President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, his unfortunate utterances on Israel have given the imperial vultures grist for their propaganda mills. 
Flipping idly through my morning newspaper, my eyes fell upon a headline, which, given its significance, should have appeared on the front page, but instead was tucked away at the back, on page A9.

“Israel won’t rule out attack on Iran”. (1)

Now, it’s true that Israel’s threatening to attack Iran is hardly news. Here was Ehud Barak, Israeli defense minister, over two years ago, talking about measures to dissuade Iran from continuing to process uranium: “We clearly believe that no option should be removed from the table. This is our policy. We mean it.” (2) And here was Barak just the other day: “We strongly believe that…no option should be removed from the table.” (3) Same defense minister. Same words. Same threat.

Yet while the threat may be old, its significance remains undiminished. One country is threatening to commit the supreme international crime: to attack another even though it, itself, has not been attacked by the country it rattles its saber at. Were Iran to threaten Israel, the headline “Iran won’t rule out attack on the Jewish state” wouldn’t be tucked away inconspicuously in the back pages of my newspaper. Instead, it would be shouted in bold letters across the front page. “My God!”, NATO state officials and editorialists would cry. “Iran is threatening to attack the Jewish state. Something must be done!”

But in this case it is Israel–which the Western media and governments have long embraced and set forth as the land of the good guys—that is issuing the threat against a country which has, since its escape from US domination in 1979, been limned as dark and menacing, and so while no one wants war, surely it’s all perfectly understandable that the plucky Israelis should be declaring their determination to stand against the Judeophobic menace of the Islamic Republic. After all, isn’t Iran building nuclear weapons to wipe Israel off the map? Well, if you listen to the Israelis and their US protector, the answer is yes.

Contrary to Western propaganda, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad enjoys much popularity in many sectors of Iranian society.

The Strangelovian Israeli historian Benny Morris declares that Israel is “threatened almost daily with destruction by Iran’s leaders.” To eclipse this threat, Iran must be wiped off the map before Iran does any wiping of its own. “Israel has no option,” Morris chillingly says, “but to use its nuclear arsenal to destroy Iran, unless the US uses its formidable military to destroy Iran’s nuclear facilities first.” (4)

Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu warns: “Iran is even arming itself with nuclear weapons to realize that goal (the obliteration of the Jewish state), and until now the world has not stopped it. The threat to our existence, is not theoretical. It cannot be swept under the carpet; it cannot be reduced. It faces us and all humanity, and it must be thwarted.” (5)

Ominous. But the idea that Iran intends to acquire nuclear weapons to obliterate Israel is pure flummery, as real as the threat King Kong poses to Manhattan; a work of fiction, intended to create a frisson of fear.

So, why do I say this? First, we don’t know whether Iran intends to acquire nuclear weapons, or only the capability of producing them, or even that. An International Atomic Energy Agency report, released yesterday, tables evidence that Iran is secretly working on a nuclear bomb. So let’s assume for the moment that Iran’s leaders do indeed intend to build nuclear weapons.

It’s widely agreed that it’s highly unlikely that Iran would be able to build nuclear weapons while its nuclear energy program is still under the scrutiny of UN inspectors. A more likely scenario is that Tehran would develop the capability to produce a bomb from within the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), and once it had reached the point of being able to do so, would turn its capability into reality by withdrawing from the treaty, ejecting inspectors, and making a mad dash to develop a rudimentary arsenal. That’s what North Korea did, when, following the demise of the Soviet Union, the United States decided to re-target some its nuclear missiles from its old nemesis to the DPRK.

But would Iran ever get as far as being able to make a mad dash to status as the world’s newest nuclear-weapons state? The United States and Israel have made plenty of noise about bombing Iran’s nuclear facilities before Iran’s nuclear scientists ever reach the point of having the capability of producing nuclear weapons. Indeed, one of the reasons why the threat to attack Iran’s nuclear facilities has been trotted out anew is because the steps the United States and Israel have taken to sabotage Iran’s nuclear program–from the Stuxnet computer virus to the assassination of Iran’s nuclear scientists to punitive sanctions–haven’t stopped the program’s development—although they have certainly slowed it.

But let’s make another assumption. Let’s assume that despite US and Israeli efforts to cripple Iran’s ability to produce nuclear weapons, that Iran, despite these impediments, brings this capability to fruition, and furthermore, manages against the concerted opposition of the United States and Israel to develop a few nuclear warheads. Does the possession of warheads mean that Iran will use them–either to wipe Israel off the map or attack the United States?

No, it does not.

The idea that Iran is an “existential” threat to Israel comes from Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s alleged promise to wipe Israel off the map. US and Israeli political leaders have been invoking this chestnut for years to justify the assassinations, economic warfare, covert destabilization, and threats of military intervention used to undermine Iran’s nuclear energy program. The problem is, the allegation is groundless.

The firestorm started when Nazila Fathi, then the Tehran correspondent of The New York Times, reported a story almost six years ago that was headlined: “Wipe Israel ‘off the map’ Iranian says.” The article attributed newly elected Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s remarks to a report by the ISNA press agency.

Then, specialists such as Juan Cole of the University of Michigan and Arash Norouzi of the Mossadegh Project pointed out that the original statement in Persian did not say that Israel should be wiped from the map, but instead that it would collapse.
Khamenei stated, “Iran’s position, which was first expressed by the Imam [Khomeini] and stated several times by those responsible, is that the cancerous tumor called Israel must be uprooted from the region.” He went on to say in the same speech that “Palestinian refugees should return and Muslims, Christians and Jews could choose a government for themselves, excluding immigrant Jews.”

Khamenei has been consistent, stating repeatedly that the goal is not the military destruction of the Jewish state but “the defeat of Zionist ideology and the dissolution of Israel through a ‘popular referendum.’” (6)

To be sure, anyone who regards Israel as a “cancerous tumor” that “must be uprooted from the region” and replaced by a government freely chosen by the people who lived in Palestine prior to its conquest by Zionist settlers, is an existential threat to Zionism, as a living, breathing idea implanted in the soil of Palestine. But while the designation of Iran as an existential threat to Israel is literally true (in the sense that Iran doesn’t accept Zionism and therefore works against it by supporting such anti-Zionist groups as Hamas and Hezbollah), the phrase “existential threat” is twisted to mean something more than intended: military destruction rather than collapse through a referendum.

Political leaders are in the habit of turning non-threats into dire ones in order to manipulate public opinion to clear a path to get what they want. In other words, they manufacture consent for their policies by lying. A not particularly egregious example of this is provided by US Defense Secretary Leon Panetta, who, needing to defend the Pentagon’s Brobdignagian budget against possible cuts, recently “cited North Korea and Iran as persistent threats, and said that the military had to maintain ‘the ability to deter and defeat them.’” (7) North Korea and Iran are not threats to the physical safety and welfare of a single US civilian, and anyone who says they are is using a trowel to liberally spread a thick film of bullshit upon the face of public discourse.

