A Decade Ends: Does It Leave a Legacy?

Will we remember the victory in Syria as a long overdue turning point in the struggle against imperialism and, perhaps, capitalism? Does the defeat of US and NATO machinations and their surrogate combatants in Syria inspire the people of the Middle East to transcend the divisive limits of sectarian grievances and cultural manipulation? Are we seeing the decline of artificially stoked and cruelly fueled national and religious divisiveness and a turn toward economic justice?

Certainly some respected, insightful commentators believe that the Middle East is experiencing unexpected, major realignments (Hallinan) and a decline in sectarian conflict (P. Cockburn).

Patrick Cockburn suggests that the decline of sectarianism is accompanied by “uprisings against corruption,” though he says far too little about the connection.

In fact, the US and Israel have used sectarian divides to combat progressive, nationalist, secular, and even socialist-oriented governments in the Middle East since the 1950s. Secular Arab nationalism, Nasserism, Ba’ath socialism, Palestinian liberation all posed a threat to Israeli apartheid and expansionism and US and European oil imperialism. By stirring the pot of tribal, religious sectarian, and national differences, they were largely successful in reducing the Middle East to a cauldron of disunity, endless conflict, and social backwardness. For most of the latter part of the twentieth century social questions of economic well-being and class justice were deflected. Instead of addressing the basic needs of the people, Middle Eastern rulers were drawn into tragic conflicts over religious, tribal, and national identity. Exploiting these conflicts were the foreign imperialist powers.

But matters may be differently now. 

With the Saudis-- the well-heeled missionaries of religious, social, and political backwardness-- smarting from energy rivalry with their US sponsor and bloodied by a losing war in Yemen, their influence in the neighborhood is reduced. Israel, likewise, is mired in a political crisis and now facing a nearly unified Syria with a powerful ally in Russia, an ally seemingly committed to being a counter to US dominance of the region. And Turkey is racked with its own political instability and increasingly tenuous membership in NATO.

These factors, along with US and NATO imperialism’s defeat in Syria, disrupt decades of senseless, internecine conflict and are allowing neglected questions of the people’s well-being and living standards to rise to the forefront. 

The recent and current anti-government risings in Sudan, Algeria, Lebanon, Iran, and Iraq are a response to the long-ignored class and democracy issues that have been overshadowed by sectarianism. Sparked by aloof policies and fueled by both government indifference and massive poverty and want, millions are fighting to depose those who hold power. 

While Patrick Cockburn writes of corruption, it is more than simply bad government that stokes these rebellions. People are opposed to rulers selected by systems designed by the Great powers to legitimize a sectarian balance or to install rule by those trusted by outside forces. They are tired of the concentration of wealth in the hands of elites or the raging torrent of wealth channeled to Western corporations. They are weary of food and power shortages, underemployment and unemployment, sectarian patronage, and poor infrastructure and housing. They are reacting to the widening class divide in these societies. These insurgencies are all suggestive of an emerging class consciousness, a growing anger at those hoarding the wealth and monopolizing undeserved political power. 

As welcome as these developments are, they bring many potential problems. No popular and clear-sighted leadership has emerged. The demands that spring forth are often simple and negative: “Down with the existing government!” There is no overarching ideological outlook, little programmatic development, and too few acknowledged leaders. The success of the movement in Sudan shows the importance of a Communist Party broadly and deeply embedded in the popular movements. Communists are engaged in all of the other risings as well. There is a basis for hope that these movements will evolve in an anti-capitalist direction.

Objections have been raised that the anti-government risings may weaken the anti-imperialist movement, particularly where existing governments take anti-imperialist positions against the US and Israel or include anti-imperialist forces within a government coalition. These concerns are especially apt when the long history of US manipulation of movements (like Ukraine yesterday, Hong Kong today) is recognized. 

However, solidarity with the people, confidence in the masses, and critical vigilance should be the stance of the revolutionary. All significant change is fraught with risks, laden with uncertainty. Revolutionaries unwilling to venture on an uncharted course are hardly worthy of the name.

While there have been recent setbacks to social democratic and anti-imperialist projects in Central and South America (and staunch resistance in Cuba, Nicaragua, and Venezuela), impressive people’s risings in Haiti, Colombia, Chile, and Ecuador have shaken governments and ruling elites. Like their counterparts in the Middle East, they often lack a clear and decisive leadership, but they, nonetheless, reflect deep-seated and profound class antagonisms and a yearning for real democracy. 

A bitter distrust of the largely corrupt parliamentary systems peddled as “liberal democracy” also spurs the upsurge in direct and militant mass action. Interestingly, this distrust is shared with millions of working people in the advanced capitalist countries who have, out of desperation, cast votes for demagogic “populist” politicians opportunistically herding dissatisfaction away from bankrupt mainstream parties. Though they both spring from similar causes, the “populist” answer will prove as futile as continued support for the traditional parties that chain the people’s fate to capitalist accumulation.

By any measure, there is mass dissatisfaction throughout the world. In some places, it is transforming into direct, physical confrontation with the state and its organs. The frequency and militancy of these actions is striking. Today, it is the remarkable national strikes to deny Macron’s destruction of pensions in France.

In other places, the fight is less developed; people are struggling to identify the enemy; their efforts are confined to narrow electoral space or misdirected toward “fake” solutions. 

Nonetheless, capitalism is presented with an impressive wave of resistance as we enter the next decade. If that wave is to swell, it must be driven by a deeper understanding of the way forward. Old, difficult debates over how national independence, secular unity, and class struggle intertwine are now, again, relevant, urgent and central. It is vital that militants see the fight against imperialism and for a better, more anti-capitalist and democratic life as one and the same. 

In addition, lessons must be drawn from the recent treacherous coup against Evo Morales in Bolivia, lessons that raise the enduring questions of the nature of the state, reform, and revolution. In our time, reform and socialism-oriented movements have proven fragile, especially while facing the determined hostility of the powerful US and its allies. As the Guaidó debacle in Venezuela shows, the US will go to any lengths to create and support anti-reform, anti-socialist elements. For over a hundred years, Marxist-Leninist theory has been the anchor of debates over the path to revolutionary change and for its defense. It would be a good place to begin in order to refresh today’s debates.

