NYC intellectuals had no economic endgame: how would the US ever stop spending? They simply did not care that they had no answers, such was (and still is) their rabid anti-socialist/anti-redistribution mentality.

They were also in a very dire situation: back in the 1970s the American/Western Dream was decidedly failing at home, i.e. corporate fascism was failing, and entirely due to the cultural victory of socialist ideology within the West itself. Their soldiers (correctly) had zero desire to keep dying in order to uphold the tenets of corporate fascism in Vietnam - which is to say that the anti-imperialist ideology of socialism had prevailed culturally in a significant manner in the US. At the same time Western labor unions never had so many members and influence - i.e. the labor solidarity ideology of socialism had prevailed culturally in a significant manner as well.

Thus for all the alleged stagnation and corruption in the Brezhnev era, corporate fascism in teh US was even more stagnant, corrupt and domestically delegitimised. Abroad, the Western imperialist war machine had run out of free - but violently wrested - lunches and resources.

Thus the era of Western financial falsification began.

If the USSR and the socialist alternative had not been standing as a viable systemic alternative, the US would not have resorted to such desperate, ultimately suicidal tactics.

How can corporate fascism revive a stagflation economy? Via financial deception, which can’t go on forever

In corporate fascism the military decides how money is redistributed not the civil service (as in socialism), with bankers providing the intellectual vanguard party. Their intellectual vanguardism is not proven like in China or Iran - via devising ever-more efficient and moral governance - but is tested by their ability to devise new financial deceptions in order to keep the US system going.

In 2020 corona is proving that such a tandem, and led by such a foolish war (on socialism), not only was always incapable of sweeping the globe in a Pax Americana but could not even ensure the prosperity of its own citizens.

Reality was first admitted in 1971 when Nixon went off the gold standard: by making the US and their military allies use dollars, not gold, the war in Vietnam stopped being so very unprofitable for the 1%. But one financial deception necessarily begets another, of course.

Absolutely nobody is more reactionary than a monarch, thus the Petrodollar was created. After all, the West doesn’t believe democracy is possible in an Islamic society anyway, right? This was the second instrument of hyperfinancialisation, an ideology which obviously only benefits those connected to high finance, i.e. the 1%.

Both hyperfinancialisation and the desire to break socialism’s cultural gains required the alleged “solution” to stagflation - breaking the housing market by increasing the prime interest rate to 20% in 1981. This rolled back the economic cushion US workers had acquired, and also sucked the value of homes from the owner back into the 1%-dominating system - more profits via financial deception.

The logic of hyperfinancialisation necessarily led to deindustrialisation and delocalisation of production, despite the obvious damage to the nation and its economic independence. Of course, breaking national economic independence within the West as well is the goal of neoliberalism/neo-imperialism, as evidenced by the Eurozone, that “neoliberal empire”. Hyperfinancialisation was the apex of Anglo-English liberal (bourgeois/aristocratic) economics and therefore the greatest pro-socialist proof that capitalism is truly the result of class warfare waged by a colluding international 1%.

By gutting housing assets, breaking labor’s power, permitting inflation in prices of energy and food, and breaking with the traditional sources of revenue, profit and hard, true wealth - necessitated because they were breaking with financial reality - a vast expansion of credit to the 99% was also needed, and credit card use began in earnest.

All of these 1980s-era decisions, including Star Wars, drastically changed the American system but were entirely in keeping with the logic and goals of corporate fascism.

Yes, these decisions did work and did lead to ten good years in the US, Boom 4 (1991-2001), but Bust 4 for the 99% began in 2001 and still continues until today; Boom 5 (2009-19) was only limited to the 1%’s asset classes and termed the “Great Recession” for the 99%. The Petrodollar and all these other fabrications enjoyed major profits, but in liberal/aristocratic democracy and their inevitable corporate fascism these profits are only hoarded among the 1% - this raison d’être could not be clearer from the last great deception from the West’s vanguard party: QE.

Bust 5 is the post-Corona era and will be called the Great Depression 2.

The only good news is: “the Western economy” is not synonymous with “the global economy”, so socialist-inspired nations will ride out Bust 5 just as they have been forced to ride out all the other inevitable busts of capitalism-imperialism.

This historical analysis of recent US economic history is thrown into clear relief by corona and the Great Lockdown. It says much that Western pro-capitalist economic commentators are so existentially distraught at the 2020 implications of the very real “QE Infinity” that only I am asking Why haven’t we called it ‘QE 5’ yet? And why we must call it ‘QE 2.1’ instead. They are so flustered they cannot even count from 4 to 5 right now.

But that is how very destabilised, how very gutted, how very sad Western capitalists are right now - they cannot deal with or describe reality, just as their similarly foolish intellectual ancestors could not deal with or accurately describe World War I, stagflation, the Petrodollar, the phony War on Terror, etc.

The corona overreaction is bringing down a history of lies, and not a short history either.

It’s quite a simple conclusion: the West could neither beat the USSR nor defeat the rising tide of domestic socialism without resorting to the economic suicide/Ponzi scheme inherent in phony hyperfinancialisation.

Hyperfinancialisation is simply no way to run a real economy, and Soviet commentators said the same thing in the 1980s - corona is proving them right.

So I guess it turns out that corona really is as dangerous as the elitist Western commentariat warned….

It is now 100% obvious that the Western system cannot and will not win: if QE is stopped the Western system collapses; if the West gives a debt jubilee or huge amounts of People’s QE this is no longer capitalism-imperialism but socialism.

Salute the Soviets: the martyrs of World War II, the only “empire” which bled the centre to feed the periphery, and soon the martyrs whose final act was to fatally wound - unknowingly - the elitist & racist American empire of corporate fascism.

We cannot really blame early socialists for not seeing this coming - financial capitalism was not as progressed as it is today, so they had less data. Who could have imagined that capitalists would be so stupid as to believe that quantitative analysts/computers using algorithms knew more about real life and the decidedly non-mathematical study of economics than human analysts? A theory (a comprehensive understanding) of capitalism which drew much from Lyonnais silk factories, which employ just 800 people today, needs adaptations to accommodate 21st century hyperfinancialisation stupidities and perpetuations of non-reality - this does not at all invalidate the core theory of socialism, no matter how much the West refuses to even teach and discuss this core theory.