First, it should be noted that Iran’s military is built for self-defense. It doesn’t have aircraft carriers, a large fleet of warships, strategic bombers or foreign military bases. The United States, by contrast, bases its Fifth Fleet in Bahrain, within shouting distance of Iran, directly across the Persian Gulf. You won’t find Iranian warships lingering menacingly in the Gulf of Mexico or patrolling the Atlantic and Pacific on the edges of US territorial waters, but the United States does the equivalent in Tehran’s neighorhood.

Second, a graph nearby shows that Iran’s military spending, at $20B per annum, pales in comparison to the budgets of the United States ($700B) and even that of the United States’ regional allies ($102B). The US military budget is 35 times larger than Iran’s, and the sum of that of the United States, its invariable military side-kick, the United Kingdom, and Washington’s regional allies, is 43 times larger. The gulf in fighting ability supported by these expenditures is as yawning as the one between the New York City Police Department tactical squadron and a troop of Boy Scouts armed with BB guns.

As regards North Korea, the charge that it is a threat to the security of a single US civilian is even more absurd. Like Iran, North Korea’s military is built for defense, and it too has no foreign military bases, no aircraft carriers, no nuclear armed submarines and no strategic bombers, and it has never—unlike its compatriot neighbor to the south—sent troops abroad to fight in other country’s wars (South Korean troops fought in Vietnam, Iraq and Afghanistan on behalf of its patron, the United States.)

North Korean military expenditures are even more modest than Iran’s. Pyongyang spends an estimated $10B on its military (and that’s probably stretching it), many of whose members are engaged in agriculture and other civilian activities. (8) By comparison, South Korea (on whose soil are resident close to 30,000 US troops), spends $39B, while nearby Japan (home to 40,000 US troops) spends $34B. Together, these two US allies outspend Pyongyang on their militaries by a factor of 7 to 1. Add to this US defense expenditures and those of Britain—a country that can be counted on to docilely follow the United States into any war, no matter whether the Conservatives or Labour are in power–and North Korea, surrounded by US troops and warships and whose air borders are incessantly menaced by the US Air Force, is outspent over 80 to 1. A threat? The claim is laughable.

And that understates the imbalance. What military budgets don’t reveal is the vastly superior destructive power of US military hardware (and that of many of its allies) compared to Iran’s and North Korea’s. The kill capacity of US strike aircraft, cruise missiles, and battleships is far in excess of the heavy artillery that figures so prominently in the North Korean armamentarium, for example.

And then there’s nuclear weapons. North Korea may (or may not) have an arsenal of a few warheads, and Iran may (or may not) be seeking one, but these rudimentary collections pale in comparison with the US, British, and Israeli arsenals arrayed against them. Would Iran attack Israel, or North Korea attack South Korea, with one or two nuclear missiles, knowing that to do so would invite a retaliatory tsunami of missiles from the target (in the case of an attack on Israel) or its hyper-armed patron, the United States, or both? The outcome of so foolhardy an attack would be game-over for either country.

“During the Democratic primaries, then candidate Hilary Clinton (now US Secretary of State) warned that if Iran attacked Israel, the United States would ‘totally obliterate’ Iran.” (9) Three years ago, Israeli “Infrastructure Minister Benjamin Ben-Eliezer went on record saying, ‘We must tell them: ‘If you so much as dream of attacking Israel, before you even finish dreaming there won’t be an Iran anymore.’” (10) It’s doubtful that the Iranians and North Koreans failed to get the message.

And then there’s the matter of Washington’s 2010 Nuclear Posture Review (NPR). If read superficially, the NPR would lead you to believe that US policy makers have finally figured out that the cardinal rule of nonproliferation is to abjure military aggression against non-nuclear states. Countries that aren’t threatened by nuclear powers have no need to develop nuclear weapons for self-defense. However, a closer reading of the review shows that nothing has changed. US president Barack Obama has stayed true to form, obscuring his pursuit of his predecessors’ policies beneath honeyed phrases that create the impression of change, where no change of substance exists.

The NPR declares “that the United States will not use or threaten to use nuclear weapons against non-nuclear weapons states”, even if they attack the United States, its vital interests or allies and partners with chemical or biological weapons. This differs, but only on the surface, from the policy of preceding administrations which refused to renounce the use of nuclear weapons against non-nuclear states. There are a number of reasons why the difference is apparent only.

While nuclear weapons are widely regarded as being unparalleled in their destructive power (and they are), the United States is able to deliver overwhelming destructive force through its conventional military capabilities. A promise not to use or threaten to use nuclear weapons against non-nuclear states is not the same as an assurance not to use or threaten to use devastating military force. Six decades ago it was possible to obliterate a city through conventional means, as the Western Allies demonstrated in the firebombing of Dresden. If a city could be destroyed by conventional means more than half a century ago, imagine what the Pentagon could do today through conventional forces alone. Indeed, the NPR makes clear that the United States is prepared to shrink its nuclear arsenal partly because “the growth of unrivalled U.S. conventional military capabilities” allows Washington to fulfill its geostrategic goals “with significantly lower nuclear force levels and with reduced reliance on nuclear weapons.”

The NPR also provides a number of escape hatches that allow Washington to continue to dangle a nuclear sword of Damocles over the heads of Iran and North Korea. One is that nuclear weapons can be used, or their used threatened, against a country that is not “party to the NPT” even if the country doesn’t yet have nuclear weapons, or it is unclear whether it does. This is the North Korea escape clause. It allows Washington to continue to threaten North Korea with nuclear obliteration, just as it has done since the early 1990s when the US Strategic Command announced it was re-targeting some of its strategic nuclear missiles on the DPRK (the reason why North Korea withdrew from the NPT.)

Another escape clause allows Washington to reach for the nuclear trigger whenever it deems a country to have fallen short of “compliance with [its] nuclear non-proliferation obligations,” even if the country doesn’t have nuclear weapons and is a party to the NPT. This is the Iran escape hatch, intended to allow Washington to maintain the threat of nuclear annihilation vis-à-vis Iran or any other country Washington unilaterally declares to be noncompliant with the treaty’s obligations.

As for the United States’ commitment to refrain from reaching for its nuclear arsenal in response to a chemical or biological attack on itself, its vital interests (a term that defies geography and democracy, for how is it that the United States’ vital interests extend to other people’s countries?) its allies and its partners, this too is verbal legerdemain. As a careful reading of the NPR makes clear, the truth of the matter is that the United States will attack any country with nuclear weapons if such an attack is deemed necessary by Washington to protect its interests, which is to say, the interests of the corporations, banks and investors whose senior officials and representatives dominate policy formulation in Washington and provide the major funding, and post-political jobs, to the country’s politicians. According to the NPR, “the United States reserves the right to make any adjustment in [its commitment] that may be warranted…” Translation: We won’t attack non-nuclear weapons states with nuclear weapons unless we decide it’s in our interests to do so.