All signs point to 2020 becoming an interesting, even promising year for revolutionaries! 

Greg Godels

zzsblogml@gmail.com

An Interview with Al Marder, President, US Peace Council

GREG: Al, you’ve lived through, participated in some of the most significant events of the last century. You’ve never wavered in your commitment to peace, social justice, and socialism despite many setbacks and disappointments. Others have dropped away, grown cynical, or given up. How do you account for your dogged commitment to these principles?

AL: Thank you so very much for providing me with an opportunity to reflect upon my activities for peace and socialism. As a boy of 14, I observed the steady stream pouring out of the New Haven Railroads yards of men looking for work, coming into my parents’ small store asking for something to eat. I also observed in the neighborhood the poverty and the run-down conditions of mostly immigrants and a few black families. In downtown New Haven, I observed women picketing the Woolworth store that was selling silk stockings protesting the invasion of Manchuria by the Japanese. And then I saw the picket line for the vigils protesting the Spanish Civil War, wearing leather jackets and berets in honor of the Spanish Loyalists. I became deeply aware of the Fascist takeover in Germany, Italy. At the same time, there were fascist broadcasts by Father Coughlin from Detroit spewing anti-Semitism.

It was at this time that I transferred to the James Hillhouse High School. In my class, I discovered some of my classmates shared my concerns. I learned that several of these classmates were the children of Communists.

In our discussions I began to understand the class nature of these events that had disturbed me so. And also, for the first time, I learned of the concept of a society without profit, without discrimination, with equality and justice for all. A democratic society for the people, a socialist society. I was enthralled. This concept was a direct contradiction to what I had observed. My imagination soared. I began seeking out all the literature devoted to the struggles of people. To think that all the people, wherever they were, were struggling for the same goals that I now envisaged was mind-boggling.

With my classmates, with my new-found comrades and friends we decided to organize a Peace Council in the high school to conduct meetings explaining the issues to our classmates. This for me, was the beginning of tying my dreams of a new society with the daily struggles.

I learned of the emergence of a society of workers and peasants in Russia dedicated to building a society of the future, a socialist society. I read of the overthrow of the Czar and the nobility that had imprisoned an entire people. I read of the intervention of the imperialist world to try to prevent the emergence of a society without exploitation and capitalism. I read of a society that declared its goal was to liberate the minds of hate and discrimination. I understood from the very beginning how difficult this task was, to build a society, in the midst of a world controlled by the imperialist capitalist world. The struggles of workers and peasants coincided with my dreams, a society devoted to equality and opportunity for everyone to fulfill their potential. I marveled at learning of how this new society, the Soviet Union, was providing written language to peoples for the first time. I was also taken by the explosion of culture, music and literature emerging from this new experiment in history.

This was also the period when the newly formed industrial unions were trying to organize the shops in Connecticut. It wasn’t long that I met the union organizers who needed help distributing flyers to the various factories in the greater New Haven area. I volunteered. Since my father owned a car, I managed to find a way that we could “borrow” the car and distribute the flyers before the family awoke. The realization that the struggle for a new society entailed the struggle for improvement of the daily lives of the workers cemented my understanding and commitment to the working class.

I learned that there was a long history of the struggle of peoples for a better life. There was a great deal of literature explaining this struggle as a science of society. I became an avid reader of this material despite the fact that at that stage much of it was difficult to absorb. I must confess that it was only in later years that the lessons of what I had read became clear to me, the more and more I became involved in the struggle.

The horrors of fascism were the background of everything we did or discussed. How to mobilize the American people against fascism became the dominant responsibility. It was clear to us that we had to unite all the democratic forces, center and left. The concept of “united front” became the overarching guide. I became deeply involved in organizing the New Haven Conference of Youth and the Connecticut Conference of Youth as part of the mobilizing of the young people against fascism. This effort deepened my understanding.

The effort to organize the electrical and brass industries of Connecticut was successful. When the organizers became aware that the companies had set up sports and activities to cement the loyalties of the young workers, they approached me and asked if I would help organize a sports and youth organization for the CIO. I enthusiastically agreed and became president of the CIO Sports and Youth Association and proceeded to organize athletic events, dances, and other activities that would enhance the participation and the loyalty of young workers to the union. The outbreak of WWII made it impossible to continue. However, this experience brought me closer to the lives of young workers, their hopes and their expectations. I was one with them.

These experiences have never left me. I understood from my experiences that the move from avaricious capitalism to socialism was a very difficult road but one I was determined to travel. I realized there was no blueprint for this struggle. It entailed educating workers that the only answer to exploitation and impoverishment was to change the system. While we fought for an increase of 5 cents an hour, this was not the ultimate answer.

Today, millions throughout the world are struggling for food and shelter. Millions are leaving their homes in search of work. The only answer of capitalism is war and domination. This, while at a different level and historical stage, is what I had witnessed as a boy of 14.

GREG: The World Peace Council emerged in 1949-1950. What is its mission? What have been its major initiatives and accomplishments?

AL: The dropping of the bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki by the US had a profound effect on the immediate post-World War II. Any thoughts that were nurtured of post-World War II cooperation in the struggle against fascism that brought together the Socialist Soviet Union with the capitalist world were shattered. That collaboration during World War II itself was characterized by the constant thread of the capitalist maneuvering to weaken the Soviet Union in that common struggle. The postponement of the Second Front was a deliberate strategy to bleed the Soviet Union. This strategy contributed to the unbelievable toll of 28 million Soviet citizens.

There was the hope that the establishment of the United Nations would provide a venue with a new socialist world that could meet as equals with the capitalist world in post-World War II. However, it did not take long for that hope to unravel. The US emerged from World War II as the sole capitalist Superpower, with no international capitalist competition and facing an enlarged Socialist block in Eastern Europe and large Communist parties in Europe.

It became evident that the post-World War II period would soon become a battleground between the people’s movement and US Imperialism. French anti-Fascist intellectuals with support from the anti-Fascist and Left movements organized a movement for peace calling the first meeting for Paris. However, the French government refused permission and it was moved to Warsaw, and the World Peace Council came into being. It began the task of organizing peace councils throughout the world. It extended support to the burgeoning anti-Colonial movements in Africa and the national movements in China and Asia.