But what is really collapsing? It is not neo-imperialism, because Western domestic belief in that ended with Vietnam: the War on Terror was the phoniest of wars, and also one which was a new type of war - one fought with huge amounts of paid mercenaries, 5th columnists and foreign radicals, as opposed to one fought by a truly national corporate fascist war machine like before. The War on Terror is a neo-imperialist war, but it was the death throes of two centuries of Western imperialism as we know it. The phony War on Islamic democracy (after the West failed to militarily defeat socialist democracy) only enriched the Pentagon-connected 1%, and the proof of that is all over the economic data since 2001.

Thus, what’s collapsing in 2020 in the largest historical sense is “capitalism with English characteristics”.

We can argue about the minority percentages of French, Spanish, Dutch, Austrian, German and Italian capitalism in this ideology, but we must agree that this system never collapsed - it passed from the English to the Americans; it was blitzed, but English liberalism (based around aristocratic privileges/liberties for the leaders of an imperialist & corporate war machine) has never been discredited nor defeated.

But this collapse is bigger than just the US and England, however - thus, “Western” is really the best name for it.

Washington recklessly decided that any risk was worth it in their effort to “win the Cold War”, i.e. destroy the ideology of socialism and its twin pillars of economic and political redistribution of power. In 2020 the Chinese laugh out loud to that possibility; in 2120 they will say that the single victor to the Cold War was not China, but socialism.

When the USSR imploded there was a system available to immediately welcome it - Western capitalism-imperialism. But when capitalism - which falsely views itself as victorious, although corona is teaching many the truth - implodes, socialism is still there, still thriving, and still not resorting to poisonous deceptions which perpetuate illusions.

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Corona contrarianism? How about some corona common sense? Here is my list of articles published regarding the corona crisis.

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Capitalist-imperialist West stays home over corona – they grew a conscience? – March 22, 2020

’s QE: the Trumpian populism they hoped for? – March 23, 2020

A day’s diary from a US CEO during the Corona crisis (satire) March 23, 2020

– March 25, 2020

Tough times need vanguard parties – are ‘social media users’ the West’s? – March 26, 2020

If Germany rejects Corona bonds they must quit the Eurozone – March 30, 2020

Landlord class: Waive or donate rent-profits now or fear the Cultural Revolution – March 31, 2020

– April 1, 2020

(A Soviet?) Superman: Red Son – the new socialist film to watch on lockdown – April 2, 2020

’s the nation-state, stupid – April 3, 2020

Condensing the data leaves no doubt: Fear corona-economy more than the virus – April 5, 2020

‘We’re Going Wrong’: The West’s middling, middle-class corona response – April 10, 2020

Why does the UK have an ‘army’ of volunteers but the US has a shortage? – April 12, 2020

No buybacks allowed or dared? Then wave goodbye to Western stock market gains – April 13, 2020

Pity post-corona Millennials… if they don’t openly push socialism – April 14, 2020

No, the dollar will only strengthen post-corona, as usual: it’s a crisis, after all – April 16, 2020

Same 2008 QE playbook, but the Eurozone will kick off Western chaos not the US – April 18, 2020

We’re giving up our civil liberties. Fine, but to which type of state? – April 20,

2020

Coronavirus – Macron’s savior. A ‘united Europe’ – France’s murderer – April 22, 2020

Iran’s ‘resistance economy’: the post-corona wish of the West’s silent majority (1/2) – April 23, 2020

The same 12-year itch: Will banks loan down QE money this time? – April 26,

2020

The end of globalisation won’t be televised, despite the hopes of the Western 99% (2/2) – April 27, 2020

What would it take for proponents to say: ‘The Great Lockdown was wrong’? – April 28, 2020

– April 30, 2020

Given Western history, is it the ‘Great Segregation’ and not the ‘Great Lockdown’? – May 2, 2020

The Western 1% colluded to start WWI – is the Great Lockdown also a conspiracy? – May 4, 2020

May 17: The date the Great Lockdown must end or Everything Bubble 2 pops – May 6, 2020

Reading Piketty: Does corona delay the Greens’ fake-leftist, sure-to-fail victory? – May 8, 2020

Picturing the media campaign needed to get the US back to work – May 11, 2020

Scarce jobs + revenue desperation = sure Western stagflation post-corona – May 13, 2020

France’s nurses march – are they now deplorable Michiganders to fake-leftists? – May 15, 2020

Why haven’t we called it ‘QE 5’ yet? And why we must call it ‘QE 2.1’ instead – May 16, 2020

‘Take your stinking paws off me, you damned, dirty public servant!’ That’s Orwell? – May 17, 2021

May 21, 2021

I was wrong on corona – by not pushing for a US Cultural Revolution immediately – May 25, 2021

August 1: when the unemployment runs out and a new era of US labor battles begin - May 28, 2021

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About the author

I’ll Ruin Everything You Are: Ending Western Propaganda on Red China. His work has also appeared in various journals, magazines and websites, as well as on radio and television. He can be reached on Facebook.

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LEFT GATEKEEPERS THROUGH THE NEW LEFT: MONITORED REBELLION – PART I

Please make sure these dispatches reach as many readers as possible. Share with kin, friends and workmates and ask them to do likewise.

BY BRUCE LERRO / PERSPECTIVES

Wherein the author provides a much needed annotated taxonomy for the left—

Why is the socialist left in Yankeedom so small and divided? How is it possible that there is no working class party here in almost 70 years, despite the precarious nature of working-class life today. Part of the puzzle can be found in understanding the differences between Old Left and the New Left. As this article will describe, the ideology of the New Left has inadvertently worked well with the aims and manipulations of the Left Gatekeepers, from the Congress of Cultural Freedom to think tanks such as the Ford Foundation.

The Cultural Cold War: The CIA and the World of Arts and Letters Frances Stonor Saunders
Cultural containment meant “ring around the pinkos”

Leftist Patron Saints

What do the following people have in common: Noam Chomsky, Cornel West, Naomi Klein, Robert Reich, Michael Albert, Howard Zinn, Amy Goodman, Media Benjamin, Norman Solomon, Chris Hedges, Michael Moore, Greg Palast, and Chip Berlet? With the exception of Norman Solomon and Chip Berlet, these are household names among “progressives”. What they appear to have in common is that they are “left.” How far left? On the surface, they appear to run the full spectrum. After all, Chomsky and Michael Albert are anarchists. Most, if not all of the rest are advocating some kind of social democracy. Robert Reich and possibly Amy Goodman are New Deal liberals. Have we missed any tendency? Is that it? Yes, we are missing a tendency. The Leninist tradition, whether Trotskyist, Stalinist or Maoist. Are there reasons they are not included?