Finally, we need to ask whether either Iran or North Korea have a motive to attack the United States, and whether Iran has a motive to attack Israel. Iran’s leaders may abhor the Zionist conquest of what they see as territory important to Islam, but that doesn’t mean they’re willing to take on a suicide mission to deal a one- or two-nuclear missile blow to Israel—one which, by the way, probably wouldn’t completely destroy Israel, but would incinerate Iran in the hail of retaliatory blows that followed. As for tangling with the United States, neither country wants that. What they want is peaceful coexistence—to be left alone to develop in their own way.

The trouble is, the United States hasn’t the barest interest in peaceful coexistence, and the reason why is the key, not only to understanding US foreign policy, but to understanding why a US-led NATO spent months bombing Libya to drive the former regime from power.

But first, a digression. As a matter for inquiry, the approaches critics of US foreign policy take to explain their subject—if they explain it at all-is as interesting as US foreign policy itself. The usual tack is to expose US hypocrisy. For example, critics might point out that the United States defends Israel, which has nuclear weapons and doesn’t belong to the NPT, while threatening to attack Iran, which belongs to the NPT, and doesn’t have nuclear weapons. Or that NATO bombed Libya to prevent the government there from using its military to put down an uprising but allowed Bahrain and Saudi Arabia to use their militaries to put down an uprising in Bahrain. Some critics stop there, reasoning that if they’re going to muster opposition to US foreign policy, it’s enough to show that it’s built on hypocrisy. Or they denounce US behavior as immoral, undemocratic or against international law, because it is, and they figure that showing this will rouse the indignation of people of good conscience. Other US foreign policy critics cogently show why US foreign policy couldn’t possibly be guided by the objectives US leaders say it is guided by. But they stop there, leaving their audiences to scratch their heads, wondering, if not for the reasons stated, then why?

Liberals insist that US foreign policy makes no sense and the reason why is because US leaders are confused, myopic, poorly motivated, or just plain dumb. An example of this point of view is offered by former US president Jimmy Carter, who contends that the conflict with North Korea can be resolved in half a day (11). Apparently US leaders have neither the political will nor smarts to do so.

The truth of the matter is that there is nothing to be gained for the corporations, investors and banks that dominate US foreign policy—the one percent who really matter in the United States–from peaceful coexistence with North Korea. For one thing, peaceful coexistence implies that each side poses a threat to the other, but North Korea, despite the rhetorical nonsense of political leaders seeking to justify Pentagon budgets, poses no threat to the United States. A $10B defense budget against a $700B one; aging aircraft whose pilots are grounded most of the time due to shortages of fuel; a puny arsenal of nuclear weapons; an army whose training time is partly displaced by engagement in farming; the most sanctioned country on earth, whose economy has been crippled by six decades of US economic warfare; a country of 24 million hemmed in to the south and east by the troops of a country of 300 million; no, North Korea is not a threat.

So how is it that peaceful coexistence would deliver anything in the way of improved security for Americans, which they already have in abundance anyway? It wouldn’t. The demand for peaceful coexistence is little more than a Quixotic plea from Pyongyang to be left alone to develop in a self-directed manner in exchange for giving up a few nuclear weapons that at best, are, to use an Edward Herman term, a “threat of self-defense.” The benefits of peaceful coexistence are all on the North Korean side.

After all, what does the United States get for promising to leave North Korea to develop in its own way? An open door for exports and investments? Hardly. North Korea’s integration into a US-dominated system of global capitalism? No. US troops on North Korean soil? Absolutely not. North Korea’s incorporation into a US-led military alliance against China? No possibility. What it gets is North Korea giving up a deterrent to attack in exchange for the United States promising not to attack. This is a one-sided deal. No wonder North Korea wants it, and Washington keeps turning it down. David Straub, director of the US State Department’s Korea desk from 2002 to 2004 sums up nicely why peaceful coexistence isn’t on Washington’s Korea agenda. “North Korea’s closed economic and social system means the country has virtually nothing of value to offer the United States.” (12) What the United States wants from North Korea (an open door to investment, exports, ownership and political influence) is the opposite of what North Korea offers (a closed door and a prickly sense of independence—both political and economic). Washington abandoned the policy of peaceful coexistence with the USSR, which was militarily strong enough to make the US a miserable place in which to live if the Pentagon ever decided to start a US-Soviet war. So why would it accept peaceful coexistence with a hated closed system that poses a minor threat at best?

Other critics of US foreign policy explain their subject in terms of power. US leaders want to preserve or expand US power (or primacy or hegemony) against such “peer competitors” as China or Russia or such regional powers as Iran. Of course, it’s never said what US leaders (or Chinese or Russian leaders) want power for. To believe these critics, power is what everyone wants, and the quest for it, as an end in itself, is what makes the world go around. But the trick here is to inquire into why power is sought. Washington doesn’t seek to enlarge its power so that it can strong-arm governments around the world into furnishing their citizens with public healthcare, guaranteed employment and free education. On the contrary, it seeks power to do the very opposite. Power serves some end, and in the case of US state power, it serves the end of protecting and enlarging the big business interests of the big business people who run the state of a big business country; it protects profits and establishes the conditions that allow them to grow—both at home and overseas.

It’s curious that the power-is-the-alpha-and-omega-of-world-politics view should hold such a strong sway among some critics of US foreign policy, when in the internal affairs of capitalist countries the organizing principle is private business, and the alpha and omega of private business, is profits. Sure, it’s understood that business leaders want power, but not so they can lord it over others, and take pleasure in its trappings, but so they can enlarge their capital. Power is a means to an end.

So why should foreign policy be any different? The moment Gaddafi was toppled by NATO bombs, a stream of NATO foreign ministers traipsed to Benghazi, their countries’ corporate CEOs in tow, to line up new business deals. It was clear the National Transitional Council (NTC), whose key members—one, an exile who had been teaching economics in the United States for years; another, who earned his PhD in 1985 from the University of Pittsburgh under the late Richard Cottam, a former US intelligence official in Iran; and a third, who had been living within hailing distance of CIA headquarters in Langley, Virginia, before being spirited back to Libya– would be a good deal more accommodating of US business interests than Gaddafi had ever been. For all his turning over a new leaf to befriend the West, Gaddafi had irked the US State Department by practicing “resource nationalism” and trying to “Libyanize” the economy, (13) which is to say, turn foreign investment to the advantage of Libyans. His threat in 2009 to re-nationalize Libya’s oil fields, stirred up old fears. (14) Now, the NTC—with its US-friendly principals–was promising juicy plums to the countries whose bombs had ousted Gaddafi.

The US ambassador to Libya, Gene A. Cretz, channeling the ghost of uber-imperialist, Cecil Rhodes, acknowledged that Libyan oil was “the jewel in the crown” but that there would be broader profit-making opportunities to lay hold of, now that Gaddafi had been bombed from power. Even “in Qaddafi’s time,” he observed, the Libyans “were starting from A to Z in terms of building infrastructure and other things. If we can get American companies here on a fairly big scale, which we will try to do everything we can to do that, then this will redound to improve the situation in the United States with respect to our own jobs.” (15) US Senator John McCain, for his part, noted that “American investors were watching Libya with keen interest and wanted to do business” in Libya as soon the country was pacified. (16)

The New York Times’ Scott Shane summed up the excitement.

