El Hermano Obama and Compañero Fidel

US President Barack Obama came to Havana with a cautiously crafted, calculated message to the people of the world, the people of the US, and the people of Cuba.

To the people of the world, Obama was signaling, on his part, a new posture towards the Republic of Cuba. His expressed desire to remove the blockade and to open up relations must be taken at face value and welcomed. How far he intends to pursue this goal and with how much energy is to be seen. That it is part of a carefully cultivated “Obama Doctrine” blossoming in the last year of his Presidency should be apparent.

In his confessional series of interviews with Jeffrey Goldberg for The Atlantic, he makes his posture towards Latin American anti-imperialism clear:

“When I came into office, at the first Summit of the Americas that I attended, Hugo Chávez”—the late anti-American Venezuelan dictator—“was still the dominant figure in the conversation,” he said. “We made a very strategic decision early on, which was, rather than blow him up as this 10-foot giant adversary, to right-size the problem and say, ‘We don’t like what’s going on in Venezuela, but it’s not a threat to the United States.’ ”

Obama said that to achieve this rebalancing, the U.S. had to absorb the diatribes and insults of superannuated Castro manqués. “When I saw Chávez, I shook his hand and he handed me a Marxist critique of the U.S.–Latin America relationship,” Obama recalled. “And I had to sit there and listen to Ortega”—Daniel Ortega, the radical leftist president of Nicaragua—“make an hour-long rant against the United States. But us being there, not taking all that stuff seriously—because it really wasn’t a threat to us”—helped neutralize the region’s anti-Americanism.

If we substitute “anti-imperialism” for “anti-Americanism” (tellingly, Obama doesn't count Latin America as America), we can see that the Obama Doctrine is a more clever and, therefore, more insidious policy to maintain US dominance in the region; overt tolerance coupled with covert intervention promises more success than an earlier strategy of saber-rattling and brute force.

To the people of the US, Obama was underscoring what he hopes to be perceived as his foreign policy legacy, an opening to Cuba that will stand with Nixon's rapprochement with the Peoples Republic of China and Reagan's overtures to Gorbachev's USSR. Like Reagan's move, Obama's Cuba trip was a charm offensive meant to sell the image of a benign super power putting aside long-standing differences in order to “open up” opportunities for business and bring Cuba back into the Western fold. But unlike his predecessors, Obama presses his initiative late in his term, leaving the heavy lifting to those who will follow. The fact that he never tackled the Helms-Burton act early in his service (and a host of other promises and expectations) when he inherited a super-majority in the legislative branch demonstrates both a slug-like caution and a shallowness of conviction, a less flattering part of his legacy.

To the Cuban people, Obama brought to Havana a caricature of past relations and the attitude of a friendly big brother. He made his point of selling market reforms, outside investors, and Western-style “democracy,” wrapping it with a ribbon of smarmy good-neighborliness.

While the Western media and liberals saw this as a moment of Obama's greatness and magnanimity, one man saw it differently. Charged with protecting Cuban sovereignty and dignity for the last fifty-six years, Fidel Castro Ruz wrote from retirement, reminding the world that while Cuba seeks normal country-to-country relations with the US, it neither forgets nor forgives the transgressions of the past. Nor does it trust the promises of the future.

In a not-too-subtle reminder-- direct enough for even the planners and speech writers in the State Department-- Fidel quotes Antonio Maceo, Afro-Cuban leader of the mambises in the liberation struggle against Spain: “Whoever attempts to appropriate Cuba will reap only the dust of its soil drenched in blood, if he does not perish in the struggle.”

Fidel offers “brother Obama” a history lesson in the long and relentless effort to overthrow the Cuban revolution by its “neighbor” to the North. Nor will he allow the neighbor to the north to shrug off the Cold War as merely a past misunderstanding. He reminds Obama that the Cold War battle lines in Africa divided colonialism and Apartheid from African liberation. Without embarrassing Obama with the fact that the US stood with those opposing African liberation, Fidel revisited Cuba's intense, principled and long support for Africa's freedom.

In contrast to the truncated, simplistic, and self-serving account of the struggle for racial equality in the US offered by Obama (“But people organized; they protested; they debated these issues; they challenged government officials. And because of those protests, and because of those debates, and because of popular mobilization, I’m able to stand here today as an African-American and as President of the United States. That was because of the freedoms that were afforded in the United States that we were able to bring about change.”), Fidel reminded the US President that the Revolutionary government “swept away racial discrimination” in Cuba and persistently fought manifestations of racism. Unlike in the US, the Cuban people fought racism along with their government, not against the government's promotion of it; where racism persists in Cuba, it is in spite of the government, not because of it.

Fidel, with a Marxist dedication to historical context, understandably views US overtures with some skepticism, doubting that the changes mark an epiphany from the long-standing policy of defeating the revolution. But as one its leaders and staunchest defenders, he makes his position clear: “No one should be under the illusion that the people of this dignified and selfless country will renounce the glory, the rights, or the spiritual wealth they have gained with the development of education, science, and culture... We do not need the Empire to give us anything.”

Cubans should be filled with pride that they enjoy the wisdom and vigilance of one of the last century's greatest revolutionary leaders. We should all be appreciative of the exceptional commitment to truth and principle of this warrior for socialism and peace.