Why would the most supposedly leftist of all tendencies, the anarchists, get airtime on a show like Democracy Now, while Leninists such as Michael Parenti or Gloria La Riva are rarely, if ever, invited. A crucial key to understanding why this is the case is to clarify the differences between the Old and the New Left.

The Old vs the New Left

What all these patron saints have in common is that they are members of the New Left in the U.S. as opposed to the Old Left. The New left grew up in the early 1960’s on the basis of rejecting the Soviet Union as a model for socialism. For the New Left, some form of social democracy or participatory democracy (anarchist) was the best model. Additionally, the old left emphasized that social class – specifically the working class – was the agent of revolutionary change. The New Left rejected this. For them, the working class has been bought off by capitalism and was no longer a revolutionary class. The New Left turned to philosophers like Herbert Marcuse who claimed that students were the revolutionary class worth organizing.

At the same time, some sections of the middle-class civil rights movement organized around Martin Luther King (a social democrat). The women’s movement had two wings, the liberal Betty Friedan wing and the radical lesbians. But what both these New Left systems of stratification had in common was that race and gender were more important than social class.

There were exceptions to the rule. For example, while the Weatherman were anti-working class, they were secretive (Leninist), and identified with anti-imperialism and the necessity of armed force in order to fight. They tended to idolize third world countries and blindly accept their leadership. Malcolm X had clear roots in the Black working class and poor and maintained a class perspective. He was murdered before he settled within a leftist tendency, but he seemed to be on the way to Trotskyism when he died. So, in the New left, there were some Leninist tendencies but mostly the social democratic and anarchist orientations won out.

A fourth major difference between the Old and the New Left was the economy. For the Old left of the Communist Party of Russia, China and Cuba, capitalism by its very nature has contradictions that will drive it to destruction. All Leninists agreed that capitalism was doomed. For the New Left, capitalism seems to have survived its crisis of the Great Depression and the World Wars and was expanding production. It was thought that capitalism could go on forever. The New Left became increasingly cynical that capitalism could be stopped due to any inherent contradictions. Only by revolutionary will would it be possible for capitalism to be overthrown.

Who developed revolutionary theory? For the Old Left, revolutionary theory was developed by professional revolutionaries inside the Communist Party or by members of trade unions. At least hypothetically if not actually, Leninist theory should be informed by political practice in organizing the working class and its struggles. On the other hand, led by the Frankfurt school, New Leftist theory was developed not within a party or a union but within the academy. Most New Leftist theory after 1970 came out of universities, whether structuralism, Foucault, post-structuralist or postmodernist. These theories were not informed by any connection to practice. They built on each other and increasingly lost touch with any kind of practical tests. One exception to this academic trend was Murray Bookchin and his anarchist followers.

France, Germany, etc in Europe to Australia, Japan, South Korea, Chile, Ecuador, Brazil and so on, in other latitudes, with scores of other nations following the same pattern of largely (non)representative democracy. ]

Democracy within Leninism was called democratic centralism. Here there was a limited amount of time for discussion and once a party decision was made, there was no more arguing. Every member of the party [was expected to] carry out the decision. [This was not as arbitrarily authoritarian as it sounds to a Westerner reading about such events across huge cultural, class, indoctrination (however recognized or not] and time barriers. Most critics of the Soviet experience are rarely able or willing to put themselves in the context of such events, defined by fierce wars (from World War I to civil war), general and persistent famines, medical emergencies, and the ravages and disruptions caused by invading pro-czarist foreign and Russian internal armies, coupled to widespread sabotage by the old czarist bureaucracy and reactionary Russians.

For the New Left democracy took different forms. For the social democrats democracy could be had by participating in elections either as an independent party, such as the Socialist party or even entering the Democratic Party as has been done for 50 years by the Democratic Socialists of America. The anarchists would have nothing to do with representative democracy but wanted direct participatory democracy as in the early years of SDS. This participatory democracy (sometims called "hyper-democracy" or ultra-leftism") continued in the strikes in France in May of 1968, and in the theories of the Situationist international. The social anarchists that followed Murray Bookchin, and of late as the Occupy movement of nine years ago followed this participatory model."

The attitude towards the arts between the New Left and the Old Left were at opposite ends of the spectrum. The Leninist left thought the responsibility of the artist was to represent reality as it really was from a working-class viewpoint (socialist realism). For the New Left, art was a rejection of the life of the working class. Beat poetry and abstract expressionism moved away from reality and expressed the psychological idiosyncrasies of the artist. What was revolutionary was individual expression.

As for appearance, Leninists tried to emulate the dress of the working-class so that short hair and jeans were a sign of solidarity. For the New Left appearances were determined by the countercultural tastes which included beads, long skirts, bell bottoms and tie-dyed clothes. Among the Leninist Black New Left, dressing in the clothes of the African country they were originally from was an option.

In terms of social evolution, the Old Left embraced Marx’s linear model of primitive communism through three forms of class society before reaching communism. Like the bourgeoisie of their country, they championed the notion of progress through science and technology. The New Left was having none of this. They questioned whether capitalist society was more evolved than what went before and they were skeptical of science in delivering us to the promised land. They were much closer to romantics, who identified with tribal societies, whether in the United States or around the world.

For the Old Left, one’s personal life had little to do with the political world. It was possible to be withdrawn, apathetic or abusive in personal life and that had nothing to do with the revolution. For the New Left, specifically the women’s movement, “the personal was political”. What this meant was that your personal life needed to be a microcosm of the world you wanted to build. That meant you could not have a bad marriage and a good revolution. You had to “be the change you wanted to have happen”. This was enhanced by pot and LSD trips.

Where does psychology fit into the picture? For the Old Left, personal psychological problems were just “nerves” not worth taking seriously. It is understandable that the Old Left was skeptical or cynical of psychology and dismissed it as “bourgeois”. The work of Vygotsky, Luria and Leontiev in Russia remained untranslated, so they had no “communist psychology” to draw from. The New Left was much more interested in psychology. It was very sympathetic to the Freudian left of Wilhelm Reich and Erich Fromm. For the socialist women’s movement Karen Horney was a heroine. Reich’s work The Mass Psychology of Fascism helped explain not only the rise of fascism but the failure of the working class to rise up. For the Black Leninist left, Frantz Fanon was the best at explaining self-hatred among colonial people.