Western security, construction and infrastructure companies that see profit-making opportunities receding in Iraq and Afghanistan have turned their sights on Libya, now free of four decades of dictatorship. Entrepreneurs are abuzz about the business potential of a country with huge needs and the oil to pay for them, plus the competitive advantage of Libyan gratitude toward the United States and its NATO partners.

A week before Colonel Qaddafi’s death on Oct. 20, a delegation from 80 French companies arrived in Tripoli to meet officials of the Transitional National Council, the interim government. Last week, the new British defense minister, Philip Hammond, urged British companies to “pack their suitcases” and head to Tripoli. (17)

Shane’s summing up provides a pretty good account of what the NATO bombing campaign had been all about, with one exception. Western security, construction and infrastructure companies aren’t turning their sights on Libya, because it is now free of four decades of dictatorship, but because it is now free of four decades of economic nationalism—an economic nationalism that once privileged Libyans over Western banks, investors and corporations. The country is now open for business…on the West’s terms.

The view that US foreign policy is shaped by considerations related to preserving and enlarging profit-making opportunities for investors, banks and corporations headquartered in the United States is based on two realities.

• The formulation of US foreign policy is dominated by the CEO’s, corporate lawyers and major investors who circulate between Wall Street and Washington.
• The countries that the United States has singled out for regime change, without exception, pursue self-directed economic policies aimed at fostering self-development and therefore deny or limit US investment and export opportunities.

Every rich country, with the exception of Britain, became rich through active state intervention in their economies to create industries, subsidize them and protect them from competition while they grew. The United States, as much as Germany, Japan, and other now rich industrialized countries, followed this path. (18) At one point, the United States had the world’s highest tariff barriers, which it used to shelter its nascent manufacturing industries against competition from established British firms. As protected industries matured under the guiding hand of a dirigiste state, they naturally sought to expand beyond their borders, as the possibilities offered by national markets were exhausted. Now, the policies that served their development so ably in the past, became fetters. Rather than protected markets at home, they needed open markets abroad. Poor countries couldn’t be allowed to emulate the policies that made the rich countries rich, because state-ownership, subsidies and trade barriers would eclipse the further development of the once protected industries of the rich countries. Poor countries would have to open themselves up as fields for exploitation by the banks, investors and corporations of the rich countries that had grown fat on the dirigiste policies some poor countries were now seeking to emulate.

A glance through the US Library of Congress’s country study on Iran reveals a truth that US officials never mention and that US foreign policy critics seem unaware of. Iran is not the kind of place an enterprising US business can hope to make money in. “The public sector dominates the economic scene, and the subordination of the private sector is observed in all industries and commerce.” (19) Worse, “Public-sector investments in transportation…utilities, telecommunications, and other infrastructure have grown over time.” (20) “The government plays a significant role in Iran’s economy, either directly through participation in the production and distribution of goods and services, or indirectly through policy intervention.” (21) Indeed, Iran’s constitution defines the public sector as primary, and “the private sector as the means of furnishing the government’s needs rather than responding to market requirements.” (22) Democratic socialists will be shocked to discover that this is the very same economic model that such New Left socialists as Ralph Miliband defined as emblematic of what a democratic socialism ought to be (which isn’t to say that Iran is a democratic socialist state, only that economically it is very close to what many socialist thinkers have envisaged for Western socialism.) In any event, it will be conceded that any economy that bears even a passing resemblance to that favored by radical democratic socialists is not likely to get a ringing endorsement from the kinds of people who formulate US foreign policy.

Other reasons why Iran’s economic policies are likely to have provoked the animosity of the US State Department: Despite its leaders making noises about going on a privatizing binge, Iran’s public sector has soberly grown rather than shrunk. (23) What’s more, large sectors of Iran’s economy remain off-limits to private ownership. ”Since the Revolution, the government has retained monopoly rights to the extraction, processing, and sales of minerals from large and strategic mines.” (24) Iran’s “agricultural policy is intended to support farmers and encourage production of strategically important crops” (25), not to open doors to US agribusiness. ”After the Revolution, many transportation companies, banks, and insurance companies were nationalized” (26) while price controls and subsidies have been used to make important consumer goods affordable (though many subsidies have been lifted recently.)

Wall Street and the US State Department dislike state-owned enterprises that serve the self-directed development goals of independent foreign countries, because they displace private investment by US capital. They abhor the practice of foreign governments subsidizing and protecting local business enterprises because it makes the task of US firms competing in overseas markets more difficult, and thereby limits the overseas profits of US firms. They revile regulations that protect local populations from pollution, desperation wages and deplorable working conditions, because they cut into profits. Some or all of these practices form significant parts of the economic policies of every country in the cross-hairs of US foreign policy, including Libya under Gaddafi and Iran today.

Washington doesn’t want to bring about a change of regime in Tehran to install a pliant government that will help expand US power. It wants to bring about a change of regime in Tehran that will cancel economic policies aimed at Iran’s self-development and replace them with policies that will open up the country’s resources, markets, labor and land to US banks, corporations and investors. It wants the holy trinity of free-trade, free-enterprise and free-markets at the center of poor countries’ economic policies, not protected trade, not state-owned and subsidized enterprises, and not trade barriers. (But while preaching the holy trinity abroad, the United States reserves the right to deploy subsidies, impede imports, and rely on state-intervention to support key industries at home. Consistency doesn’t matter. Profits do.)

To reach the goal of turning Iran into a country that can disgorge a bonanza of profits to US corporations and investors, Iran must first be denied the capability of mounting an effective defense against military intervention by the United States and its allies. It is for this reason that the United States and its Middle Eastern Doberman, Israel, have embarked upon a program of sabotage, assassinations and threats of aerial bombing aimed at crippling even the possibility of Iran acquiring a nuclear deterrent. The idea that Tehran is bent on lobbing a few nuclear-tipped missiles toward Israel, to complete what the Fuhrer had left undone, is demagogic nonsense, intended to provide a compelling justification for aggression against Iran. Evoking Hitler’s campaign of genocide against the Jews to invest contrived existential threats with gravitas has been a standard operating procedure of Zionist leaders dating to 1948. (27) Iran has no intention of attacking Israel, and would commit suicide if it did, a reality we can be certain has not escaped its leaders’ ken.

All of this to say that in order to understand US foreign policy it’s necessary to examine who rules in the United States, who formulates its foreign policy, and how the policy the rulers formulate intersects with their economic interests. (28) This is an inquiry into class. For if an economic elite dominates foreign policy, we should expect to find that the outcomes of foreign policy favor elite economic interests, and that foreign countries that pursue economic policies that are not agreeable to those interests will be harassed, sabotaged, sanctioned, destabilized, and possibly bombed or invaded, until the policies are changed.