Recognizing that the major threat to world peace was the emergence of nuclear weapons, the World Peace Council initiated the Stockholm Peace Pledge, a petition that was circulated globally for the abolition of nuclear weapons. It mobilized international support for the Cuban Revolution and full support for the anti-Apartheid struggle in Africa. Throughout its existence, it has provided leadership and recognition of the dangers that US Imperialism presents to world peace. It is a beacon for peoples everywhere who are struggling for national liberation and sovereignty.

With the virulent McCarthyite anti-Communism of the post-World War II period coinciding with the organizing of the World Peace Council, relations for the US peace movement were very difficult. It was almost impossible to get travel permission from the State Department for outspoken peace leaders of the Left. A delegate to the initial World Peace Council Conference from the US was Reverend Willard Uphaus, president of Religion and Labor, from New Haven. He addressed the meeting in Warsaw, urging the peaceful competition between systems. Upon his return, the trade union movement, already subverted to virulent anti-Communism, the national trade union leadership withdrew support from the organization. Forced to find employment Willard Uphaus became the Executive Director of a Peace Camp in New Hampshire. There the state of New Hampshire insisted that he reveal all the names of people who attended his Peace Camp. Willard refused and served a prison sentence.

The US Peace Council maintained its membership in the World Peace Council despite all the difficulties. It finally assumed a leadership role in preparation for the World Congress held in Copenhagen in 1986 for the International Year of Peace. It has remained a Vice President and member of the Secretariat.

GREG: Many believed that with the end of the Cold War global peace was within reach, yet today the US is involved in seven wars, maintains hundreds of military bases, and strong-arms countries with sanctions. The US military budget is bloated and growing even faster than the military requests, nuclear weapons are being modernized, new weapons systems are being developed, the INF treaty is threatened, and the US and NATO surround Russia and PR China with offensive weapons. How do we best understand these developments? Are we headed for another world war?

AL: The New York Times recently in a lead editorial asserted that the US was involved in 14 secret wars. We are aware of the seven but obviously New York Times is privy to other developments.

These are indeed volatile times. The capture of the US government by the billionaires, assisted by the belligerent positions and support of the Democratic Party, has created the preconditions for a potential catastrophe. The US economy is a war economy with 61% in the national treasure devoted to the military budget. The dominance of the military in the government becomes more apparent every day, with ex-military officials in policy-making positions. The arms industry is flourishing, depositing huge profits. Arms have become the major export item, along with capital. In order to keep this profit stream going imperialist policies must follow.

US imperialists are fully aware that they are no longer able to dominate the global agenda. In order to turn that trend around, they have unleashed a global offensive creating the crisis, potential of war.

While the major capitalist world is part of the aggressive NATO Alliance, there are serious disagreements and competition. The role of Russia and China in opposing US aggression plays a very significant role in the opposition. In addition, the global peoples’ movements are an integral part of the movement against imperialist aggression and cannot be ignored.

When we talk about another world war, the frightening aspect is the presence of nuclear weapons. The trillion-dollar Obama budget for modernizing nuclear weapons and the threat and withdrawal of the INF Treaty by Trump threatens any semblance of arms control and escalates the tensions. The global peace movement must accelerate its opposition to nuclear weapons and energize the recent drive for a United Nations Ban on Nuclear Weapons. This cannot be separated from the campaign for peace.

While we recognize all the factors that can explode into a world war, we cannot, we must not allow this to produce a sense of inevitability. Just as we are witnessing an upsurge by the US peace movement against the US plotted coup in Venezuela, so must we intensify our efforts to mobilize the powerful grassroots movement for peace that has characterized peoples’ struggles for peace in the past. The basic ingredient must be unity of all peace forces.

GREG: You are the president of the US Peace Council, the US chapter of the WPC. In July of 2016, the USPC organized a first-of-its-kind fact-finding delegation to Syria. This was a bold move in the face of almost total official and media support for the anti-government forces and their international sponsors. The report-back broke the consensus and spurred rethinking among many on the left who gave tacit or even active support to the enemies of the Syrian people. Why was the broader peace movement largely absent on the issue of Syrian self-determination? What lessons should we draw from this initiative?

AL: In the broader peace movement there were serious divisions, not only Syria but on Russia, Ukraine, Yugoslavia and North Korea. In every instance, sections of the peace movement bought into the CIA/ State Department ploy of demonizing the leadership of these countries, thus justifying the intervention of US imperialism. They forgot that each intervention of the past was justified by this rationale. It inhibited a discussion that US imperialism was violating the sovereignty of Syria and the right of peoples to determine their own destiny. This led to almost complete silence on the part of the broader peace movement.

The US Peace Council decided that it would organize a delegation that would build on global solidarity and hopefully open the avenues of discussion in the US peace movement. We realized there would be criticisms. At the same time, we knew that a report-back from this delegation would provide the opportunity to engage the peace movement in a discussion. It did. Members of the delegation were invited to address a number of local peace groups. While we cannot say we won over everybody, nevertheless, the delegation opened the door to deepen the conversation on Syria and emphasized the obligation to oppose US imperialism’s drive to extend its domination in the Middle East.

This action proves the need for dramatic expression.

GREG: The US and World Peace Councils were major organizers of the recent Dublin conference against US/NATO bases. Tell us about the event and its resolutions. I understand that one important result is the planning of a national demonstration in Washington on March 30. Would you tell us about this action as well?

AL: The leadership of the US Peace Council recognized that the broader peace movement in the US was comparatively silent in the face of aggressive foreign policies initiated by the new Trump administration and endorsed by the Democratic Party. We also recognized the divisions within the peace movement. We felt it was our historic responsibility to bring the peace movement together in the face of this juggernaut for global domination. To overcome the differences, we proposed a Unity Statement that would recognize that the main dangers to world peace were the policies of US/NATO.