Zoltan Zigedy

zoltanzigedy@gmail.com

A Peek behind the Curtain

Most US Presidents use their retirement to construct their interpretation of events transpiring during their service. They prefer to distance their more candid, more personal observations from the people, places, and activities that occupied their incumbencies. The mythology of the magisterial presidency demands that nothing tarnish the contrived imagery of sobriety, civility, and selfless governance. Therefore, it is uncommon for a President to air differences and confidences while still in office. That reticence makes President Obama’s recent comments, as told to Atlantic writer Jeffrey Goldberg (The Obama Doctrine, April, 2016), even more interesting.

Now Goldberg is no leftist. His commentary accompanying his interviews shows him to be a reliable consumer and purveyor of the official, self-serving Washington line on good guys and bad guys, freedom-lovers and freedom-haters. For Goldberg, Ghaddafi, Assad, Hugo Chavez, Putin, and the others who defied US diktat personify evil, while despots who toe the US line get a free pass. The fact that Obama does not unqualifiedly endorse this simplistic picture makes the interview most interesting.

For the vast majority of the entertainment-driven, scandal-seeking media, Obama’s openly expressed disdain for those US allies that he labeled “free riders” served as blood-soaked red meat. They relished the gossipy blast at putative friends like Hollande, Cameron, Erdogan, and the Saudis. But they never stopped to develop the implications of his remarks, refusing to frame the comments in the context of a new balance of power and shifting alliances.

For a time, the Obama administration has been moving away from the triumphant unilateralist (one dominant super power) position emerging from the demise of the Soviet Union. Obama would like us to believe that this is part of a rational, measured policy that he describes as “realist” and “internationalist”—a rejection of both “isolationism” and “liberal interventionism.” In fact, it is a move imposed by events: the endless, unwinnable wars, the intensification of nation-state rivalries, economic stagnation, and the resultant international instability. The Obama foreign policy vision reflects these new realities more than it shapes them.

Obama was vetted and anointed by significant sectors of the ruling class, and subsequently elected because his youth, dynamism, différence, and “hope/change” slogan fit the needs of a country wounded by economic crisis, political dysfunction, and military blunders. Just as James Carter emerged as a clean, pure and decidedly different candidate to legitimize the Presidential myth after the Nixon fiasco, Obama was the best option to clean up the Bush mess. Obama obliquely concedes this when he characterizes himself as a “retrenchment” President.

He embraced the responsibility with gusto, attempting to replace open military aggression and occupation with bombs, drones and special forces. The goal of advancing US national interests (really, capitalist interests) is addressed best, he believes, with care and deliberation: “We have to choose where we can make a real impact.” Or as he put more crudely, “We don’t do stupid shit.”-- An obvious allusion to the foreign policy of his predecessor.

But it is not only the hyper-militarized foreign policy of the Bush administration that Obama rejects; it is also the shrewd, cynical Clintonesque foreign policy of “liberal interventionism” that he opposes.

Liberal interventionism-- sometimes known as “humanitarian interventionism”-- is the doctrine that disguises US regime change, aggression, and meddling as inspired by the promotion of human rights. Whether it's aiding in the dismantling of Yugoslavia, noxious policies against Cuba or Venezuela, saber-rattling in the South China Sea, threats to the Democratic People's Republic of Korea, a coup in Ukraine, or the wholesale dismantling of the state of Libya, the US hides its moves behind a hypocritical appeal to the cause of encouraging human rights and democracy. The self-serving US doctrine of exporting human rights and democracy is a US counterpart to the British Empire's previous mission of civilizing the non-European peoples; both are a transparent cover for imperial design.

Within the Obama Administration, the chief proponents of liberal interventionism were Hillary Clinton, Samantha Power, Susan Rice, Ben Rhodes, and Antony Blinken, according to Jeffrey Goldberg.

When not sitting on an opportunistic fence, John Kerry will side with the “humanitarians.”

Goldberg traces Obama's “realist” foreign policy position to a speech the then senator made before an anti-war rally:

“I suffer no illusions about Saddam Hussein,” he said. “He is a brutal man. A ruthless man … But I also know that Saddam poses no imminent and direct threat to the United States or to his neighbors.” He added, “I know that an invasion of Iraq without a clear rationale and without strong international support will only fan the flames of the Middle East, and encourage the worst, rather than best, impulses of the Arab world, and strengthen the recruitment arm of al-Qaeda.”

Certainly Obama deserves some credit for anticipating the strong and enduring resistance to an unprovoked invasion and occupation of a sovereign country. But it's important to note that it is not a defense of Iraq's sovereignty and right of self-determination that anchors his argument, but a calculation. Obama, like all bourgeois politicians, has not abandoned the imperialist project; he has only sought to improve it-- a point lost on those worshiping him in the run-up to the 2008 election.

The decisive event spurring Obama to settle accounts in The Atlantic interviews is the overthrow of Ghadaffi and the destruction of the Libyan state. It has become impossible to see the US, NATO, and Gulf states' war on Libya as anything more than a criminal enterprise and a strategic disaster. Obama is unconcerned about the criminality, but troubled by the debacle as a blemish on his record. Thus, he goes to great lengths to push responsibility onto his allies (Sarkozy, Cameron, etc.) and the liberal interventionists in his administration:

“...as tragic as the Libyan situation may be, it’s not our problem. The way I looked at it was that it would be our problem if, in fact, complete chaos and civil war broke out in Libya. But this is not so at the core of U.S. interests that it makes sense for us to unilaterally strike against the Qaddafi regime. At that point, you’ve got Europe and a number of Gulf countries who despise Qaddafi, or are concerned on a humanitarian basis, who are calling for action. But what has been a habit over the last several decades in these circumstances is people pushing us to act but then showing an unwillingness to put any skin in the game.”