For the Old Left ecology was not an issue. They treated the ecological setting as a backdrop for social evolution which was understood as a higher form of nature. In terms of scale, the Old Left took for granted the nation-state as the smallest, most realistic political body to organize around. The Old Left thought of nature as infinitely fecund and able to carry a growing population without limits. But for the New Left, the ecology movement in the 60’s saw nature as under attack and should be defended and appreciated. The romantic tendency of the New Left meant “going back to nature”. This was later accompanied by the “small is beautiful” movement which fit well with anarchist decentralization concepts. Furthermore, in 1972 the Club of Rome issued its first report stating that the carrying capacity of the planet was limited. This meant that unlimited growth could no longer be sustainable. People had to learn to do with less. For the first time since the eugenics movement, the question of too many people on the planet was broached, however tentatively. [Infinite growth in a finite planet, of course, is an absurdity, even if it remains an unquestioned mantra and politically popular slogan symbolising "the good life" and secure employment, among capitalists, many workers, and even people supposedly opposed to amoral industrialism's central tenets. The constant growth imperative is one of the reasons social ecologists regard capitalism as irrational and on a collision course with nature. See, Joel Kovel, The Enemy of Nature —Eds.]

The last categorical difference has to do with the differences in religion and spirituality. For the Old Left, atheism was the ideal and organized religion and spirituality were all part of the same superstition. The New Left was more open to institutionalized religion (as in following Martin Luther King), while making a distinction between institutionalized religion and spirituality (which was separate from organized religion). By the early 1970’s, the New Left became susceptible to Eastern mysticism (TM, yoga) and the Gurus who came with it. Women especially were leaving institutionalized religion for wicca and other neo-pagan traditions. Some New Leftists later morphed into Rudolf Steiner Waldorf education and Gurdjieff movement. Anarchists were more likely to gravitate to the magical work of Aleister Crowley. See table 1 for a summary.

But why does this matter? If the Old Left is marginalized and excluded in the press, magazines and on radio waves today and the New Left – social democrats and anarchists – are welcomed, what does this have to do with Left Gatekeeping? After all, maybe the Old Left is not paid attention to because they are “out of date” with their Leninist vanguard party and ["mindless"] defense of the Soviet Union. To some extent this may be so, but that is far from the whole picture.

Old Left vs New Left – Table I

The Congress for Cultural Freedom

How it started

In his book The Mighty Wurlitzer Hugh Wilford describes the events that led to the founding of the Congress for Cultural Freedom (CCF):

In March 1949, the Waldorf-Astoria hotel hosted a gathering of Soviet and American intellectuals, the Scientific and Cultural Conference for World Peace. This was sponsored by the American Popular Front attended by, among others, Paul Robeson and Lillian Hellman. It was a publicity disaster. The State Department derailed preparations by refusing to grant visas to would-be European participants. Anti-communist vigilantes were alerted by the Hearst Press. Disruptions were staged by anti-Stalinists, organized by Sidney Hook. (Page 70)

What it did

In her book The Cultural Cold War: The CIA and the World of Arts and Letters, Frances Stonor Saunders traces the activity of an organization called the Congress for Cultural Freedom which existed from 1950 to 1967. The secret mission of the organization was to promote cultural propaganda in Western Europe to keep it from going communist. The idea was to make it seem that the cultural criticism of communism coming from the West about the Soviet Union was a spontaneous irruption, rather than stage-managed. The CIA poured tens of millions of dollars into this project.

As it turns out, groups of ex-communists for the most part inadvertently, helped to invent the weapons with which the CIA fought communism. Later, these ex-communists were sidelined as the spies attempted to professionalize their front operations with their Ivy League recruits.

As Stonor Sanders tells it, the congress:

…stockpiled a vast arsenal of cultural weapons – journals, books, conferences, seminars, art exhibitions, concerts and awards. Whether they knew it or not, there were few writers, poets, artists and historians, scientists or critics in post-war Europe whose names were not in some way linked to the covert enterprise. It consisted of former radicals and leftist intellectuals whose faith in Marxism had been shattered by Stalinism. (Page 2)

In terms of propagandistic goals, as Stoner Saunders says, “The most effective kind of propaganda is where the subjects move in the direction you desire for reasons which he believes are his own” (Page 4)

The strategy of promoting the non-communists was to become the theoretical foundation of the agency’s political operations against Communism over the next two decades. (Page 63)

Suitable texts were easily available from the CCF such as Andre Gide’s account of his disillusionment in Russia, Koestler’s Darkness at Noon and Yogi and the Commissar and Ignazio Silone’s Bread and Wine. Further, the CIA subsidized The New Class by Milovan Djilas about the class system in the USSR. Books with titles like Life and Death in the USSR by a Marxist writer criticizing Stalinism was a book widely translated and distributed with CIA assistance. The compilation of articles made into the book The God That Failed was distributed all over Europe.

On the surface it may seem that the purpose of the CIA front groups was to destroy communism. However, Stoner Saunders denies this.

The purpose of supporting leftist groups was not to destroy or even dominate… but rather to maintain a discreet proximity and monitor the thinking of such groups to provide them with a mouthpiece so they could blow off steam. It was to be a beach head in western Europe from which the advance of Communist ideas could be halted. It was to engage in a widespread and cohesive campaign of peer pressure to persuade intellectuals to dissociate themselves from Communist fronts. (Page 98)

Besides publishing, the CIA set up front groups for disseminating their ideas. In 1952 it began setting up dummy organizations for laundering subsidies. The formula was:

Go to a well-known rich person and tell them you want to set up a foundation in the name of the government:

Pledge this person to secrecy.
Publish a letterhead with the would-be name of the donor.
Give the dummy organization a neutral sounding name.

When it came to the arts:

With an initial grant of 500,000 Laughlin launched the magazine Perspectiveswhich targeted the non-communist left in France, England, Italy, and Germany. Its aim was not so much to defeat leftist intellectuals as to lure them away from their positions by aesthetic and rational persuasion. (Page 140)

According to Stoner Saunders the animated cartoon of Orwell’s Animal Farm was financed by the CIA and distributed throughout the world. But the CIA did more than distribute. They actually changed the story.