We also recognized that an issue that would unite all the peace movements was foreign bases, the widespread distribution of US military forces in 186 nations, the symbol of US imperialist domination. We proposed a national conference in Baltimore, Maryland in January 2018 to form a US Coalition Against Foreign US/NATO Bases. The Conference was very successful, very well attended and united. Out of the Conference came the Resolution to organize a global conference to set up a global coalition. It also resolved to organize some April spring actions for peace in New York. Efforts ensued to bring together a global coalition in November. With the co-sponsorship of the Ireland Peace and Neutrality Alliance (PANA), a conference was organized in Dublin, Ireland that brought together over 400 delegates from global peace organizations. This successful conference called for the creation of a global coalition and actions.

NATO declared that it was going to commemorate its 70th anniversary in Washington, DC on April 4, 2019. This announcement desecrates the observance of the assassination of Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King. It also was the date of the previous year when Dr. King made his famous speech at Riverside Church in New York condemning the Vietnam War and decrying the militarism of US policies.

While there will be several activities that week, the Coalition is organizing a Demonstration and March on Saturday, March 30 in Washington, DC. It is imperative that the peace and justice community organize a large expression. It will provide an opportunity to demonstrate the opposition to the drive to war. Carrying banners and posters expressing the demands for peace and justice, the marchers will be making a major contribution to mobilizing the American people for peace.

The WPC will organize a conference on NATO on Sunday, March 31, 2019, continuing its practice of mobilizing in opposition to NATO.

GREG: What role do you see for the USPC in 2019? What is its unique role in the peace movement?

AL: The USPC has maintained its unwavering position of anti-imperialism since its founding. Its unity with the struggles of working people everywhere is integral to its work. Its history of solidarity with peoples and movements throughout the world struggling for liberation and sovereignty permeates its relations with the global people’s movement.

We consider it a profound historical responsibility to help unite the various peace and justice movements in our country. This is an imperative if we are to halt the drive to war.

We invite all those who wish to contribute to this noble struggle to join the USPC, to form Chapters wherever they are. Together we can make a meaningful contribution to unity.

GREG: Thank you for the interview, Al. You are a wonderful example for the thousands of youth who are stirring and looking for political direction. Any closing thoughts and further information about how to participate in USPC activities?

AL: My closing thoughts for young people is if you want a full, rewarding and meaningful life, I heartily recommend joining with us. Knowing that you are devoted to creating a more just, equal and peaceful world is of great satisfaction. It brings you together with others who share your vision. It also extends your hand to peoples throughout the world who are involved in the same struggle. The USPC is a member of the World Peace Council (WPC) bringing us together with peace organizations throughout the globe.

I urge you to come aboard and share your ideas and dreams.

Contact information: https://uspeacecouncil.org




US Peace Council

PO Box 3105

New Haven, CT 06515




Phone: 203-387-0370

No Confidence!

The big losers in the recent NPR/PBS NewsHour/Marist confidence polling (January 08-10-2018) are Congress, the two parties, and the media. Based on the poll, most people in the US have “not very much” or “no confidence” in the legislative body, corporate news and entertainment, or the Democratic or Republican parties. In fact, over two-thirds of those surveyed lack confidence in the media and nearly three-fourths show little or no confidence in Congress!

In light of these numbers, one can only wonder when the pitchforks are coming out. Clearly, dissatisfaction with major US institutions extends very broadly. Yet these results are not new. Nearly a decade ago, a similar Gallup poll showed that only 11% of respondents had a “great deal” or “quite a lot” of confidence in Congress. A Wall Street Journal/NBC News poll in 2014 showed that both parties earned a decidedly more negative than a positive image. That same poll put the approval rate for Congress at 12%.

Those pundits and political operatives who discount the depth of dissatisfaction and disregard the festering anger in the US are doomed to misread the meaning of past and most-recent elections. The mainstream media mock Trump’s “fake news” charges while blithely ignoring the negative sentiments of the population toward the news industry. Don’t media elites see that “lack of confidence” is, in fact, a scathing indictment of their own collective performance in delivering the truth?

Failure to recognize the widespread disdain for core US political institutions hinders the understanding that Trumpism is not merely a malignant political alternative, but the consequence of a long history of malignant political alternatives; Trump isn't the cause of the problem, he's the result of the problem. As much as Trump disgusts with his vulgarity, he openly expresses thoughts shared by other powerful people who voice them only behind the walls of their mansions or private clubs. As much as Trump attacks the living standards of working people and degrades their safety net, he stands at the end of a relentless, unrelieved half-century of assault on the gains won in the New Deal era. As much as Trump has embraced belligerence and aggression in his foreign policy, he has only belatedly and somewhat reluctantly fallen in line with the imperialist agenda crafted and executed by his predecessors in the post-Soviet era.

He has Defense Secretary ‘Mad Dog’ Mattis to remind him of the agenda. The Wall Street Journal tells us (January 19, 2018) that Trump recently proposed to call off joint ROK/US military exercises as a pacifying gesture to Kim Jung Un. Mattis stepped in and purportedly flattered him with “Your instincts are absolutely correct,” while cajoling him into betraying those same instincts and going forward with the exercises. Incredibly, Mattis is the figure that many liberals cite as the restraining force in the Trump White House.

“Making America Great Again” is the mark of an empire facing increasingly effective threats from imperialist rivals as well as anti-imperialist resistance. While the dream of a Pax Americana imposed on the world is now discredited, Trumpism clings to the illusion that robust, blustery nationalism is the answer to an increasingly fruitless globalism.

Last year, in his lengthy, candid valedictory interview with Jeffrey Goldberg in The Atlantic magazine, one will find many hints of Obama’s lost confidence in the aggressive reordering of the world that he inherited and that was represented in his administration by Clinton, Rice, Power, and Rhodes. Mattis and General Kelly play that same role of sabre-rattlers and war-instigators in the Trump administration despite the popular caricature of them as wise counsel to a wild man.

With Trump, the missionary mask, so long a feature of US imperialism, is cast off. The “humanitarian, human rights” pose used so skillfully by Clinton and Obama’s war makers is of little interest to Trump and his consort. Any renegade thoughts Trump may have of exercising his self-proclaimed “deal” skills or imagined “charm” in negotiating with rivals are quickly squashed by the two pillars of militarism (Mattis and Kelly) within the Trump administration.