Since we know from the Tony Blair phone transcripts (see my Journalists or Courtesans?) that on February 25, 2011-- barely two weeks after most journalists date the beginnings of the Libyan “uprising”-- the US and NATO were already threatening armed intervention, Obama's proclaimed reluctance to act seems less than convincing. But his determination to deflect the blame is certainly apparent. Despite his slipperiness, the fact is that the US vigorously bombed the Libyan government into defeat. 

Goldberg notes Obama's reflections:

“When I go back and I ask myself what went wrong,” Obama said, “there’s room for criticism, because I had more faith in the Europeans, given Libya’s proximity, being invested in the follow-up,” he said. He noted that Nicolas Sarkozy, the French president, lost his job the following year. And he said that British Prime Minister David Cameron soon stopped paying attention, becoming “distracted by a range of other things.” Of France, he said, “Sarkozy wanted to trumpet the flights he was taking in the air campaign, despite the fact that we had wiped out all the air defenses and essentially set up the entire infrastructure” for the intervention. This sort of bragging was fine, Obama said, because it allowed the U.S. to “purchase France’s involvement in a way that made it less expensive for us and less risky for us.” In other words, giving France extra credit in exchange for less risk and cost to the United States was a useful trade-off—except that “from the perspective of a lot of the folks in the foreign-policy establishment, well, that was terrible. If we’re going to do something, obviously we’ve got to be up front, and nobody else is sharing in the spotlight.”

With the Libyan fiasco as a backdrop, one understands Obama's subsequent hesitancy to bomb the hell out of Assad's Syria. Goldberg (and others) make much of Obama's turn away from his “red line” ultimatum on Syria: “History may record August 30, 2013, as the day Obama prevented the U.S. from entering yet another disastrous Muslim civil war...”

But the truth is far more complicated. The rebuff of Cameron's partnership by the UK parliament, US opinion polls, Merkel's disapproval, and intelligence hesitance all played a large role in causing Obama to throw the question of war into Congress's reluctant lap. Rather than defying “Washington's playbook” and rebuffing his own liberal interventionists, the President got cold feet.

Nonetheless, in this election season, Obama's uncharacteristic criticisms of his Administration mates do not bode well for the post-Obama era. Hillary Clinton, the presumptive next President, departs little from the “Washington playbook” on Obama's reckoning, seemingly willing to unleash the bombers at the slightest provocation. In this, she differs little from the Republican bullies. Only Sanders, with little chance to win the nomination, shows some leaning toward Obama's “realism,” his “enlightened” imperialism.

Obama's pull-back from the Syrian intervention left many allies confused, angry, even disgusted. It brought many existing frictions to a new, more damaging level. The old Washington consensus-- a euphemism for complete and servile Washington hegemony-- has been unraveling for some time. The rise of new economic powers and power blocs, the scramble for recovery and advantage after the trough of the economic crisis, and the US continuing engagement in costly, multiple wars sharply challenges US dominance.

Obama's backing away from overt action in Syria and recent rapprochement with Iran left the Jordanian leadership unhappy. Similarly, Turkey's Erdogan, who Obama considers a failure and an “authoritarian,” now challenges US leadership and authority in the region.

But the long-standing Saudi relationship is nearly fractured; festering differences only deepened with the Syrian and Iranian moves. Criticism of Saudi actions in Yemen, the US jettisoning of Mubarak, and the oil wars preceded the current hostility. With US energy production nearing self-sufficiency, the Saudi grip on Obama's foreign policy was loosened. One might speculate that Saudi Arabia's decision not to put a floor on falling oil prices constituted a response to the new-found independence. The US responded by removing the ban on exporting US energy resources. For a recent account appreciative of Obama's candor regarding Saudi Arabia in these interviews see the always perceptive commentator on Middle Eastern affairs, Patrick Cockburn, writing in Counterpunch.

Goldberg's interviews show clearly a growing exasperation with the US's traditional Middle Eastern allies and a yearning for new, more promising relations on the part of Obama. Israel and Saudi Arabia-- traditional loyal cops for US aims-- often defy US orders, adding to what Obama calls the post-Libyan “mess.”

Obama makes it clear that he he would like to get past his Middle Eastern mess, a task that he was elected to perform. He would like to focus on his Asia pivot. He would like to shift his attention to dampening Chinese influence and strengthening US economic links with other Asian countries-- the policy of isolating the PRC embodied in the Trans-Pacific Pact.

He acclaims his “restraint” in South and Central America as a formula for patient, but effective regime change, a formula that he hopes to exercise in his new relationship with Cuba.

If we take the Obama interviews as a kind of candid valedictory, we can say that he bitterly regrets failing to fulfill his mission of restoring a stability to the Middle East favorable to US corporate interests. We also can say that, after Libya, he came to the conclusion that tolerating the liberal interventionists in their knee-jerk military responses to advancing US imperial designs is a recipe for further entanglements and costly “messes.” He has arrived at an alternative, measured, “rational” imperialism in its stead, an imperialism that reflects the rise of new regional and international powers, the weakening of US hegemony, and the need to not be drawn into unconditional alliances.