In the original text, communist pigs and capitalist man are indistinguishable, merging into a common pool of rottenness.

In the film, such congruity was carefully elided (Pilkington and Frederick, central characters whom Orwell designated as the British and German governing classes are barely noticeable) and the ending is eliminated. In the book:

The creatures outside looked from pig to man and from man to pig and it was impossible to say which was which. Viewers of the film saw something different – which was the sight of the pigs impelling the other watching animals to mount a successful counter-revolution by storming the farmhouse. By removing the human farmers from the scene, leaving only the pigs reveling in the fruits of exploitation, the conflation of the Communist corruption with capitalist degradation is reversed. (Page 295)

When it came to his novel, 1984, most everyone assumed that the idea of it came from Orwell’s Trotskyist criticism of Stalinism. However, Trotsky’s biographer, Isaac Deutscher, claimed that Orwell got the symbols, plot and chief characters from Yevgeny Zamyatin’s book We.

Image is of author Arthur Koestler, trade-unionist Irving Brown and Professor James Burnham

Who was involved?

What leftists or former leftists were involved in the Congress for Cultural Freedom? Sidney Hook (former Marxist), Arthur Koestler (former communist), James Burnham (former Trotskyist), Raymond Aron, Harold Laski, Isaiah Berlin, Daniel Bell (The End of Ideology), Irving Kristol (former Trotskyist,) Franz Borkenau (former communist), and Lionel Trilling to name just a few.

For the most part, without knowing exactly who they were dealing with, these former communists like Burnham, Koestler and Louis Fischer wanted to directly confront Stalinism politically. They felt no one knew better how to fight communism than they did. Burnham went so far as to say that CCF should form a true anti-communist front embracing the non-socialists right as well. Koestler, Burnham, Hook, Lasky and Irvin Brown met every evening as an unofficial steering committee. But cooler heads prevailed. Michael Josselson, one of the founders of the organization, believed in the soft-sell strategy, which is winning intellectual support for the western cause in the Cold War by fostering a cultural community between America and Europe.

Did these ex-communists know they were working for the CIA?

The parameters of knowing ranges from who knew and who didn’t. But these extremes are too easy. Better to separate points of gradation into:

those who were completely naïve and didn’t know.

One who knew was Sidney Hook, who was in contact with the CIA. He was a regular consultant to the CIA on matters of mutual interest. In 1955 Hook was directly involved in negotiations with Allen Dulles. Another who knew but was not ashamed of it was Diana Trilling who said, “I did not believe that to take the support of my government was a dishonorable act”. Late in his life Orwell knew the CIA was involved and actively supported them. He had handed over a list of suspected fellow travelers to the Information Research Department in 1949.

Deeply suspicious of just about everybody, Orwell had been keeping a blue quarto notebook close to hand for several years. By 1949 it contained 125 names. (The Cultural Cold War Page 299)

It would seem that most leftists fell into categories two and three. It is highly unlikely that those involved in radical politics both internationally and domestically, and those subjected to the intrigues of Stalin would be completely naïve about the machinations of any other large political organizations that were involved.

Furthermore, as Primo Levi points out insightfully in The Drowned and the Saved, those who consciously lie to others as well as themselves are in the minority:

But more numerous are those who weigh anchor, move off from genuine memories, and fabricate for themselves a convenient reality. The silent transition from falsehood to sly deception is useful. Anyone who lies in good faith is better off, he recites his part better, he is more easily believed. (The Cultural Cold War, Page 414)

How successful was the CIA?

It is tempting to think that an organization as powerful as the CIA would overwhelm and turn to mush another group that stood in its way. But that is not what happened. Ex-communists fought among themselves and twisted the intention of the CIA and took things in another direction. As if to answer Stoner Saunders’ excessive attribution of power to the CIA, Hugh Wilford says that the CIA might have called the tune, but the piper didn’t always play it, nor did the audience dance to it.

Did This Left Gatekeeping End with the Ending of the Congress for Cultural Freedom?

It is fair to say that Khrushchev's allegations about Stalin broke the hearts and backs of the Old Left for some time. The sad story of disbelief, denial, of communists who spent years bending over backward justifying the purported evil and truth about Stalinist “terrors” and "show trials" was exposed.. Recently work by scholars like Ludo Martens' Another View of Stalin has challenged substantially Khrushchev's depiction of life under Stalinism, but for rank-and-file communists in the late 1950’s, making their judgments long before Stalin exculpating facts began to emerge in recent decades, this was profoundly disorienting and indeed heart-breaking. The Congress of Cultural Freedom contributed to this downfall, to some extent though its whole operation was exposed by Ramparts magazine in 1967.

But what about the New Left? Since the Congress of Cultural Freedom had ended, was there anything left to monitor? After all, the New Left was not Leninist. Is there a relationship between the characteristics of the New Left in Table I and some new monitoring organizations like foundations, think tanks, public relations campaigns and lobbyists? Or was the New Left an autonomous, spontaneous eruption of the youth culture of the 60’s? Part II will discuss these important questions.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

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— Ben Norton (@BenjaminNorton) April 9, 2020

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The Stalin controversy smoulders on

Please make sure these dispatches reach as many readers as possible. Share with kin, friends and workmates and ask them to do likewise.

EDITED AND HOSTED BY THE GREANVILLE POST

Billy Bob, a member of our Facebook group, recently filed an important comment on our post on debunking anti-Stalin propaganda. (Ludo Martens: Another view of Stalin). What happened next was most interesting. We'll let him provide the introduction to this story and its aftermath in his own words.

So, an interesting thing happened when I changed my avatar to a picture of Stalin. Suddenly, by the hundreds, I started getting friend requests from folks in places like India, Pakistan, and Morocco. Everyday after work I was accepting scores of friend requests thinking once I got to 5K, I wouldn't have to deal with it anymore. I must have added at least a thousand friends this way over the past couple of weeks.

Additionally, I started getting random messages and things posted on my wall by anti-communist fascists. These people felt liberated by my Stalin pic to forego all standards of politeness and decency and took it as a license to utter the most vile and threatening insults.