It may be objected that the cost to the United States of military intervention in Iran would surely exceed any economic gain that would accrue to the country as a whole. For liberals, this would count as evidence that US foreign policy makers had once again made an error. For others, it would stand as a challenge to the idea that a war on Iran would be a war for profits.

But the costs of military intervention are what economists call externalities—costs created by a firm, an industry or a class, but borne by others. Hydraulic fracturing—the high-pressure injection of fluids into rock to release fossil fuels—creates costs in water pollution and wear and tear on roads used by trucks and heavy machinery. If these costs are internalized—borne by the oil companies whose activities have created them—then hydraulic fracturing makes no sense economically–its costs exceed its returns. But if the costs are externalized—left to society as a whole to absorb—hydraulic fracturing becomes an attractive way for oil companies to turn a profit. (29)

Here’s the parallel with military intervention. The giant engineering firm Bechtel would absorb virtually none of the costs of a successful war on Iran, but if one happens, Bechtel is likely to reap enormous profits in contracts to rebuild the infrastructure that the US Air Force would raze to the ground. For Bechtel, then, US military intervention in Iran would be highly profitable, even though it might not make sense economically when viewed from the perspective of the United States as a whole. Lockheed-Martin, Boeing, Northrop Grumman, General Dynamics and Raytheon—the top five defense contractors–don’t foot the Pentagon’s massive $700B per annum bill, but large portions of that budget are transferred to them in the form of contracts for military hardware. While bloated military expenditures make no sense from the point of view of the country as a collectivity, major defense contractors reap enormous profits from them.

If I persuade the three other members of my family to kick in $100,000 each to buy a $250,000 house (paying $50,000 over the market price) and I contribute nothing, but claim nine of the 10 rooms for my exclusive use, the transaction makes a lot of sense for me, even though it makes no sense when viewed from the perspective of the four of us together.

The problem, then, of arguing that military intervention in Iran would make no sense because the costs would exceed the economic gains that would accrue to the United States as a whole, is failure to recognize that the country is class-divided, and that the gains of war are internalized within the dominant class while the costs are externalized to the bottom 99 percent. Hence, war doesn’t make sense for the bulk of us, but the problem is that decisions about military expenditures, foreign policy and war are in the hands of the top one percent and their loyal servants, who privatize the benefits of these things and socialize the costs. When liberals say US foreign policy makes no sense, they’re being misguided by a set of erroneous assumptions: that the United States has only class, the middle-class, that it is not class-divided, that everyone within it has the same middle-class interests, and that the state rules in the interests of all.

Like all US wars, the war on Iran is a class war (and with sanctions, sabotage, assassinations and saber-rattling it is a war in all but name.) It is a war of class in two respects. First, it is waged on behalf of a class of bankers, major investors, and corporate titans, to knock down walls in Iran that deny this elite access to markets and investment opportunities. Second, it is a war carried out on the back of a class of employees, pensioners, unemployed, and armed forces members—the bottom 99 percent–who bear the cost, through their taxes (and in the future possibly blood.)

The aim is to install local politicians, most of whom will have been educated at US universities where they will have been instilled with imperialist values, who can, assisted by US advisors, make over Iran into an agricultural, natural resources, low-wage appendage of the US economy in the service of Wall Street and the class of owners and high-level managers who occupy its commanding heights. In short, a war for profits.

1. Adam Blomfield, “Israel won’t rule out attack on Iran,” The Ottawa Citizen, November 7, 2011.
2. Associated Press, July 27, 2009.
3. Blomfield.
4. Benny Morris, “Using Bombs to Stave Off War,” The New York Times, July 18, 2008.
5. Isabel Kershner, “Israeli strike on Iran would be ‘stupid,’ ex-spy chief says”, The New York Times, May 8, 2011.
6. Glenn Kessler, “Did Ahmadinejad really say Israel should be ‘wiped off the map’?” The Washington Post, October 6, 2011.
7. Thom Shanker and Elisabeth Bumiller, “Weighing Pentagon cuts, Panetta faces deep pressures”, The New York Times, November 6, 2011.
8. Bruce Cumings. Korea’s Place in the Sun: A Modern History. W.W. Norton & Company. 2005.
9. Mark Landler, “Iran policy now more in sync with Clinton’s views,” The New York Times, February 17, 2010.
10. Mazda Majidi, “What lies behind US policy toward Iran?” Liberation, June 12, 2008.
11. Tim Beal. Crisis in Korea: America, China and the Risk of War. Pluto Press.2011. p. 71.
12. Kim Hyun, “US ‘Has No Intention to Build Close Ties with N Korea’: Ex-official,” Yonhap News, September 2, 2009.
13. Steven Mufson, “Conflict in Libya: U.S. oil companies sit on sidelines as Gaddafi maintains hold”, The Washington Post, June 10, 2011.
14. Thomas Walkom, “What Harper and co. got from the Libyan war”, The Toronto Star, October 21, 2011.
15. David D. Kirkpatrick, “U.S. reopens its embassy in Libya”, The New York Times, September 22, 2011.
16. Kareem Fahim and Rick Gladstone, “U.S. Senate delegation offers praise and caution to Libya’s new leaders”, The New York Times, September 29, 2011.
17. Scott Shane, “West sees opportunity in postwar Libya for businesses”, The New York Times, October 28, 2011.
18. Erik S. Reinert. How Rich Countries Got Rich and Why Poor Countries Stay Poor. Public Affairs. New York. 2007; Ha-Joon Chang. Bad Samaritans: The Myth of Free Trade and the Secret History of Capitalism. Bloomsbury Press. 2008.
19. The Library of Congress. Iran: A Country Study. 2008. p. 143. http://lcweb2.loc.gov/frd/cs/irtoc.html
20. Iran: A Country Study, p. 145.
21. Iran: A Country Study, p. 150.
22. Iran: A Country Study, p. 151.
23. Iran: A Country Study, p. 152.
24. Iran: A Country Study, p. 167.
25. Iran: A Country Study, p. 170.
26. Iran: A Country Study, p. 181.
27. Ilan Pappe. The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine. Oneworld Publications. 2006.
28. Albert Szymanski. The Capitalist State and the Politics of Class. Winthrop Publishers. 1978.
29. Paul Krugman, “Here comes the sun,” The New York Times, November 6, 2011.

I recognize that in my views and even use of certain phrases that I have been influenced by Michael Parenti, and that needs to be acknowledged here. Of particular influence is Parenti’s latest book, The Face of Imperialism, Paradigm Publishers, 2011 and his earlier Against Empire, City Light Books, 1995.

The New York Times ran an article today about Washington’s plans to strengthen its military presence in Australia. Australia is to be used by the US military “as a new center of operations in Asia” from which the United States will seek “to reassert itself in the region and grapple with China’s rise.”

The problem for policy planners in Washington is that “China has become the largest trading partner with most of the countries in the region, undercutting American economic influence.” And so the United States will beef up its presence in the Pacific to prove that “it intends to remain a crucial military and economic power” in Asia.