Others have seen the Obama valediction for what it is: a step away from the New American Century war hawks and their “liberal” counterparts who hide their war mongering behind human rights. The Wall Street Journal responded to The Obama Doctrine with a scathing attack issued by Global View columnist, Bret Stephens (Barack Obama Checks Out, 3-15-16). Stephens agitatedly charges Obama with giving interviews to Goldberg “...that are.. gratuitously damaging to long standing US alliances, international security and Mr. Obama's reputation as a serious steward of the American interests...” Harsh words, indeed.

But even more troubling is the pack of rabid candidates seeking a chance to replace Obama. Neither Hillary Clinton nor any of the Republican candidates shares Obama's professed sobriety in pursuing imperial goals. All see military might and its ready exercise as the fulcrum of foreign policy. None share Obama's preference for drones and special operations over mass bombings and overt military operations. None would call out the “free-riders” and trouble makers. If one of them becomes President, we are back to the cowboy imperialism of Bush, the younger. Obama-imperialism is bad enough.

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

A Moment Charged with Possibility

Writing in the Los Angeles Times (If Bernie Sanders loses, his backers may not be there for Hillary Clinton in November, February 5), Evan Halper and Michael A Memola report:

Gio Zanecchia is so enamored of Bernie Sanders that he made a five-hour drive with his wife and infant son from South Jersey on Saturday morning to catch a glimpse of the progressive firebrand.

But what if Sanders loses the Democratic nomination? Asked whether he will be there to vote for the Democrat in November should Sanders falter, the 34-year-old union mechanic reacts as if the question is insane. There is not a chance, he insists, that he would ever support Hillary Clinton.

“She’s establishment,” Zanecchia said. “Most of the guys I work with think she’s a criminal.”…

This is not a group that is particularly loyal to the Democratic Party. While liberal Democrats make up a big chunk of Sanders’ support, many other backers are independents. Some mistrust the party so much that Sanders supporters booed the party chair when she took the stage Friday night at a dinner at which the candidates spoke.

Zanecchia’s second choice for president is Donald Trump.

Attempting to interpret the electorate for the Wall Street Journal (The Life of the Party, January 30-31), John O’Sullivan, a prominent writer, highly regarded in conservative circles, agrees that Democratic Party loyalty plays a diminished role in this electoral cycle. He sees changes in the Democratic Party as creating a gulf: “These changes have orphaned a very large class of voters. Working-class Americans no longer feel well represented by the Democrats…”

But he sees a similar gulf lurking in a significant section of the Republican Party, producing: “ the people now saying that they will vote Trump for president. Early media analyses tended to assume that these voters were Tea Partiers under a new flag. But… Philip Bump… found that Trump supporters were younger, poorer, less educated, less conservative, more moderate, more likely to call themselves Republican, less likely to call themselves independent…, more likely to be white and less likely to be evangelical than were Tea Party supporters on all these points.”

Mr. O’Sullivan is troubled because these Republican-in-name voters are less willing to carry the water for the corporate Republicans. They eschew the anti-government dogma that welds corporate Republicanism together with the Tea-Party: “Tea Partiers stress constitutional limits on what government can and should do; Trump supporters are enthusiastic for getting things done and aren’t too particular about how that happens.”

The Trumpets and Trumpettes lack enthusiasm for free-market ideology: “[L]ibertarianism and its prophet, Sen. Rand Paul, have been pushed aside by the rush of popular support to Mr. Trump, who represents, if anything, a movement from libertarianism to activist government.”

And most alarming to Mr. O’Sullivan and the corporate Republicans, “…Mr. Trump has sweepingly promised to preserve entitlements against… reforms, discouraging other Republicans from making this tough case.”

Thus, the Trump segment of Republican voters departs sharply from the corporate Republican playbook and represents somewhat of a challenge to the core corporate ideology of Republican Party bosses.

Of course the Trump constituency openly embraces the anti-immigrant racism stirring in all the elements of the Republican base. O’Sullivan sees this more of a tactical issue than a principled difference.

Something is stirring in the US electorate

Dissatisfaction within the two parties is not new. The desire for a break from the past, for change, drove the Obama election. And the rise of the Tea Party signaled turmoil within the Republican Party. While Obama and the Tea Party were both responses to a continued deterioration of confidence in US institutions and politicians, the challenges never threatened the two parties’ pro-corporate programs-- the Obama phenomena never eroded the dominance of big business or the banks, nor did it pretend to do so; the Tea Party never distracted the Republican Party from its mission to promote capital, big and small. Both parties were confident that they could stage manage dissatisfaction and tame dissent in the final act.

The Sanders and Trump successes suggest that voters are not appeased by the thin gruel offered by the party elites this go-round. But something more profound is occurring—a refusal to settle for the usual charade. Moreover, party loyalty is unusually thin this time, challenging party leaders’ ability to count on a transfer from one candidate to another. What the pundits call “unpredictability” is actually the exercise of a new level of political maturity and independence.

A recent Pew Research Center poll (December 8-13, 2015) bears out the mood of voter alienation: 62% of all respondents maintain that “the federal government does not do enough for middle-class people.” Thus, the notion that anti-government sentiment runs deep in the populace is a media-inspired illusion. Instead, people want better government.

Furthermore, the respondents harbor no illusions about the political parties. Sixty-two percent (62%) believe that the Republican Party favors the rich. And only 32% of the public believe that the Democratic Party favors the “middle class.”

