[R-G] [BillTottenWeblog] The Anti-Empire Report

[Bill Totten]

by William Blum

www.killinghope.org (April 04 2009)


Some thoughts about socialism

"History is littered with post-crisis regulations. If there are undue
restrictions on the operations of businesses, they may view it to be
their job to get around them, and you sow the seeds of the next crisis."
-- Liz Ann Sonders, chief investment analyst, CharlesSchwab & Company, a
leading US provider of investment services. {1}

And so it goes. Corporations, whether financial or not, strive to
maximize profit as inevitably as water seeks its own level. We've been
trying to "regulate" them since the 19th century. Or is it the 18th?
Nothing helps for long. You close one loophole and the slime oozes out
of another hole. Wall Street has not only an army of lawyers and
accountants, but a horde of mathematicians with advanced degrees
searching for the perfect equations to separate people from their money.
After all the stimulus money has come and gone, after all the speeches
by our leaders condemning greed and swearing to reforms, after the last
congressional hearing deploring the corporate executives to their faces,
the boys of Wall Street, shrugging off a few bruises, will resume
churning out their assortment of financial entities, documents, and
packages that go by names like hedge funds, derivatives, collateralized
debt obligations, index funds, credit default swaps, structured
investment vehicles, subprime mortgages, and many other pieces of paper
with exotic names, for which, it must be kept in mind, there had been no
public need or strident demand. Speculation, bonuses, and scotch will
flow again, and the boys will be all the wiser, perhaps shaken a bit
that they're so reviled, but knowing better now what to flaunt and what
to disguise.

This is another reminder that communism or socialism have almost always
been given just one chance to work, if that much, while capitalism has
been given numerous chances to do so following its perennial fiascos.
Ralph Nader has observed: "Capitalism will never fail because socialism
will always be there to bail it out".

In the West, one of the most unfortunate results of the Cold War was
that seventy years of anti-communist education and media stamped in
people's minds a lasting association between socialism and what the
Soviet Union called communism. Socialism meant a dictatorship, it meant
Stalinist repression, a suffocating "command economy", no freedom of
enterprise, no freedom to change jobs, few avenues for personal
expression, and other similar truths and untruths. This is a set of
beliefs clung to even amongst many Americans opposed to US foreign
policy. No matter how bad the economy is, Americans think, the only
alternative available is something called "communism", and they know how
awful that is.

Adding to the purposeful confusion, the conservatives in England, for
thirty years following the end of World War Two, filled the minds of the
public with the idea that the Labour Party was socialist, and when
recession hit (as it does regularly in capitalist countries) the public
was then told, and believed, that "socialism had failed".

Yet, ever since the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991, polls taken
in Russia have shown a nostalgia for the old system. In the latest
example, "Russia Now", a Moscow publication that appears as a supplement
in the Washington Post, asked Russians: "What socio-economic system do
you favor?" The results were: "State planning and distribution": 58% ...
"Based on private property and market relations": 28% ... "Hard to say":
14%. {2}

In 1994, Mark Brzezinski (son of Zbigniew) was a Fulbright Scholar
teaching in Warsaw. He has written: "I asked my students to define
democracy. Expecting a discussion on individual liberties and
authentically elected institutions, I was surprised to hear my students
respond that to them, democracy means a government obligation to
maintain a certain standard of living and to provide health care,
education and housing for all. In other words, socialism." {3}

Many Americans cannot go along with the notion of a planned, centralized
society. To some extent it's the terminology that bothers them because
they were raised to equate a planned society with the worst excesses of
Stalinism. Okay, let's forget the scary labels; let's describe it as
people sitting down to discuss a particular serious societal problem,
what the available options there are to solve the problem, and what
institutions and forces in the society have the best access, experience,
and assets to deliver those options. So, the idea is to prepare these
institutions and forces to deal with the problem in a highly organized,
rational manner without having to worry about which corporation's
profits might be adversely affected, without relying on "the magic of
the marketplace". Now it happens that all this is usually called
"planning" and if the organization and planning stem from a government
body it can be called "centralized". There's no reason to assume that
this has to result in some kind of very authoritarian regime. All of us
over a certain age - individually and collectively - have learned a lot
about such things from the past. We know the warning signs; that's why
the Bush administration's authoritarianism was so early and so strongly
condemned.