In simple language this means that China has secured export and investment opportunities in its own backyard and that US corporations, banks and investors want them for themselves. So Washington will use its military to take them away from the Chinese.

For obvious reasons, China thinks this smacks of old-fashioned gun-boat imperialism.

Not so curiously, the headline of the Ian Johnson and Jackie Calmes article announcing Washington’s plan to muscle China out of economic primacy in the region put a chauvinistic spin on the story: “As US looks to Asia, it sees China everywhere.”

Imagine China setting up military bases in Venezuela and sending aircraft carriers to the Gulf of Mexico in order to “assert itself in the region.” How strange would seem a newspaper headline that read: “As China looks to the Gulf of Mexico, it sees the United States everywhere,” as if this were an unexpected discovery.

The New York Times’ headline could have been more aptly written this way: As China looks around its neighborhood, it sees the US military everywhere. But then this would have made US imperialism uncomfortably obvious.

An article by Johnson and Calmes’ New York Times’ colleagues Nada Bakri and Rick Gladstone, also in today’s edition of the newspaper (“Syria faces new threats as opposition seeks allies”) is equally worthy of comment. Their article used “one human rights group, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights” as a source for the number of people killed in recent clashes with Syrian government forces.

One might get the impression that the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights is a neutral human rights monitor without a political agenda. After all, Bakri and Gladstone refer to it as “one human rights group”, and nothing more.

Were it an opposition group seeking to overthrow the Syrian government we might think twice about trusting it as a source of unbiased information.

Well, think twice.

A statement posted to the group’s website on November 15, 2011, makes clear that it is more than just “one human rights group.” In the statement, the group calls for a no-fly zone over Syria “in accordance with its duty and commitment to echo the voice of Syrian Popular Revolution.”

The Observatory makes no secret of the reason it wants “the international community” (which is to say, Nato) dropping bombs on Syrian military installations and Assad supporters: “the acceleration of overthrowing Syrian brutal regime.”

Meanwhile, the Gulf Cooperation Council, the group of US-allied oil autocracies that had been acting as arms and propaganda suppliers to Libyan rebels, played a key role in pushing through the recent Arab League suspension of Syria.

The Council has also become a key to Washington’s plans to continue to dominate the Persian Gulf, even as—or rather, precisely because–US troops are being withdrawn from Iraq.

Both US Defense Secretary Leon Panetta and the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff have said that the United States will “maintain a large military presence in the region, in part as a counterweight to Iran.” The US military will rely on “the six nations in the Gulf Cooperation Council — Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Bahrain, Qatar, the United Arab Emirates and Oman. While the United States has close bilateral military relationships with each, the administration and the military are trying to foster a new ‘security architecture’ for the Persian Gulf that would integrate air and naval patrols and missile defense.”

It’s not only China that is hemmed in by the US military. As Iran looks around its neighborhood, it too sees the US everywhere.
 

WHAT IS THE PURPOSE OF A UNION?  How should unions respond to the oppression of Blacks, women, immigrants and gays? How should unions relate to the rest of the working class, the employer, and the State? Should existing unions be reformed, or is more fundamental change required?

In Solidarity Divided: The Crisis in Organized Labor and a New Path Toward Social Justice ¹ Bill Fletcher, Jr. and Fernando Gapasin insist that we need new answers to these questions if we hope to reverse “the crisis facing organized labor – indeed the crisis facing the entire US working class.” This crisis is marked by declining unionization, inter-union conflict, falling living standards, rising unemployment, growing poverty and deepening oppression.

Solidarity Divided is essential reading. For a summary of the contents, I recommend Immanuel Ness’s thoughtful review.² I will address the strategic questions that Fletcher and Gapasin raise because they are so important to our organizing efforts.

What is the purpose of a union?

Since Samuel Gompers took the Presidency of the American Federation of Labor (AFL) in 1886, the official answer to the question of what is the purpose of a union has been – to promote the economic interests of those fortunate enough to be union members.(15) Fletcher and Gapasin argue that this narrow focus on economic self-interest (economic unionism) has been a colossal failure for unions and for the working class as a whole.

Unions are the most organized section of the working class. They could win mass support if they championed the unity, rights and standard-of-living of the entire class, that is, if they addressed social and political issues.

When unions don’t support the class, they cannot count on the class to support them. And without mass support, unions cannot prevail against an employers’ offensive that pits groups of workers against one another. Here’s a good example.

I recently heard a public radio report on a months’ long civic workers’ strike. The head of the union was interviewed first, followed by the city’s mayor (the employer).

The union leader focused on the fairness of the union’s economic demands compared with what other unionized workers in the city have won. The mayor talked about how the strike was an attack against seniors and children. He said that everyone was suffering from the recession, and city workers had no right to put their own welfare above that of others. He added that he could not meet the union’s demands without cutting public services.

The mayor presented himself as the guardian of the greater good, when the reverse is true.

The union had rejected a concession contract. It was fighting to maintain a standard of living that serves as a benchmark for other workers in the area – defending senior’s pensions and good jobs for tomorrow’s workers. However, the union did not say that it was fighting for the rights of all workers. The union did not say that it was fighting against the unreasonable demand that workers should pay for economic problems they did not create. The union did not call on everyone who is suffering from the recession to join its fight and demand that business profits be taxed to provide more good jobs through expanded public services. It said none of these things. Unlike the mayor, it steered clear of “politics.”

So, after hearing both sides, the average person would be inclined to support the mayor against the “greedy unions” who either caused the recession or are demanding more than their share.

How can union supporters convince others that unions fight for everyone, when unions themselves refuse to make this argument?

Polls show that most workers want union jobs, so there is potential for majority support for unions. However, a narrow union focus on economic self-interest does not invite mass support. On the contrary, it can generate resentment among non-union workers. By refusing to fight the political class war, unions are losing the economic battle.

To reverse this situation, Fletcher and Gapasin argue that the union movement must undergo a political transformation to become a labor movement that champions the economic and social interests of the entire working class: union and non-union, employed and unemployed, all races, genders, sexual orientations, native-born and immigrant.

How should unions respond to oppression?

Employers use racism, nationalism, sexism and homophobia to divide workers and weaken their collective power, so unions would benefit from fighting these oppressions. However, most unions go along with workplace and social divisions, and their structure reflects this – most union officials are straight White males.

When unions do address matters of oppression, these are not considered central to the union’s function. Instead, they are usually delegated to separate union departments or caucuses, so that Black members are left to fight racism, women to fight sexism, gays to fight homophobia, etc. The implication is that straight White male workers have nothing to gain from fighting oppression. The question of whether they do or not divides society, the workplace, the unions and the left.

Employers accumulate capital by paying workers less than the value of what they produce. As a result, the gap in wealth between the capitalist class and the working class keeps widening. Capitalism denies that employers exploit workers. Instead, it promotes the view that employers and workers are economic “partners.”