One should not be fooled by the dodgy term “middle class,” so popular with class-conflict deniers. Respondents understand the term as roughly synonymous with “working class”: “When it comes to what it takes to be middle class, there is near unanimity in the public that a secure job and the ability to save money are essential for middle-class status.” (Pew)

Thus dissatisfaction is understandable when “middle class” is coupled with the finding that “Majorities of self-identified middle-class (58%) and lower-class adults (73%) say that good jobs are difficult to find.”

An even more recent Pew poll (released 2-10-16) shows a remarkably strong unhappiness with the US economic system (presumably capitalism!): “A substantial majority of Americans – 65% – say the economic system in this country ‘unfairly favors powerful interests.’” Fewer than half as many (31%) say the system “is generally fair to most Americans.”

While rejection of “the establishment” and “business-as-usual” marks a new level of political maturity, it is not accompanied by a comparable ideological clarity; the public shares only a murky vision of alternatives. The expression of dissent through such diverse electoral vehicles as Sanders and Trump demonstrates this point.

Nonetheless, the successes of the Sanders campaign, despite many weaknesses, open up an opportunity for the left in the US. Sanders has successfully and unapologetically embraced words like “socialism” and “revolution” in his campaign narrative. Never mind that he may use the words in a modest, unthreatening way; they have been effectively banned from main stream US political discourse for most of our lives. To the shock of many, a Boston Globe survey of New Hampshire Democratic Party primary voters prior to the February 9 vote found that 31% described themselves as “socialist,” over half of those between the ages of 17 and 34 did so as well.

Certainly many only have a hazy idea of socialism, but any one afraid to discuss socialism with others in this climate should surrender her or his leftist badge.

The failure of intense red-baiting to gain traction at this moment is equally remarkable. Consequently, the occasion to interact with an angry electorate looking for fresh answers should not be lost to the socialist left.

While Democratic Party values have inexorably moved rightward over the last 25 years or more, its loyal followers have just as deliberately moved leftward. An NBC/Wall Street Journal poll shows that Democrats describing themselves as “Very Liberal” rose from a mere 9% in the Bill Clinton era (1992) to 22% in 2016. Whatever “Very Liberal” means, it should be fallow ground for those of us offering a fresh alternative. It is surely apparent that the barrier to moving politics leftward is the Democratic Party establishment and the two-party stranglehold on change.

Lest anyone harbor illusions, the insurgencies are very far from victory. The two party establishments are not going to surrender—they will fight ferociously to the end. After all, the two parties belong to the elites and their corporate partners.

On the Republican side, should a corporate Republican fail to rise to successfully challenge Trump, Michael Bloomberg stands in the wings with a threatened independent run. The party’s corporate masters would rather he scuttle the ship temporarily than see Trump set back Republican chances for the next decade, especially with the emerging minority majority.

Should Clinton falter on the Democratic side, Biden is waiting in the wings, ready to accept a hand off. Rigged primaries, media assaults, and other traps lie ahead for Sanders before a stacked convention. We must remember that the Democratic Party doesn’t belong to the people.

The left must offer ideas of substance and clarity, along with bold alternatives, to the young idealists supporting Sanders’ quixotic campaign or they may retreat to indifference and inaction. A lot is possible.

Zoltan Zigedy

zoltanzigedy@gmail.com

Journalists or Courtesans?

If there is an honest, unfettered, or unsullied investigative reporter or commentator working for the major—even minor—US commercial press, would he or she please stand up?

This past several weeks have demonstrated that the so-called “free press” may well be free of overt US government dictate, but it nevertheless hues faithfully to the US government line on foreign policy matters. The words that flow from the official US spokespersons are dutifully recorded and slavishly reported as news copy by every domestic reporter or pundit holding a press badge and assigned to cover a branch of government.

Consider the outrageous rebuff of Seymour Hersh who has won well over a dozen of the most prestigious US journalism awards, including the Pulitzer and five Polk prizes. Responsible for the My Lai and Abu Ghraib atrocity revelations, Hersh has been effectively blacklisted from publishing in the US since 2013. His accounts of the Syrian war and the US assassination of Osama bin Laden were published overseas in the London Review of Books, since his former primary publisher, The New Yorker, and other US outlets refused to accept them. Amazingly, no groups of journalists, journalist organizations, or “freedom of the press” advocates have risen in protest against this muzzling of one of their most esteemed colleagues. Collective letters protesting alleged media repression in socialist countries or countries critical of US policy appear regularly in the New York Review of Books and as paid ads in the New York Times; yet these same indignant journalists, pundits, and academics have remained overwhelmingly silent when it comes to Seymour Hersh.

Even more outrageous is the lack of any serious effort by the mainstream press to confirm or refute Hersh’s claims. His counter narrative to the Obama Administration’s well publicized and embarrassingly self-serving account of bin Laden’s death would be easily assessed by following the threads developed by Hersh. Instead, the press interviewed a handful of government officials and camp followers and left the official story intact.

Even more egregious, some independent investigations of Hersh’s Sarin-gas claims have surfaced that suggest strongly that he might be right in laying the gassing of civilians at the doorstep of US allies in the anti-Assad crusade. Both a UN agency and a Turkish legislative body have challenged the sensational claims of alleged Syrian government barbarity that prop the US argument for regime change. However, no major US media outlet has actively acknowledged this challenge—a shameful affront to journalistic integrity.