The overwhelming majority of people in the United States work for a
salary. They don't need to be motivated by the quest for profit. It's
not in our genes. Virtually everybody, if given the choice, would prefer
to work at jobs where the main motivations are to produce goods and
services that improve the quality of life of the society, to help
others, and to provide themselves with meaningful and satisfying work.
It's not natural to be primarily motivated by trying to win or steal
"customers" from other people, no holds barred, survival of the fittest
or the most ruthless.

A major war can be the supreme test of a nation, a time when it's put
under the greatest stress. In World War Two, the US government
commandeered the auto manufacturers to make tanks and jeeps instead of
private cars. When a pressing need for an atom bomb was seen, Washington
did not ask for bids from the private sector; it created the Manhattan
Project to do it itself, with no concern for balance sheets or profit
and loss statements. Women and blacks were given skilled factory jobs
they had been traditionally denied. Hollywood was enlisted to make
propaganda films. Indeed, much of the nation's activities, including
farming, manufacturing, mining, communications, labor, education, and
cultural undertakings were in some fashion brought under new and
significant government control, with the war effort coming before
private profit. In peacetime, we can think of socialism as putting
people before profit, with all the basics guaranteed - health care, all
education, decent housing, food, jobs. Those who swear by free
enterprise argue that the "socialism" of World War Two was instituted
only because of the exigencies of the war. That's true, but it doesn't
alter the key point that it had been immediately recognized by the
government that the wasteful and inefficient capitalist system, always
in need of proper financial care and feeding, was no way to run a
country trying to win a war.

It's also no way to run a society of human beings with human needs. Most
Americans agree with this but are not consciously aware that they hold
such a belief. In 1987, nearly half of 1,004 Americans surveyed by the
Hearst press believed Karl Marx's aphorism: "From each according to his
ability, to each according to his need" was to be found in the US
Constitution. {4}

Along these lines, I've written an essay entitled: "The United States
invades, bombs, and kills for it, but do Americans really believe in
free enterprise?" {5}

I cannot describe in detail what every nut and bolt of my socialist
system would look like. That might appear rather pretentious on my part;
most of it would evolve through trial and error anyway; the important
thing is that the foundation - the crucial factors in making the
important decisions - would rest on people's welfare and the common good
coming before profit. Humankind's desperate need to halt environmental
degradation regularly runs smack into the profit motive, as does the
American health-care system. It's more than a matter of ideology; it's a
matter of the quality of life, sustainability, and survival.


"Omission is the most powerful form of lie". -- George Orwell

I am asked occasionally why I am so critical of the mainstream media
when I quote from them repeatedly in my writings. The answer is simple.
The American media's gravest shortcoming is much more their errors of
omission than their errors of commission. It's what they leave out that
distorts the news more than any factual errors or out-and-out lies. So I
can make good use of the facts they report, which a large, rich
organization can easier provide than the alternative media.

In early March, the Washington Post ran an article about Iran which
stated that "Iranian leaders ... reiterated that the Holocaust was 'a
lie' ". The article then went on to add that Iranian president Mahmoud
Ahmadinejad "repeated his assertion that the Holocaust is a 'big lie' ".
{6} That's all we're told. What is the poor reader to conclude but that
some Iranian leaders must be amongst that much vilified and ridiculed
group called "Holocaust deniers"?

What the article fails to mention is that these Iranian leaders use the
word "lie" to refer to only particular features of the Holocaust. There
is no report of any of them simply, clearly, unambiguously, and
unequivocally asserting that what we know as the Holocaust never took
place. Ahmadinejad, for example, has instead commented about the
peculiarity and injustice of a Holocaust which took place in Europe
resulting in a state for the Jews in the Middle East instead of in
Europe. Why are the Palestinians paying a price for a German crime? he
asks. And he wonders about the accuracy of the number of Jews - six
million - allegedly killed in the Holocaust, as have many other people
of all political stripes and nationalities, including the noted Italian
author Primo Levi, a Holocaust survivor. Even Mahmoud Abbas, President
of the Palestinian National Authority - Israel and Washington's favorite
Palestinian because of his opposition to Hamas, their least favored
Palestinians - wrote in his doctoral dissertation: "The truth of the
matter is that no one can verify this number, or completely deny it. In
other words, the number of Jewish victims might be six million and might
be much smaller - even less than one million." {7}

It is also worth noting that at the end of the Post article we learn
that "a senior Israeli official in Washington, who spoke on the
condition of anonymity because he was not cleared to discuss such
matters publicly" has asserted that "Iran would be unlikely to use its
missiles in an attack [against Israel] because of the certainty of
retaliation". Really? That's what I and others have been saying for
years. It should have been the story's headline, not the very last
sentence, literally. Yet, we can be certain that Israeli and American
officials and their disciples will continue to warn the world of the
danger of Iranian missile attacks. So will the Washington Post, engaging
in future omissions of its own news story.