What interested me the most however was the response of self identified leftists whose view of Stalin precisely mirrored the views of the rabid fascists. The "leftists" were more polite of course but they were appalled that I would demean and defame leftist thought by championing Stalin. They viewed my aggrandizement of Stalin to be damaging to their leftist brand and perceived my Stalin apologism as misguided and wrongheaded.

I continue to maintain that these Anti-Stalin views result from an acceptance of false narratives and anti-communist ruling class propaganda. I just finished reading a superb article on this very subject and recommend it to anyone that may be interested in the topic. I highly encourage folks read the article in its entirety."

Following Billy Bob's advice, here's the article he suggested. But before we look at it, let's examine the "prequel", the opinion piece by one Garry Maclachlan who, apparently quite influenced by Trotskyist arguments, started the whole exchange.

The Problem with Stalin and Stalinism
Solidarity / 27 Feb 2019.

I felt an urge to write this short article because I see good intentioned socialists on social media sharing posters with quotes from the late leader of the Soviet Union, Joseph Djugashvili (actually, Ioseb Besarionis dzе Djugashvili)– Joseph Stalin. But do they truly know what Stalin and Stalinism represents?

The Russian Revolution had crumbled due to a massive decline in the working classes through famine and war after Stalin rose to power and workers were exploited, workplaces controlled by managers and military officials and a new Ruling Class of beaurocrats had emerged under Stalin’s regime. Workers would lose their jobs if they missed a day for whatever reason and would get the death penalty for striking. Leon Trotsky called it a ‘deformed worker’s state’, other international socialists call it ‘state capitalism’, believing that if Trotsky were alive today would reflect and call it that himself. Whatever the name, the U.S.S.R was not a union, it was not socialist and there were no soviets.

Many of the same socialists who idolise Stalin are also great admirers of Vladimir Lenin yet although Stalin was a close comrade of Lenin in the early 1900’s, when Lenin was nearing the end of his life after a series of strokes he warned, “Comrade Stalin, having become Secretary-General, has unlimited authority concentrated in his hands, and I am not sure whether he will always be capable of using that authority with sufficient caution.”
I also wonder if they overlook the many Revolutionaries who Stalin had murdered, from his friend Lev Kamenev to more famously Leon Trotsky.

This wave of young social media Stalinists proudly remind us how Stalin effectively defeated the Nazis but neglect the fact that it could be argued that Stalin allowed the rise of fascism in Germany in the first place due to the German Communist Party (who were affiliated to Stalin and followed Russian orders) did not build a rank and file, working class, antifascist movement against the rise of Hitler. Stalinist organisations also crumbled antifascist movements in Spain against Franco and destroyed the general strike.

What type of new world would the Stalin worshippers like to see? Marx called for the ‘Dictatorship of the Proletariat’, meaning a new society where the workers who create the wealth have complete control of the means of production. They democratically decide in their communities and workplaces the best way forward for the society. For the workers, by the workers. It could be described that this type of society is controlled from the bottom up which is entirely different to Stalin’s top down dictatorship where he himself made the decisions and he could not be removed from his position if the ordinary people didn’t like it.

The Ruling Class of today use Stalin and his dictatorship to turn people away from socialism. They explain that life under Stalin is what life under socialism would be like. They highlight that he presided over the ‘death of millions’. Their argument that Stalinism was socialist or communist is a farce but it gives us socialists a difficult time trying to convince people that a new and better world is possible.

In conclusion, Stalinism is counterrevolutionary and has dampened the flame of possible revolutions in many countries. To promote Stalin is to do the fight for a better society a great injustice. Stalin was a tyrant who epitomises the defeat of the Russian Revolution, was a brutal authoritarian and gives socialism a bad name. Therefore I appeal to the well meaning poster sharing Stalinists to look for a new idol and at least try not to get one of their lackeys to ram an ice pick in my head if they get into power.

—Garry Maclachlan

Before we examine

Response to Garry Maclachlan

Paul Cockshott

Figure 1. Stalin – banner of our victories!, archetypal Soviet war poster.

An article by Garry Maclachlan, “The Problem with Stalin and Stalinism“ appeared on the Solidarity Website 27 Feb 2019. Some discussion ensued on Facebook, but I thought it would be best to write a response here.

Why should anyone be concerned now, about a Soviet politician who died almost seventy years ago?

What makes it worth discussing him in a small Scottish socialist party?

Socialist parties exist to propagate the ideas of socialism and to attempt to win political power. The basis of their appeal has to be the political and economic programme that they advance in the here and now. They do not impose on their members a single view of history. We do not insist that party members have a consistent view on the causes of the First World War, Churchill’s policy on the Second Front, or the correctness of Gaitskill’s policy towards the Common Market. If we can allow a diversity of views on history that has affected our own country, there is certainly no need for uniformity on Soviet or Turkish history. The strengths and weaknesses of Ataturk or Stalin as leaders of their countries in the 20th century does not affect Scotland in the 21st.

Garry says he is perturbed by seeing well-intentioned socialists sharing quotations by the late Soviet leader on Facebook. But why should this be worrying?

Presumably, the quotes themselves seem to say things that most socialists can readily agree with. It does not seem to be what the quotes say that perturbs him. Instead, he seems to think it risky that, well after the cold war, young people forming a favourable view of the USSR.

This is because the individual person, Stalin, came to represent much more than one person. In the terminology of Soviet propaganda, Stalin became a ‘banner’ (Figure 1). His name and face became a symbol for the victory of Soviet Power over German Imperialism, and still, within the countries of the former USSR is a symbol of the power of the working classes over the new capitalist classes (Figure 2).

Figure 2. Stalin as a banner in the modern world: a communist workers demonstration in the former USSR.

For the capitalist classes in the West Stalin has become the symbol both of the peril that was defeated, and of the communist spectre that they fear may haunt them in the future. Stalinism is the label that the press here give to the economic system the Communists established: publicly owned industry, coordination by national plans, the subordination of the market to the plan, prohibition of the private employment of wage labour.

When the Labour Party takes timid steps back towards Clause 4 socialism, it is denounced by the liberal press as becoming ‘stalinist’. But that only works as a denunciation if ‘stalinism’ is seen as a very bad thing indeed.

So we have a paradox. In Russia, the opinion of Stalin is overwhelmingly favourable. A recent Levada poll shows that 57% have a favourable opinion of Stalin, 18% having a negative view (with the rest don’t know or no opinion). This from a population made up of people either old enough to directly remember the USSR or who hear about it from their own family.