The Blair/Ghadaffi Phone Transcripts

A few weeks ago, Tony Blair, former UK Prime Minister, released transcripts of two phone conversations that he had with Muammar Ghadaffi on February 25, 2011. Despite their significant bearing on the early moments of the Libyan rising that led to Ghadaffi’s assassination and overthrow, US media barons and their sycophant employees chose to trivialize the importance of the calls.

Ten days after the date that the West marks as the major start of the Libyan uprising, Tony Blair placed an anxious call to the Libyan leader, self-admittedly at the behest of the Obama administration and the NATO allies. It is just as clear, with hostilities at an early stage, that Blair is threatening Ghadaffi on behalf of his sponsors. He begins innocuously enough, decrying violence and calling for a peaceful outcome. He then adds that Ghadaffi must “engage with the international community, including American and European…” Why that engagement is essential is not clear. But it soon becomes so…

Five hours later, Blair is back on the phone with a message from his masters: “…if you have a safe place to go you should go there because this will not end peacefully and there has to be a process of change, that process of change can be managed and we have to find a way of managing it.” He goes on: “the violence needs to stop and a new constitution needs to take shape… I repeat the statement people have said to me, if there is a way that he can leave he should do so now. I think this can happen peacefully but he has to act now and signal that he wants this to happen.” [my italics]

Blair could not be clearer. He is demanding that the leader of a sovereign country step aside and allow the US and European powers unilaterally and without the consent of the people of Libya to determine the future of Libya. Moreover, Blair clearly backs the demand with the threat of violence—“…this will not end peacefully.” Sane people would count this as tantamount to a coup.

For his part, Ghadaffi asks Blair to come and see the situation himself. He denies that the situation is either dire or unstable. But he does affirm strongly that his opposition is Al Qaeda—that is, extreme fundamentalists. He asks Blair if he supports them: “…are you supporting terrorism?” Exasperated with the threat, Ghaddafi concludes: “…we have no problem, just leave us alone. If you are really serious and you are looking for the truth, get on a plane and come see us.”

Of course Blair and those pulling his strings were not “looking for the truth’ anymore than the Western media are seriously looking for the truth.

Less than three weeks later, the UN declared the infamous “no fly zone” that allowed NATO forces to launch an air war against Ghadaffi’s forces. US and NATO planes, along with covert fighters from the Gulf States, crippled loyalist forces and violently turned the war against Ghadaffi just as Blair said they would.

And today, Libya is a broken, ungovernable state, a haven for jihadists, just as Ghadaffi said would happen.

A pity the courtesans of the US media show no interest in “looking for the truth.”

Adrift in the Persian Gulf

Two shallow draft riverine craft operated by the US military were boarded and held by Iranian security forces near Farsi Island the day of President Obama’s state of the union address and days before a radical shift in US-Iranian relations.

Any reasonably alert reader of US news accounts of this encounter would be curious about nearly every detail and subsequent explanation offered. The fact that two specialized military craft favored by US special operations and used extensively for command, control and reconnaissance, were boarded in Iranian territorial waters near Iran’s largest naval base might cause some wonder.

The fact that the riverine craft are designed to operate in shallow river or coastal waters, but found their way over two hundred miles from the Saudi shore and in the middle of the Persian Gulf surely warrants some further wonder.

The military’s first explanations of these bizarre circumstances blamed engine failure and drift for the embarrassing presence of two boats and ten US personnel in unauthorized waters.

Of course, it’s hard to imagine that both boats suffered engine failure at the same moment and no relief was mobilized to render assistance. Before anyone asked embarrassing questions (not that the lapdog press would), Defense Secretary Ash Carter offered another tale: navigational failure caused the boats to go off course (way off course!).

But should anyone press this explanation (no one did), they might notice that the boats are equipped with sophisticated navigation, radar, and communication systems; and the likelihood that both of the boats would make the same error, go undetected, and proceed radically off course is about the same as a commercial air craft leaving New York’s LaGuardia airport and heading east rather than west.

So the military (CENTCOM) returned to a version of the first account, stating emphatically that mechanical failure of one boat’s diesel engine caused the two to stop for repairs while travelling from Kuwait to Bahrain. Of course that leaves the question of why the shallow draft boats needed to be hundreds of miles from the Saudi coast in the middle of the Persian Gulf, far away from the most direct and appropriate route to their destination.

But the bumbling explanations caused no consternation among the willfully gullible capitalist press. Instead, they reported earnestly the xenophobic ranting of election-season politicians about imaginary offense to US virtue.

Apart from Glenn Greenwald at The Intercept, no significant media figure cast a doubt on the Pentagon’s ever changing fairy tale, another demonstration of the utter spinelessness of the US media.

Zoltan Zigedy

zoltanzigedy@gmail.com

Tottering on Another Brink

In June of 2015, I wrote:

Broadly speaking, the three key factors of fixed business investment, productivity and, corporate profits have been trending downward for three to four years. First-quarter 2015 fixed investments fell 3.4%, not surprisingly, output per hour (productivity) fell by 3.1%, and earnings were expected to barely move. These three interdependent and fundamental indicators underscore the critical weaknesses in the US economy. Capitalism has wrung as much sweat as it can from workers, managers are reluctant to invest in new or advanced means of production, and US corporations are experiencing a decline in the rate of profit.

Since then, the “three key factors” gauging the health of the US economy have only worsened: Capital expenditure in the third quarter fell by 3.8%, productivity on an annualized basis was only up .4% for the third quarter, and profits suffered the largest (annualized through the third quarter) decline since the 2008 downturn.