In better times, one could count on a sizeable segment of activist liberals to stand with the anti-imperialist left against US militarism and aggression. But, today, they have been mesmerized by a phantasmagoric anti-Russia campaign framed to distract attention away from real issues and the chronically flawed democratic process.

Apart from the demonstrated thinness of liberal principles, the NPR/PBS NewsHour/Marist poll explains exactly why RussiaGate could gain traction despite a lack of evidence. Behind the hysteria are two institutions that retain a great deal of misplaced confidence with the public: the FBI and the military. And behind that confidence is a glorifying and romanticizing of the two in popular culture, especially since the onset of the Mission Impossible-like War on Terror. Network and cable television feature drama of attractive, upright, and diligent FBI agents standing between the US public and chaos, night after night. Similarly, the military enjoys a heroic stature nourished by the media, the entertainment industry, and the chicken-hawk elites whose children never see the enlistment office.

Glenn Greenwald clarifies the self-deception lurking behind this cult of self-righteousness, while speaking in Santa Fe recently: “Every time Trump says or does something that is xenophobic, or bigoted, or militaristic, or threatening, people always say, ‘This is not what America is about,’... I always react to that by saying, ‘It’s not?’”

The RussiaGate mania is now runaway paranoia, perfectly suited to turn the populace from its real problems. Democratic Party operatives have crossed over to insanity, detecting Russia behind the announced candidacy of Chelsea Manning for US Senate. Neera Tanden, prominent head of the Center for American Progress, smelled a Kremlin plot behind Manning running against a corporate Democratic Senator. It may be a long wait for the soft left and the identity Democrats to render support to the heroic Manning. But then they wouldn’t comprehend the real heroism of serving jail time for exposing US war atrocities.

Emboldened by its success in fabricating RussiaGate from nothing, the FBI has turned its scrutiny on the People's Republic of China. Our intrepid spy hunters are casting their vigilance on Rupert Murdoch’s ex-trophy wife, Wendi Deng Murdoch, a prominent DC socialite. According to “sources” friendly to The Wall Street Journal, Ms Murdoch lobbied for a Chinese garden funded by the PRC at the National Arboretum. The FBI explained that the Arboretum was less than 5 miles from the White House and the Capitol. And, if that were not enough, the plan included a 70-foot tower that the FBI feared might be used for surveillance!

As if the Chinese could not rent a room in a six- or seven-story building in downtown DC to further their nefarious plot without spending $100 million on a Chinese garden.

So, we have a prominent figure who might have lobbied for a project that might have served PRC intelligence purposes by constructing a 70-foot tower that might have a surveillance purpose. But this twisted conspiracy tale goes further-- Ms Murdoch socialized with Ivanka Trump and Jared Kushner! The FBI has a picture of them together! Of course, that is the point of this inane exercise: meddling in US politics. Let’s see if deranged liberals buy this, too.

And we have the NBC story that reports that a CIA agent who retired in 2007 has been arrested for collaborating with the PRC. But there is a hitch: “U.S. officials told NBC News they don't believe Lee ever will be charged as a spy, in part because they don't have all the proof they might need, and in part because they would not want to air the evidence they do have in a public courtroom.” A careful read of the NBC article might lead one to believe that the CIA is embarrassed because their PRC counterparts broke the secret communication system that the CIA used to communicate with their covert agents. One might further surmise that Jerry Chun Shing Lee is the patsy for this failure. But the uncritical, trusting media report the damaging charge even though sources admit that “...they don't have all the proof they might need…” A fine example of a responsible press in the age of Trump!

As the US empire undergoes further and further stress, more and more dysfunction, the search for scapegoats and distractions will only intensify, and the barbarism of apocalyptical conflict will grow even more probable.

It is not enough to take a small step or two back from the brink, as liberals and the compromised left would like. Delivering a world two steps from catastrophe is a feckless award to future generations.

An angry, disappointed public that has lost confidence in its institutions is searching for a new, more promising road forward. Isn’t it the time to bring the promise of democracy and social justice embedded in socialism before the US public?

Greg Godels

zzsblogml@gmail.com

Looking Back

The year 2017 was not entirely a bad one in the US. We learned that, despite the fact that we have no serious, mass party for socialism, millions of US citizens have a favorable, positive view of socialism. Actually, we first learned that fact from a Gallup poll in mid-2016. To the surprise of many and the alarm of others, Gallup found that over half of 18-29 year olds had a favorable view of socialism. The Wall Street Journal/NBC poll discovered a year later that over half of every age group thought that “To help people, government should do more.” This result is perhaps an even more significant finding since it provides some meaning to what people want when they endorse socialism, as well as what they want even with their fear of the word “socialism.” In that poll, nearly two-thirds of 18-29 year olds agreed with the statement.

The fact that interest in “socialism” is growing dramatically though there is no mass socialist or communist party is a paradoxical reflection on US political life (though not only that of the US). Part of the reason for this paradox, of course, is the enormous effort that US elites, corporations, academic institutions, security services, media, and politicians have made to intensely demonize all but the most benign expressions of socialist thought and organization.

But much blame must be shared by our own left, which has been shattered into a thousand sects, cults, and tendencies and cowed into submission from fear of red-baiting. The Cold War anti-Communist mentality remains deeply embedded in the generations that preceded the more open-minded millennials. Anything-but-Communism (ABC) constitutes an attitude that promotes “respectable” socialisms like utopian cooperatives, socialism through the backdoor of the Democratic Party, trickle-down socialism, armchair academic socialism, socialism of the soul, and a host of socialisms that dissolve into tepid reformism or socialism over the horizon. No wonder the ruling class sleeps well at night.

Death to the NFL!

Another change that came into sharp relief in 2017 was the persistent loss of fan support for professional football. In 2016, TV viewership dropped by 8%. And last year, TV numbers dropped another 9.7%, a precipitous two-year decline!

Given that professional football represents almost everything that is wrong with the US and combines all of the elements, from other sports, that are socially harmful, I would like to think that the NFL decline is inversely proportional to the growth of interest in socialism.