Table 1. Opinion poll evidence from Russia still shows strong support for Stalin among the public. (https://www.levada.ru/2018/04/10/17896/)

Garry Maclachlan worries that the ruling class uses Stalin to discredit socialism. That is certainly true in Britain, but they can only do that as the end result of a propaganda campaign running over decades. In the West, it is enough to label a politician like Corbyn as being sympathetic to ‘stalinism’ to discredit him.

But who has the more realistic view of Stalin, Russians or us?

Are the Russians right to believe their own memories rather than our press?

Turn it around. Who will have a more realistic view of Thatcher, people in Scotland who experienced her, or Americans who only got favorable press accounts of her?

A spectre is haunting Europe — the spectre of communism. All the powers of old Europe have entered into a holy alliance to exorcise this spectre

The negative image Stalin now has in the West had to be constructed. Back in the 1940s the popular view, including the press view, was favorable (Figure 3). Communist ideas enjoyed broader supporter support than at any time since. CP membership peaked at 56,000 in the late 40s. They won two MPs and over 100,000 votes in the 1945 General Election, with its candidates getting an average vote of 14.6%. The Party also took over half a million votes in the following year’s local council elections winning 215 council seats. At this point, during Stalin’s lifetime, association with him did not harm socialists. Stalin was the veritable spectre of communism and the fear this spectre instilled in our ruling classes allowed Attlee and Cripps to embark on the nearest thing to a transition to socialism that Britain has ever seen.

Figure 3. In the 1940s the public image of Stalin in the West was also favourable. This had to be deconstructed by propaganda after the Cold War started.

In due course, the powers of Old Europe entered into their holy alliance, NATO, to exorcise this spectre. Along with military preparation went ideological warfare. Contemporary readers will be familiar with the Integrity Initiative, which exists to covertly spread anti Russian stories through the press and internet. We know that they directly pay stipends to reporters, including some in Scotland to ensure that they place such stories.

But this is but a pale shadow of the efforts that the Secret Intelligence Service(SIS) and the CIA ran from the 50s to the 70s to disseminate stories hostile to the USSR. This effort went to the extent of funding historians and whole University schools (Glasgow School of Soviet Studies comes to mind) in order to develop and spread this propaganda. As a result, several generations grew up in the Anglo Saxon countries with anti-communism and anti-stalinism as part of their education. For the working class who did not go to university this came in the form of crude tabloid stories. For those who, with the expansion of university education, got a higher education there were the more sophisticated stories developed by paid historians like Conquest or the openly fictional works of the fascist Solzhenitsyn.

Tories were not the targets of this propaganda. The target was the labour movement and the left. The aim was to cultivate a ‘responsible’ left who would repudiate the USSR and in doing so would reject the ideas of a nationalised planned economy. The state would then pitch these against those in the labour movement who were seen as potentially sympathetic to the communism. From the MI6 standpoint these were a broad group which, in the 1970s ran from Harold Wilson to Arthur Scargill.

The SIS propaganda really paid dividends when Kinnock chucked nationalisation of industry and adopted the market socialist ideas developed by Prof Nove of Glasgow( a man with a SIS background). Shortly after, when Blair completely removed clause IV from the Labour constitution the work was done, and the schools of (anti-)Soviet Studies could be disbanded.

Now, 20 years later, the capitalist press is worried that the Spectre is re-awakening. A new generation, not exposed to the intensive propaganda of the past is expressing support for communism. The Nov 4 2017 Washington Times ran the headline:

Another poll reported

“One in five (23%) of Americans age 21-29 consider Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin a ‘hero’; 26% for Vladimir Lenin; 23% for Kim Jong Un,”

This is understandably worrying for the capitalist press in the USA. The last thing they want is to return to the situation of the 1940s when Stalin was widely seen as a hero. But it is strange that a member of a small Scottish socialist party should have the same worries.

A revival of Soviet imagery on the internet goes hand in hand with increases in class polarisation and increasing support for socialism. Far from being inversely related as Garry seems to fear, when Soviet imagery captures the imagination of youth, support for socialism rises. We should welcome it with open arms.

The last thing we should be doing is reviving the old SIS lies about communism killing millions. Thanks to the internet, Millennials have access to counter-narratives that were out of reach to previous generations. Just two links for now:

From Sputnik Holodomor Hoax: Joseph Stalin’s Crime That Never Took Place and from CounterPunch The Ukrainian Famine: Only Evidence Can Disclose the Truth

The Western press spreads absurd stories about 66 million deaths under Stalin. Well in one sense, all social systems have a 100% mortality rate. None offer immortality. So in a big country, there will be millions of deaths per decade. This real issue is how many premature deaths there are and whether life expectancy is going up or down.

You can not hide millions of premature deaths. They show up as declining population and declining life expectancy.

When you look at the actual population figures they show the opposite of what Garry claims. It was the deconstruction of the ‘stalinist’ system in the 1990s that brought about a catastrophic rise in the death rate. Figure 4 shows the trend of the Soviet population, steadily rising, except when interrupted by the German invasion. It is worth noting that anti-soviet sources often include deaths due to the German invasion as ‘victims of communism’.

Figure 4. The growth of Soviet population up to the fall of the Stalinist system. Dark dots are an actual census or published counts. The top trend line shows what the population would have been without the loss of some 26 million during the war. The effect of a big excess of death is clearly visible.

If we contrast that trend up to the fall of communism with what happened after, the difference is dramatic (Figure 5). As soon as capitalism is restored deaths of poverty and despair shoot up. For Russia this amounts to some 12 million excess deaths. They are clearly visible in the graph. For a year by year breakdown, see Table 2.

At a time when capitalism in the UK and in the USA is bringing about terrible rises in death rates and declining life expectancy, what is point of repeating discredited cold war propaganda about life expectancy in the USSR? We should unhesitatingly state that it is socialism that brings longer life expectancy and capitalism that brings poverty despair and early death (Figure 6).

Figure 5. Population prior to and after the restoration of capitalism around 1990. The sharp decline in population due to the higher death rate is clearly evident in the figures. (Plotted by me from UN population database)

Figure 6. The rise in mortality due to the diseases of despair, USA

Table 2. Demographic effects of anti-stalinism. Excess deaths consequent the introduction of capitalism in Russia amount to some 6 million over 10 years. Data from successive UN Demographic Yearbooks, table 18. The death rate started rising with Perestoika, and shot up under Yeltsin.