In addition, the US manufacturing activity index (Institute for Supply Management) has fallen to its lowest level since June of 2009 and industrial production has declined for the third straight month through November (the just released December data from ISM affirm the first consecutive monthly contraction of the index of manufacturing activity since 2009).

Capacity utilization has dropped to 77%, the lowest in two years. Before 2007 and the onset of the economic crisis, it stood at 80%.

I wrote in June of the stock market inflation generated by mergers and acquisitions, stock buy-backs, and the obscenely low cost of borrowing. The wealth effect of that inflation—its psychological effect on spending—has receded. Market losses account for most of the $1.2 trillion in erased wealth in the third quarter, as reported by the Federal Reserve.

The rout of junk bonds (high-risk, high-yield bonds) in 2015 only adds to insecurity. While junk bonds only totaled $709 billion at the onset of crisis in 2008, they totalled $1.3 trillion when investors began to abandon them. Consequently the ratio of high-yield debt to corporate earnings is close to a new high. A faltering equity market is dampening investor euphoria.

I warned in June:

Today, there are 65 venture capital investments of over $1 billion each (CB Insights says there are 107), drawing funds from yield-hungry retirement funds, mutual funds, and hedge funds. Whatever the number, all agree that the total capitalization of these investments in firms that are little more than start-ups approaches or exceeds the capitalization of the similar “dot com” firms that blew up in 2000.

But new start-ups hit powerful head winds in 2015, especially in the tech/internet sector. As The Wall Street Journal reports: “Technology and Internet companies that went public in the US raised $9.5 billion in 2015, down from $40.8 billion in 2014… the number of IPOs in the sector dropped by more than half, to 29 from 62.”

Clearly, “yield-hungry” investors have miscalculated, as reflected by the current sharp fall of the NASDAQ equity market.

Of course, the US economy is also decidedly rocked by global developments: the PRC economy is shaky at best, the EU is stagnant, Canada is slowing, and the Russian and Brazilian economies are in sharp decline.

While consumer spending has buoyed the US economy, lifting GDP into positive territory, the well-spring of capitalism—profitability—continues to pose the critical problem. The third quarter of 2015 suffered the largest annualized decline in profits since the 2008 downturn. Third quarter profits were down 1.1% from the second quarter and 4.7% from the same quarter in 2014, demonstrating a persistent downward trend.

Interviewed in Barron’s (December 21, 2015), David Levy of the Jerome Levy Forecasting Center perceptively opined: “…But the one thing that has actually caused the economy to weaken a little is sagging profits. We’ve heard people use the expression ‘profit recession’, but there is no profits recession without a real recession. I see signs of things slowing as a result of that profits decline…”

It confounds me that progressive economists, many Marxists, and even Communist Parties continue to locate the source of the ongoing, and now deepening, capitalist crisis in “overproduction” or declining consumption or demand. These notions are remnants of an earlier pre-monopoly era or the influence of Keynesian thinking on Marxism and the broader Left. The “overproduction” that is relevant to capitalist crisis is the overproduction of capital which cannot find a profitable home without gumming up the accumulation process.

The demand-based theories serve as the centerpiece of social democratic crisis theory. Yes, corporate revenue and consumer spending are now stagnant or declining—not as leading indicators, but as consequences of a general economic slowdown brought on by the prospect of fewer profit opportunities. But it is a fall in the growth of profits or a decline in the rate of profit that causes capitalists to apply the brakes. If markets demonstrate greater profitability (by awarding capitalists a greater share, for example), capitalists will continue to invest, fuel the economic engine, even in the face of the stagnant or declining revenues of the moment. Of course falling revenues will eventually further retard the rate of profit. But it is profit that propels capitalism or sinks it in its absence.

For Marxists, it is not simply the numbers that explain the future, but the trends or patterns. Clearly the trends are negative. With central bank tools largely exhausted, it is difficult to imagine an easy escape from deepening crisis; it is difficult to see the coming year as bringing anything other than economic hardship.

Given the rise of the extreme right and the absence of a militant left in most countries, the economic crisis threatens to pose formidable political obstacles. And given the ubiquitous deadly conflicts and increasing inter-imperialist hostilities, the new year demands a heightened commitment to peace and social justice. That commitment must go beyond the tinctures and band aids served up currently by liberals and social democrats.

Zoltan Zigedy

zoltanzigedy@gmail.com

After State Monopoly Capitalism?

Few review articles are as satisfying as the recent Paul Krugman examination of Robert Reich’s new book, Saving Capitalism: For the Many, Not the Few, in the New York Review of Books (December 17, 2015). To begin with, it was gratifying to find the stark candor behind the title of Reich’s book. “Saving capitalism” assuredly implies that capitalism is on the ropes—in danger of expiring—an implication that I both believe and welcome.

Robert Reich, Paul Krugman, and another colleague, Joseph Stiglitz share lofty accomplishments in academic economics and constitute the intellectual triumvirate informing the non-Marxist left in the US. Although they do not agree on everything, they share a core set of beliefs in the viability of capitalism and its need to reform. It is unusual to see Krugman and Reich suggesting such blatant urgency.

The felt urgency turns on the dramatic increase of economic inequality in major capitalist countries, particularly the US. Krugman stresses that inequality was an issue that Reich and he “were already taking seriously” twenty-five years ago. That may be, but I think it’s fair to say that neither was taking the growth of inequality seriously as a structural feature of capitalism until the important work of Thomas Piketty two years ago.