The NFL transmits violence and bullying to our youth. It celebrates the victory of power over weakness, without any respect for compassion, pity, fair play, or empathy. The business-posing-as-a-sport pillages municipal and regional coffers for stadia and amenities while paying little or no taxes. The teams glorify militarism and the cult of the hero. The owners are super wealthy, including a nasty group of right-wing racists. And Black gladiators risk limb and life to fill the owners’ coffers.

It’s no wonder that no other country shows a serious interest in an NFL franchise.

Of course, we must credit the disgusting blacklisting of Colin Kaepernick for some of the decline in interest.

Let’s hope that a similar disconnect from Dr. Phil, celebrity-worship, British royalty, and zombies will bring further interest in socialism in 2018.

2017 was not Pro-Life

For the first time since the early 1960s (before Medicare and Medicaid), life expectancy in the US dropped for two consecutive years. The head of the Center for Disease Control and Prevention attributes the drop to the increase in opioid use, a phenomenon that correlates pretty closely with desperation, poverty, and alienation.

A year ago, when The New York Times reported the 2016 decrease, its sources were puzzled. Yes, they saw the increase in deaths from opioid abuse, but eight out of the top ten causes of death were also up, as was the infant mortality rate. The Times discovered a more revealing datum, a finding that cut to the heart of the matter: a Brookings Institute study found that a man in the lowest 10% of incomes born in 1950 will live fourteen years less than his counterpart with earnings in the top 10%.

Inequality!

Clearly, the Obama jewel, the ACA, has done less than nothing to address this great cause of premature death.

And yet the chief battle of 2017 was a semi-successful struggle waged by the leaders of Labor, the Democratic Party, and a host of “progressive” organizations to save this bloated, corporate-friendly, drug company-sponsored, bureaucratically bewildering sham of a healthcare program.

How far we have fallen!

Deplore the Deplorables

Certainly 2017, like the run-up to the 2016 election, was the climax of willful blindness to the plight of vast numbers of the working class and the working poor in the small towns and cities outside of the major metropolises. Hillary Clinton famously stubbed her presumptive Presidential toe on this neglect when she characterized the group as “deplorables.” For petty bourgeois liberals, a best-selling book gave sustenance to their elitist contempt for the decimated working class in the US heartland. Venture capitalist J.D. Vance’s Hillbilly Elegy, a memoir of his early years, hit the top of The New York Times best-seller list in both 2016 and 2017. Vance, telling a modern-day Horatio Alger story, titillated the burghers with his tales of abuse, failed character, and backwardness. Vance paints the deplorables as, indeed, deplorable.

A Fordham University professor published a scholarly rejoinder to Hillbilly Elegy at the end of 2017. Based on extensive research and historical backgrounding, Ramp Hollow: The Ordeal of Appalachia tells a story of capitalist exploitation, neglect, and political chicanery that refutes the blame-the-victim anecdotes of Vance. Author Steven Stoll offers context and nuance, compassion and respect, where Vance projects arrogant contempt. Given its unlikely appeal to jaded liberals, Ramp Hollow will likely not make the best-sellers list.

...the First Time as Tragedy, the Second Time as Farce

It is impossible to leave 2017 without reflecting on the new Red-less “Red Scare.” The old Red scare was a mid-century ruling class reign of terror in response to the Soviet victory over fascism and its painfully won respect with the world’s millions. The perceived threat of socialism ascendant brought a hysterical panic in the bastions of capitalism. A tragic, ruthless clampdown followed.

The farcical RussiaGate of 2017 reignites the old Russia fears, but this time against a capitalist rival. The perpetrators of this giant scam count on the public’s faulty memory and mass confusion of a Cold War adversary with the current government of Russia. To any disinterested follower of recent Russian history, Russia looks like a junior version of the US, with similar great power aspirations, hopes of imperial penetration of new markets, and rampant militarism. History teaches, for those not contemptuous of history, that these tendencies are features of every developed capitalist state. Similarly, Russian “democracy” more and more resembles its US counterpart which is dominated by wealthy, powerful elites and sustained by a gutless, fawning media.

We can, however, rejoice that Russian interests often conflict with the most belligerent, arrogant policies of US elites (Syria, for example) in ways that neutralize or forestall US aggression. But only a fool would mistake checking the US internationally with embodying the cause of anti-imperialism.

But vilifying Russia is useful. For US ruling elites, portraying Russia as an enemy prepares the public for confrontations to come. Much as the Maine debacle of 1898 set the stage in the US for a war for Spain’s colonies, the endless tales of Russian intrigue and mischief justify the saber-rattling and aggressive sanctions that follow.

The Democratic Party and the media eagerly join this project for their own purposes. RussiaGate has revitalized cable news and breathed life back into the print media and the news services. Sensationalized stories and fear-mongering are the stock-in-trade of the modern entertainment-oriented monopoly media.

Of course, RussiaGate is tailor-made for a political party suffering huge electoral setbacks despite overwhelming resources, especially if it can link its loss to external factors like Russian interference. The Democrats-- ideologically hollow-- have pulled every trick to link Russia to the sitting Republican President, Donald Trump. Unwilling to project a peoples’ program, the Democrats intend to win the 2018 interim elections by simply attacking Trump and his vaporous Russia connections. For the Democrats, Trump’s propensity towards arrogance, outrageousness, and lies is the gift that keeps on giving. They plan to run on Trump and Trump alone, nothing substantial.  

While most people find their living standards stagnant or sinking, and while climate change, rising inequality, racism, and foreign killing go ignored in the corporate media, the RussiaGate theatrics dominate the news.

RussiaGate does serve as a reminder of the thinness of liberal commitment to ‘liberal’ values. In the Red Scare era, liberal devotion to the Bill of Rights collapsed like a house of cards in the face of the McCarthyite onslaught. Today, liberals are leading the charge in an assault on fair play, due process, and the rules of evidence. Innuendo, anonymous sources, and hearsay form the tissue that supports the daily Russia insanity. And the glorification of the odious-- the FBI, CIA, and NSA-- is shameless.

The fact that the celebrated Mueller investigation has produced nothing substantial beyond an obvious fact-- Israel meddles in our elections-- should calm the unhinged. But it doesn’t. The Democrats need both Trump and Russia at least until the November elections.

May we all survive 2018!