On the other hand, capitalism encourages the belief that sections of the population who are better off have achieved this position at the expense of those who are worse off, i.e., that men benefit from the oppression of women, Whites benefit from the oppression of Blacks, straights benefit from the oppression of gays, workers in richer nations benefit from the exploitation of workers in poorer nations, etc. This idea is widespread, but untrue.³

The belief that some workers benefit from the oppression of others causes the presumed beneficiaries of oppression to feel guilty around their oppressed co-workers who, in turn, feel resentful toward their more “privileged” brothers and sisters. This is divide-and-rule at its finest, and it benefits only the employers.⁴

I could find no reviews of this book that questioned its assertion that some workers benefit from the oppression of others. This issue must be resolved if we hope to build an effective fight against oppression. As the authors state,

[Either] oppressions such as racism and sexism become battlegrounds to unite workers in the larger challenge for power, or they become battlegrounds in the intra-class struggle over resources. (181)

Building beyond the workplace

Solidarity Divided argues that the struggle against oppression must transcend the boundaries of workplace, union and nation.

Katrina provided an opportunity to challenge racism, poverty and neoliberal government policies and to help Gulf Coast residents organize themselves so they could have a say in the future of the area. But instead of providing political support, the unions offered only charity.

Similarly, unions have not fought against unemployment, for women’s reproductive rights, for affirmative action, for immigrant rights, for gay marriage, etc. At best, resolutions are passed, and money is donated.

Instead of paying lip service to social issues, the authors argue that unions should promote internal political discussion with the aim of mobilizing members to fight for the rights of the oppressed of all classes and for the working class as a whole. (168-9) This will be not be possible without challenging the widespread conviction that straight White male workers actually benefit from racism, sexism and homophobia.

How should unions relate to employers?

Fletcher and Gapasin describe how American unions embraced a social contract with employers after World War II.

The postwar social accord with capital was symbolized by the so-called Treaty of Detroit in 1950, in which Corporate America bought back managerial initiative and control of the shop floor in exchange for cost-of-living raises, employer-sponsored health care, and pension plans. The price was abandonment of class struggle against Corporate America and further bureaucratization of the union movement. Grievance and arbitration procedures replaced the right to strike. “Professional” labor-relations representatives replaced rank-and-file shop stewards as the primary representatives of the unions. (28-9)

In the early 1970s, the economy sank into recession, and Corporate America tore up its half of the social contract. By the late 1970’s, employers were on the offensive, demanding concession contracts to roll back wages and benefits. Both Republican and Democratic administrations backed the capitalist class.

In the wake of President Carter’s firing of postal workers after the 1978 wildcat strike and then the dramatic firing of the PATCO workers by President Reagan, organized labor had no sense of how to build a massive social movement that was anything more than a lobbying effort. Organized labor made excuses for its inaction rather than reflectively and self-critically acknowledging that labor’s “Pearl Harbor” had taken place and that a new form of class warfare was unfolding on the national level. (46-7)

Unions refused to accept the new reality. They continued to operate in a kind of time warp, insisting on upholding their end of a social contract that no longer existed. They accepted employers’ demands for concessions, no matter how deep, in the hope that once profitability was restored, they could regain lost ground. However, even as the economy boomed during the 1980s and 1990s, employers continued to demand concessions.

The unions cannot acknowledge this one-sided class war, because years of compromise and bureaucratization have left them totally unequipped to fight on a class basis. The authors warn,

As long as unions operate solidly within capitalism, accepting its basic rules and premises as permanent, they may be marching to their doom. (214)

Fletcher and Gapasin disagree with the prevailing wisdom that all union problems can be solved by acquiring more members and building bigger unions. They argue that this strategy cannot succeed unless the push for growth is matched with a political strategy that acknowledges the fundamental conflict between labor and capital, challenges the supremacy of capital, and fights for working-class power.

How should unions relate to the State?

Samuel Gompers believed that the interests of American workers were linked with the interests of American corporations and the American Empire. So the AFL allied itself with US capital and the US State in their program of world domination, even though this partnership put the AFL in direct conflict with the interests of workers in America and around the world.

With the notable exception of US Labor Against the War (USLAW), most US unions continue to back US foreign policy, supporting imperial wars and military aid to foreign governments that attack workers’ rights (ie. Columbia, Indonesia, Israel). As the authors state,

The AFL-CIO and CTW leaderships appear to equate patriotism with support for US foreign policy and are clearly reluctant to entertain broad-based discussion of US foreign policy within the ranks of the union movement. (120)

Fletcher and Gapasin believe that unions must take a stand against US imperialism, because class solidarity means nothing if American workers back their State to dominate and destroy the lives of workers in other lands.

Similarly, unions must oppose domestic anti-worker policies, including racist immigration measures, a privatized medical system and neoliberal economics that force workers to pay the cost of bailing out failing corporations.

Solidarity Divided challenges the myth that government represents “we the people” (as in, we the people now own shares of GM and Chrysler), when it actually represents the collective interests of the capitalist class (as in, we the capitalist class are using public money to float GM and Chrysler until it can be returned to profitability). As they point out, the State serves the employers by consistently suppressing independent working-class activity.

Strikers, 1920s

What’s the solution?

Solidarity Divided advocates building geographically-based unions and workers’ councils that include union and non-union members. Such formations have traditionally provided a base for working-class power. However, the authors do not advocate building an independent political party of the working class.

The authors support independent political action, but not political independence from the Democratic and Republican parties. Instead, they call for a neo-Rainbow approach – building an organization that can work both inside and outside of the Democratic Party.⁵

Unfortunately, the American electoral system is designed to prevent independent mass organizations from developing. Bi-yearly electoral races exert an irresistible pull on all social movements to back particular candidates and to tone down their demands in order to get those candidates elected.

The Democratic Party has been phenomenally successful in absorbing and derailing social movements, the campaign to elect President Obama being the most recent example. Fletcher signed the founding statement of “Progressives for Obama” which states,

We intend to join and engage with our brothers and sisters in the vast rainbow of social movements to come together in support of Obama’s unprecedented campaign and candidacy. Even though it is candidate-centered, there is no doubt that the campaign is a social movement, one greater than the candidate himself ever imagined.⁶

This is how social movements are seduced into supporting a capitalist party that serves the capitalist class. Only a political organization that is dedicated to working-class rule could resist this pull and avoid the demobilization that follows inevitable betrayal.⁷

Despite warning us that the State is not a class-neutral machine, it appears that Fletcher and Gapasin fall into Gompers’ trap of viewing the State as “an empty vessel that could be filled by any sort of politics or political or economic influence… [so that] the working class need not challenge the capitalists for state power.” (15)

This may be the greatest weakness of the book – it calls for building a movement to challenge capitalist oppression, not to end that oppression by bringing the working class to power.

The problem may be the mistaken belief that some workers benefit from the oppression of others. If this were true, then a society run by workers would not end oppression, so that it would be necessary to seek cross-class alliances. However, this is a dangerous road because cross-class alliances typically subordinate working-class demands.

Can unions be reformed?