Krugman takes us on an intellectual journey, outlining in clear, non-technical terms how he, Reich, and other non-Marxist economists modified their understanding of the causes of inequality growth (not simply inequality, but its growth) over the last several decades. Where Krugman arrives is nothing short of amazing: he, no doubt unwittingly, describes an evolved capitalism resembling the capitalism that Marxists described well over half of a century ago.

Decades ago, liberal, mainstream economists believed that rising inequality in the US sprang from a poor match between technological requirements and workers’ skill sets—what Krugman calls “skill-based technological change” (SBTC). Education was seen as the great leveler, restoring wealth and income to those falling behind. But with the correlation between levels of education and compensation broken today, all reject SBTC as an adequate explanation and the key to arresting the growth of inequality. The growth of debt-laden college graduates working in call centers surely shatters that illusion. Or as Krugman smartly puts it: “…hedge fund managers and high school teachers have similar levels of formal training.”

But economists fell back on another technological example: robots and other productivity-enhancing devices replacing workers. But Krugman makes short shrift of this explanation:

…if we were experiencing a robot-driven technological revolution, why did productivity growth seem to be slowing, not accelerating?

…if it were getting easier to replace workers with machines, we should have seen a rise in business investment as corporations raced to take advantage of the new opportunities; we didn’t and in fact corporations have increasingly been parking their profits in banks or using them to buy back stocks.

Krugman thus dismisses a technological explanation for the growth of inequality.

Instead he urges that we consider the centerpiece of Reich’s study: monopoly power.

It is the concentration of economic power in the hands of fewer corporate players that accounts for growing economic inequality, according to Krugman and Reich: “…it’s obvious to the naked eye that our economy consists much more of monopolies and oligopolists than it does of the atomistic, price-taking competitors economists often envision.”

So why did it take Reich and Krugman so long to arrive at this juncture, a place that Lenin visited over a hundred years ago? Marxist writers like Paul Baran and Paul Sweezy devoted an entire influential book to monopoly capitalism nearly fifty years ago.

Krugman apologetically-- “an intellectual and a policy error”--attributes the mainstream economic neglect of monopoly to an influential paper written by Milton Friedman in 1953 that emphatically dismissed the effects of monopoly power on significant economic behavior.

Thus, non-Marxist economists and their political allies have scorned the concept of monopoly power until recently, a concept that Marxists have made a centerpiece of their analyses for most of the twentieth century. What is “obvious to the naked eye…” now informs the theories embraced by our left-leaning reformers.

But Krugman and Reich reveal another crucial linkage—that between economic power (monopoly power) and political power (“And this ties the issue of market power to political power”). They see monopoly power as sustained, protected, and expanded by political actors. At the same time, they see political actors as selected, nourished, and guided by monopoly power. This creates a troubling conundrum for those seeking to reform capitalism. Reich’s conclusion, in Krugman’s words:

Rising wealth at the top buys growing political influence via campaign contributions, lobbying, and the rewards of the revolving door. Political influence in turn is used to rewrite the rules of the game—antitrust laws, deregulation, changes in contract law, union-busting—in a way that reinforces income concentration. The result is a sort of spiral, a vicious circle of oligarchy.

Putting aside the clashing metaphors of circles and spirals, this statement reasonably captures the mechanism behind the socio-economic formation Marxists call State Monopoly Capitalism.  For Marxists, concentration necessarily begets monopoly capitalism, which subsequently completely fuses with the state, creating a mutually reinforcing synthesis. The state rules in the interest of monopoly capitalism while policing the economic terrain to maximize the viability and success of monopoly capital. Monopoly capital legitimizes the state and selects and imposes its overseers. Nothing demonstrates the intimacy more than the crisis bailouts of mega-corporations (“too big to fail”) and the increasing establishment of international governing bodies and trade agreements. Nothing demonstrates monopoly capital’s political dominance more than the decisive role of mega-corporate money in the two-party political process.

With the recognition of the vital link of monopoly capital and the state, Krugman and Reich reach an understanding on a parallel with those Marxist theorists who characterized the post-World War II era as one of state monopoly capitalism. While some features of that characterization were and are sometimes disputed (see, for example, Politico-Economic Problems of Capitalism, Y. Varga, 1968), most Marxists would enthusiastically welcome the two economists to their camp on this important issue.

But unlike Marxists, who see the overthrow of capitalism as the final answer to the wedding of monopoly power to political power, Krugman, Reich and their liberal and social democratic colleagues are left with the conundrum that follows inescapably from their conclusions about the source of inequality. The economic reforms that they envision to retard the growth of inequality are altogether blocked by the massive political power stacked against them. And that political power is stacked against reform because political power is the purchase of monopoly power. In other words, their findings confirm that monopoly has the political process locked up and that lock will ensure that monopoly will continue to grow along with inequality.

Krugman clearly recognizes this conundrum and casts serious doubts over Reich’s wistful glance back at the past and faith that a New Deal-like solution will magically emerge from the amorphous “populism” of candidates from both parties (he mentions Ted Cruz!).

Of course Krugman is right in dismissing Reich's nostalgic answer, but he can offer no alternative.

We conclude that the growth of inequality will only be stopped when the program of saving capitalism is put aside for a program that vigorously challenges the capitalist system. We hope that Krugman and Reich will draw the same conclusion in the future.

Zoltan Zigedy

zoltanzigedy@gmail.com