Remembering Stalin in a recent Moscow demonstration.

SOURCE: https://paulcockshott-wordpress-com.cdn.ampproject.org/...

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

William Paul Cockshott is a Scottish computer scientist, Marxian economist and a reader at the University of Glasgow. Wikipedia

SELECT COMMENTS
(Original thread)

Karl

March 5, 2019 at 5:09 pm

Paul,

It might be harmless if the extent of the matter was people sharing Stalin memes on the internet. In truth there is a creeping rise of neo-Stalinism that literally denies Stalin did anything wrong or that the USSR, at least during the Stalin period, made any mistakes. Look at any of TheFinnishBolshevik’s videos on the purges. It’s one giant exercise in confirmation-bias.

“A revival of Soviet imagery on the internet goes hand in hand with increases in class polarisation and increasing support for socialism.”

The problem is that to the neo-Stalinists the idea of socialism is *not* something democratic based on a scientific criticism of society. It is an authoritarian state justified by dogma. This is the kind of “socialism” they advocate. These people take Stalin’s Russia as *the* model for socialism. This is not just a minor historical disagreement but a massive ideological difference built upon falsifications.

I’ll finish with a quote from Engels,
“In every revolution some follies are inevitably committed, just as they are at any other time, and when quiet is finally restored, and calm reasoning comes, people necessarily conclude: We have done many things which had better been left undone, and we have neglected many things which we should have done, and for this reason things went wrong.
“But what a lack of judgment it requires to declare the Commune sacred, to proclaim it infallible, to claim that every burnt house, every executed hostage, received their just dues to the dot over the i! Is not that equivalent to saying that during that week in May the people shot just as many opponents as was necessary, and no more, and burnt just those buildings which had to be burnt, and no more? Does not that repeat the saying about the first French Revolution: Every beheaded victim received justice, first those beheaded by order of Robespierre and then Robespierre himself!”
https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1874/06/26.htm
1. Paul Cockshott
  
  March 7, 2019 at 12:19 pm
  
  The issue here is what is rejected when people reject ‘stalinism’, in current press usage it implies rejecting public ownership and planning of the economy. There are of course aspects of the Soviet form of economy that can be substantially improved on, but those improvements rely on taking what it achieved as ones starting point and then building a positive critique from that. The ideological effect of current ‘anti-stalinism’ is effectively to block off being able to think of how to actually run a socialist economy.
gerald kavanagh

March 6, 2019 at 10:36 pm

Impressive facts and telling references. lucid, powerful and instructive and grounds for optimism.

Reply
Rafael Granados

March 9, 2019 at 6:36 pm

I fully agree with Professor Cokshott’s presentation.

The anti-Stalin paradigm is absolutely stifling in Western countries and serves as an irreplaceable propaganda weapon and “brainwashing” of the working population.

This does not happen, of course in Russia or China.

See in this regard, Daniel Bleitrach’s book: “2017-2017.Staline tyran sanguinaire ou héros national ?, Les editions delga, 2017.

*http://editionsdelga.fr/produit/1917-2017-staline-tyran-sanguinaire-ou-heros-national/

The “New Left”, of course, adheres faithfully to the demonization of Stalin with the same fervor that social democracy did in 1914 to the “Sacred Union”.

Academic historiography is an anticommunist propaganda industry, there are only some honest investigators, the so-called “revisionists” like Arch Getty, Robert Thurston, Jabara Carley, Stephen Wheatcroft or Geoffrey Roberts but they are a minority against the “warriors of the cold war” .

There are also incisive sharpshooters who have opened a gap in the wall of lies of “Anti-Stalinism”, are the cases of the Marxist philosopher Domenico Losurdo, Grover Furr with his systematic review of the evidence in six books and the French historian Annie Lacroix Riz.

* https: //en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Domenico_Losurdo

SPECIAL NOTE: Losurdo on Stalin: History and Criticism of A Black Legend

In Stalin: History and Criticism of A Black Legend (2008), Losurdo stimulated a debate about Joseph Stalin, on whom he claimed it is built a kind of black legend intended to discredit all communism.^[22] Opposed to the comparison of Nazism and Stalinism, Losurdo criticised the concept of totalitarianism, especially in the works of Hannah Arendt, François Furet, Karl Popper and Ernst Nolte, among others. He argued that totalitarianism was a polysemic concept with origins in Christian theology and that applying it to the political sphere required an operation of abstract schematism which makes use of isolated elements of historical reality to place Nazi Germany and other fascist regimes and the Soviet Union and other socialist states in the dock together, serving the anti-communism of Cold War-era intellectuals rather than reflecting intellectual research.^[35]^[36]

Reception

[37]

Grover Furr, who has been called “a ‘revisionist’ on a career-long quest to exonerate Stalin” and has written the book Khrushchev Lied on the “Secret Speech”,^[40] starting a mutual friendship with Losurdo, whom Furr praised especially for his 2008 book on Stalin.^[41] His book also caused controversies internationally, especially in Germany, with critics labelling Losurdo a neo-Stalinist.^[42]^[43]^[44]

[45]^[46] Additionally, Losurdo wrote a back-cover to Furr’s 2013 book The Murder of Sergei Kirov and an introduction to the book which remains unpublished.^[47]^[48]

*https: //msuweb.montclair.edu/~furrg/

* http: //www.historiographie.info/

I live in Spain, and here the dictator Franco is constantly bleached while the anti-Stalin propaganda is terrible and constant.

Best regards.

Chris Kovacic

December 20, 2019 at 6:26 pm

I’m sure that everyone Stalin framed, tortured, assassinated, worked to death, or let starve would also tick ‘yes’ on a favorability poll if they could.
1. Paul Cockshott
  
  January 1, 2020 at 8:08 pm
  
  The issue is what would those tens of millions who would have been exterminated in the Nazi final solution to the Slav problem have thought. It was the policies of the Soviet government in the 1930s that ensured that the USSR won and its people were not exterminated as provided for in GeneralplanOst.

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The Stalin controversy smoulders on

SPECIAL NOTE: Losurdo on Stalin: History and Criticism of A Black Legend

Reception

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