Fletcher and Gapasin argue that the existing unions cannot be reformed, because they are structured to prevent democratic control from the base. (165-6)

The authors provide numerous examples of how conservative and even right-wing union leaders have used socialists to build the unions while denying them any power unless they agree to be co-opted into the bureaucratic structure.

Solidarity Divided describes how the union machine has applied anti-democratic methods to prevent the class-based expansion of union struggles (Decatur, Illinois) and to crush internal rank-and-file rebellions (Ron Carey and Teamsters for a Democratic Union). A more recent example is the SEIU takeover of United Healthcare Workers -West, when it insisted that front-line health care workers had the right to vote on who should represent them and to participate in bargaining contracts with their employers.

For those attempting to build independent unions, Fletcher and Gapasin warn that capitalism creates the conditions under which undemocratic business unions are reproduced and by which even the most well-intentioned leaders are co-opted. Preventing such corruption requires stringent counter-measures that make sure members keep collective and democratic control of the union. As the authors put it,

members must be active participants in the change process rather than recipients of someone else’s work, even if that work is conducted on their behalf. (66)union bureaucracy,

This is a huge challenge in a society that dominates workers to keep them passive.

It should be noted that the book’s many examples of rank-and-file defeats are drawn from years of relatively low class struggle. Democratic rebellions would be more likely to succeed in a context of rising class struggle.

If unions are too weak to challenge the employers, how can they lead a more general class uprising? The answer is that they can’t, but other sections of the class can and, in the process, revitalize the unions. The 2006 million-strong general strikes in defense of immigrants’ rights were fed by the rising unionization of immigrant workers. They also fed into that unionization.

While Fletcher and Gapasin promote a mutually beneficial relationship between unions and social movements, they are unclear on how this can be achieved, given the narrow economic focus of the union bureaucracy and the domination of most social movements by professionals. Class politics can provide an answer.

The authors rightly argue that race/color is the key division in the American working class (and in American society) and so the fight against racism must be central to the labor movement. However, I would argue that, within the unions themselves, the central division is one of class, not race.⁸

Fletcher and Gapasin describe how the ascension of rank-and-file workers to union officialdom “marks the beginning of a transition from one class to another.”(58) They also describe the revolving door between union officials and local politicians. (102,159) But instead of attributing the conservative politics of the trade union bureaucracy to its position as a professional middle class, the authors attribute these politics to outmoded and unproductive “old-style thinking.” (108)

If the problem of union strategy is simply one of ideology, then the unions could be reformed. If the problem is a class divide within the unions, then a revolution-from-below would be needed to turf out the union professionals and put the worker-members in power. The same would hold true for social movements dominated by professionals. Unions and social movements that joined forces to advance class concerns would be a might force indeed. However, there is huge resistance to acknowledging the existence of any class-divide within the unions.⁹

Conclusion

Solidarity Divided calls for a return to the class-struggle politics that originally built the unions.

This call could not be more timely, as today’s unions lack the political clarity required to advance their own limited demands, let alone to champion the rights of workers and the oppressed.

The questions raised by the authors deserve serious consideration, widespread discussion and further development. After reading this book, I eagerly read every review I could find in the hope of learning more, but what I found was disappointing.

Most criticism of this book was self-serving, in that the authors were condemned for setting themselves up as authorities and equally condemned for not being authoritative enough to address every possible concern. And it was distressing to see so much academic competition over who is “getting it right” when we must pull together to achieve the political clarity and the organization we so desperately need. This low level of politics is the result of 30 years of setbacks and defeats for our class, and the reason why Solidarity Divided was written and is so important.

As Fletcher and Gapasin remind us, “Class struggle is built into the fabric of all societies that have classes.” To develop these struggles, we must answer the strategic questions that Solidarity Dividedhas placed on the table.

SUSAN ROSENTHAL is a Canadian physician practicing in Ontario, Can. This piece is crossposted with http://susanrosenthal.com/articles/solidarity-divided-a-welcome-return-to-class-politics
Contact the author

NOTES

1. Solidarity Divided: The Crisis in Organized Labor and a New Path Toward Social Justice, by Bill Fletcher, Jr. and Fernando Gapasin (2008). University of California Press. The numbers in parentheses indicate page numbers from the book.

2. Book Review: Solidarity Divided: The Crisis in Organized Labor and a New Path Toward Social Justice, by Immanuel Ness. First published in Socialism and Democracy, No. 49, March 2009.  Read it online.

3. “The politics of identity,” by Sharon Smith. International Socialism Review, Issue 57, January-February 2008.

4. “Emphasizing divisions,” pp.197-202 of POWER and Powerlessness, by Susan Rosenthal (2006). Trafford.

5. “Visualizing a Neo-Rainbow” by Danny Glover and Bill Fletcher Jr. The Nation, Feb 14, 2005.

6. Barack Is Our Best Option – And You’re Needed Now! by Tom Hayden, Bill Fletcher, Jr., Barbara Ehrenreich, and Danny Glover. Progressives for Obama, March 24th, 2008

7. The Democrats: A Critical History, by Lance Selfa (2008). Haymarket Books. Chicago.

8. “Class-Divided Unions,” by Susan Rosenthal, March 23, 2007.

9. Professional Poison: How Professionals Sabotage Social Movements, and Why Workers Should Lead Our Fight, by Susan Rosenthal (2009).

Original post at: SusanRosenthal.com – Solidarity is the Best Medicine.

2 Select Comments For This Post

1. Doug Page Says:
   We Whites have to face our self-defeating privileges within unions, just as White citizens and cops need to recognize their self-defeating privileged status just because of skin color. The wealth class makes effective use of these “privileges” to divide and defeat us, and to preserve its power.

   I too regretfully supported Obama, as did Fletcher, Hayden and Ehrenreich.

   Obama is a dangerously masterful communicator whose acts so far, always betray us and serve corporate wealth at home, in Israel, the Middle East and Honduras. Given his advisers and apparent personal conservatism, I see no prospect of change.

   We need to plan now for the immense despair and bitterness that will surface as more and more voters, now afflicted with Obamamania, realize that Obama has seduced and betrayed them.

   Dr. Rosenthal’s outline of a class based employee movement is an excellent place to start.

   Otherwise, a bitter and dissillusioned employee class is likely to vote for a Wall Street backed Sarah Palin for President in the next cycle. At least she would provide a circus of entertainment, and would do no more harm than brilliant Harvard graduates who always serve corporate wealth.

2. Harry Canary Says:
   When that time comes people of good will need to be ready to act. Otherwise the Lenins and Dzherzinskis will take hold of any class based movement. The change can go bad in an instant. Till then we can try to move the discussion in the right direction.

   Do not allow the pseudo conservatives, pretend libertarians and the pretend social darwinists to dominate the discussion. Though these people talk tough, they always demand that the table be tilted in their favor. I have never met one who made it on her own without a leg up from mommy or the government.

   Society will not work if it is set to benefit only a few. And no person is inherently better than another simply due to accident of birth.