Greg Godels

zzsblogml@gmail.com

MOMENTS ON AND OFF THE CAMPAIGN TRAIL

Fortunately, young activists have failed to learn the lessons accepted by many who have preceded them. For example, they fail to respect Hillary Clinton as the wife of “the first Black president.” Young African Americans have held her to the same standards applicable to white politicians who display racist code words. They do not accept that when Hillary or Bill lecture youth on Black “social predators” or defend Bill’s policies leading to the mass incarceration of Blacks that the Clintons are speaking as members of the family-- Uncle Bill and Aunt Hillary. Consequently, the power couple has been roughed up on the campaign trail when faced with reminders of earlier racial transgressions.

Therefore, it was necessary last week for the first real Black President to intercede with a lesson on the proper etiquette when addressing the wielders of power. While in London, Obama attended a town hall meeting of young people, and explained:

Too often what I see is wonderful activism that highlights a problem but then people feel so passionately and are so invested in the purity of their position that they never take that next step and say, ‘How do I sit down and try to actually get something done?’

Curiously, “getting something done…” would seem to be the task for legislators, for elected officials and not the activists “highlighting” problems. But Obama elaborates, drawing on his own experience as a “community organizer”:

You can’t just keep on yelling at them and you can’t refuse to meet because that might compromise the purity of your position… The value of social movements and activism is to get you at the table, get you in the room and then start trying to figure out how is this problem going to be solved.You then have a responsibility to prepare an agenda that is achievable, that can institutionalize the changes you seek, and to engage the other side, and occasionally to take half a loaf that will advance the gains that you seek, understanding that there’s going to be more work to do, but this is what is achievable at this moment.

Embedded in this lecture for young activists are the modern liberal values of deference to power, compromise, and incrementalism. These values are not the values that have inspired the more profound changes that have markedly advanced life in the US. These are not the values that inspired Thomas Paine, John Brown, Frederick Douglass, Eugene Debs, or Martin Luther King. These are not the values that demanded a Bill of Rights, ended slavery, built a labor movement, and ended institutional segregation. Demands, and not polite requests, inspired these fundamental improvements in the lives of the many. In fact, it was the opponents of change, in every case, who preached quietly sitting at the “table,” preparing an “agenda” and accepting “half a loaf.”

Activists need only reflect on the last seven years of the Obama administration to see the fruits of civil discourse, trusting power, and gaining polite access: endless wars, declining living standards, growing debt, housing crises, escalating racism, and eroded civil liberties-- in short, more of the same.

The liberal activist playbook has succeeded in accomplishing one thing for Obama and those who will follow him: it has successfully corralled many idealistic, energetic advocates for change, tamed them, and kept them firmly in the grip of the Democratic Party.

And Obama knows that holding serve, guaranteeing that his party and its corporate, pro-business candidate (Hillary Clinton) will gain the presidency, will require that another generation of young activists is similarly co-opted. The post-Sanders campaign to assimilate Sanders’ youthful followers is already underway, with party loyalists ginning up the “Stop Trump” hysteria.

While liberal angst over Trump will sway many, it’s important to remind the left that though Trump is a clownish Mussolini/Berlusconi-like reprobate, he is, in essence, an opportunist with no core ideology beyond power and attention. For that reason, he has alarmed the corporate elites who rule the Republican establishment. They fear his unpredictability and maverick views. He is shattering the unity of the party. The left should welcome that development.

Of course there should be no doubt as to which class Clinton wholeheartedly and reliably represents. If there was any doubt, the recent comments by ultra-conservative billionaire Charles Koch should have dispelled that notion. His carefully worded statements legitimized Clinton as an option in a field of unreliable conservative candidates whose unimpeachable corporate fealty is in question-- Clinton is the more corporate candidate. While liberal apologists scramble to prove that Koch did not endorse Clinton, they miss the point: she could be more acceptable than her rivals (because she is a proven corporate politician).

The big question remaining is what becomes of the admirable fire and brimstone conjured by the aging pied piper of social democracy, Bernie Sanders. As with earlier insurgencies fought within the Democratic Party and contained by the Democratic Party, this youthful movement may well be absorbed into the party. History and the left’s inability to cut the cord with the Democrats suggest that it will. After all, to effectively break the bondage imposed by the corporate Democrats only two options are available: shake loose the iron grip that corporate power maintains over the Democratic Party or reject two-party politics and build an independent movement. The former is popular, but a pipe dream; the latter is difficult, but the only viable option.

However, hope resides in a younger generation that both suffers greater burdens than any generation since the Great Depression and is largely oblivious to the scare-tactics of anti-Communism. The latest of several polls shows a significant and growing interest in socialism and an even greater rejection of capitalism. The Harvard University study of young adults between 18 and 29 found that 51% do not support capitalism. With the same group of respondents, 33% supported socialism. Of older respondents, a majority of support for capitalism could only be found among those fifty years old or older.

In a 2011 Pew Research Center poll, 49% of 18 to 29 year-olds had a positive view of socialism, a higher percentage than those with a positive view of capitalism.

Reporting the Harvard Survey in the Washington Post, author Amy Cavenaile is rankled by these results. She searches far and wide for an authority or a poll result that can diminish these findings. Accordingly, she finds Frank Newport, the editor-in-chief of Gallup, who opines: “Young people could be saying that there are problems with capitalism, contradictions… I certainly don’t know what’s going through their heads.”

Further disturbing to the author and other pundits, young people do not identify socialism with government regulation or government spending-- the establishment’s vulgar characterization of socialism-- but with “Basic necessities, such as food and shelter [and healthcare], are a right that the government should provide to those unable to afford them.”

Clearly, the seemingly unassailable truth of a few decades ago-- “there is no alternative”-- fails to resonate with recent generations. Shaping and sharpening a realizable vision of socialism for the latest generations is the most critical task before us.

Zoltan Zigedy

zoltanzigedy@gmail.com

Ellen Meiksins Wood: Against the Tide

Ellen Meiksins Wood died on January 14.

Ms. Wood was a prolific academic, writing many books and articles from a Marxist perspective. Among her peers, her work on the transition from feudalism to capitalism, the advocacy of so-called “political Marxism,” and her views on Ancient modes of production are remembered.

With a broader audience, she will be remembered for her staunch defense of classical Marxism at a time of full retreat.

After the fall of the Soviet Union, most of Western Marxism—both Party-based and otherwise—lost its way. Disillusionment and despair held sway. In academic circles, a period of “rethinking” Marxism grew like a virus. The fundamentals of classical Marxism were challenged by the supposed rigor of rational choice theory on one hand and the wildly wielded scalpel of post-modernism on the other.

Rational choice theory announced ominously that the Marxist foundation was not and could not be built on the basis of homo economicus, a result that was both obvious and welcome to any serious student of Marx. Nonetheless, so-called “Analytical Marxism” took a toll.

A wave of epistemological relativism penetrated Western political thought from its pretentious and esoteric perch in European-- especially French-- universities. The idea that we could not defend any foundation for our world views apart from our own subjective and uniquely shaped perspective took hold. The fact that thinkers formerly associated with Marxism promulgated these views carried considerable weight in the English-speaking world. The unity that Marxism had striven to achieve between workers and other oppressed groups was shattered into a multitude of self-reflecting identities by the post-modern turn. Students and budding intellectuals hurled the epithet of “reductionism” at every effort to reveal underlying structures or processes.

The expansion of world markets to previously market-adverse economies dramatically boosted trade and investment to new levels. Theorists dubbed this quantitative burst “globalization” and hastily heralded it as a new stage of capitalism. Some went further, counting it as a harbinger of a world with transnational corporations overruling the governance of historically constructed states.

Indeed, it was an ugly time. Nonsense abounded.

The intellectual climate fed a similar floundering of the activist left in the nineties. Socialism, as a societal vision, was diluted into a regimen of “social markets” or receded behind the allure of anarchism and spontaneity. The fuzzy, unfocussed anti-globalization movement replaced anti-imperialism as the organizing principle of the left. A nostalgic yearning for the supposed golden era of post-World War Two prosperity and a thread-bare safety net substituted for the quest for full social justice—“revolution” was retired.

It was in this context that Ellen Meiksins Wood declared war on the navel-gazers, the timid, and the opportunists abandoning Marxism. Even before the fall of the Soviet Union and the ensuing Western ideological Great Plague, she exposed the “new,” eviscerated Marxism in her Retreat from Class (1986). Reflecting upon it years later in a new introduction, she wrote:

People have, in their various ways, moved on, in ways that have very little to do with Marxism, or even socialism, except to repudiate it. It seems clear that Post-Marxism was just a short pit-stop on the way to anti-Marxism. The Retreat from Class (1998)

She carried out much of her struggle against traitors, slackers, and opportunists in the pages of Monthly Review while serving as co-editor with Paul Sweezy and Harry Magdoff from 1997 to 2000.

Her stinging attacks on the globalization thesis (‘Globalization’ or ‘globaloney’?), along with the equally biting polemics by Doug Henwood, were aimed at anyone who would dare to defend it: “…globalization…is the heaviest ideological albatross around the neck of the left today.” (MR, February 1997)

Wood saw the global dominance of markets not as a defeat, but as an opportunity for the left:

Now capitalism has no more escape routes, no more safety valves or corrective mechanisms outside its own internal logic… So maybe it’s time for the left to see the universalization of capitalism not just as a defeat for us but also as an opportunity—and that, of course above all means a new opportunity for that unfashionable thing called class struggle. (Back to Marx, MR, June, 1997)

The recurring theme in Ellen Meiksins Wood’s writings was the centrality of class struggle. Against the tide of New Leftism, neo-Marxism, post-Marxism, post-modernism, and other wooly, confused departures from Marxism, she saw the working class as the essential agent for change.

When Frances Fox Piven and Richard A. Cloward engaged her on the pages of Monthly Review (January, 1998), challenging her “nostalgia for the working-class formations of the industrial era” and asserting that “We are all social democrats now,” she responded sharply:

‘There are no social-democrats now.’ People are waking up to the fact that social democracy is not a viable option. For those who have tended to identify social democracy with socialism, there seems to be no other alternative to capitalism—in fact no alternative to the more inhumane, neoliberal forms of capitalism. So the loss of social democracy is for them indeed an awesome one. It is for them a more cataclysmic and perhaps even final loss than for those who, while certainly supporting the welfare state or any amelioration of capitalism’s destructive consequences, have always doubted the long term sustainability of capitalism “with a human face.” Those who used to place all their hopes in social democracy are inclined to explain their awesome loss not by conceding that a humane capitalism was never sustainable in the long term but by invoking some massive epochal shift which had destroyed what used to be, but no longer is, a real possibility.

In answer to the then fashionable skepticism toward the socialist project, Ms. Wood asserted that the naysayers could offer nothing beyond “a better and maybe more humane management of ‘flexible’ capitalism,” an insight that presages by nearly two decades the principled refusal of Greek Communists today to join SYRIZA in the management of capitalism.

Lest anyone believe that Wood harbored any illusions about reformism apart from the goal of socialism, she offered the following thoughts to a 1999 forum in South Africa which included participants from the ANC, COSATU, and the South African Communist Party:

My main point is that there can be struggles and objectives short of a socialist transformation, but there can’t be such a thing as a Third Way. There really is no middle ground between capitalism and socialism.

That’s not a paradox. It simply means that all oppositional struggles… should be informed by one basic perception: the class struggle can’t, either by its presence or by its absence, eliminate the contradictions in the capitalist system, even though it can ultimately eliminate the system itself… without falling into the hopeless trap of believing that the left can do a better job of managing capitalism. Managing capitalism is not the job of socialists, but, more particularly, it’s not the job that can be done at all. (MR, September, 1999)

No doubt events have played the largest role in washing away much of the ideological fashions that enjoyed such popularity with the Western left in the 1990s. Endless wars, exploding inequality, and an epochal economic crisis make what appeared to be learned assessments and ominous projections appear little more than naïve.

We should not forget, however, how important it was to have a few courageous voices defend principle against the current, to stand firm while others were in full retreat.

Ellen Meiksins Wood was one.

Zoltan Zigedy

zoltanzigedy@gmail.com