What actually has long worried Israeli and US officials about possible
Iranian nuclear weapons is not that Iran might attack anyone, but that
Israel's beloved security blanket - being the only nuclear power in the
Middle East - would at risk, as might be Washington's dominance of the area.

Later in March, the Los Angeles Times ran an obituary of Janet Jagan,
the former president of Guyana and widow of Cheddi Jagan who had earlier
also been president. The obituary says not a word about the fact that
for eleven years, 1953-64, two of the oldest democracies in the world,
Great Britain and the United States, went to great lengths in their
repeated attempts to prevent the democratically elected Cheddi Jagan
from occupying his office. {8}

I've selected these examples of omission virtually at random. If I
wanted to report on each media omission concerning significant US
foreign policy matters I could fill this newsletter each month with
nothing else.

It happens that in late March the Washington Post also provided us with
the less common out-and-out lie. In an editorial about the leftist
former guerillas in El Salvador, the FMLN, winning the presidential
election with their candidate Mauricio Funes, the Post said: "If Mr
Funes as well as the election's losers now respect the rule of law, the
result could be the consolidation of the political system the United
States was aiming for when it intervened in El Salvador's civil war
during the 1980s. At the time, the goal of a successful Salvadoran
democracy was dismissed as a mission impossible, just as some now say
democracy is unattainable in Iraq and Afghanistan." {9}

The idea that the US intervention in the Salvadoran civil war stemmed
from a desire to bring democracy to the country is so breathtaking in
its audacity that it's conceivable the Post editorial writer is
suffering from early-stage Alzheimer's; it's wholly comparable to saying
that the Apartheid regime of South Africa strove to increase harmony and
equality between blacks and whites. In the process of supporting a
Salvadoran government of remarkable tyranny, brutality and human-rights
violations, the United States provided the country's armed forces with a
never-ending supply of funds, weapons and training that brought
continual destruction and suffering to the people of El Salvador. The
Post's "disclosure" will not send historians scurrying to rewrite their
books. Nor can it serve to conceal the fact that the United States is
not fighting for "democracy" in Iraq and Afghanistan any more than it
did in El Salvador.


The ideology of Barack Obama

In the past two months:

* US Vice President Joe Biden was asked by reporters at a summit in
Chile if Washington plans to put an end to the near-fifty-year-old
economic embargo against Cuba. He replied "No". {10}

* Israeli authorities broke up a series of Palestinian cultural events
in Jerusalem, disrupting a children's march and bursting balloons at a
schoolyard celebration. {11} There has not been, nor will there be, any
embargo of any kind by the United States against Israel. Nor will
President Obama make any comment about what he really feels about
invading a children's party and bursting their balloons.

* The White House and the Pentagon appear to be having a competition
over who can announce the most troops being sent to Afghanistan. Is
anyone keeping a body count?

* US drones continue to drop bombs on people's homes and wedding parties
in Pakistan. No one in Washington publicly admits to this or comments in
any way about the legality or morality of it all.

* Bolivia and Ecuador have expelled American diplomats for what their
hosts saw as conspiring to undermine the government.

Any number of other examples can be given of how alike the foreign
policies of the Bush and Obama administrations are, how little, if any,
change has occurred; certainly nothing of any significance. Yet, my
saying such a thing is precisely what most often bothers Obama
supporters who read or hear my comments. They're in love with the man
with the toothpaste-advertisement smile, who's "smart" (whatever that
means), who plays basketball, and is not George W Bush, and his wife who
puts her arm around the queen of England.

Obama's popularity around the world is enhanced, to an important extent,
by the fact that he has endeavored to conceal or obscure his real
ideology. As an example, in early March, in an interview with the New
York Times, he was asked: "Is there a one word name for your philosophy?
If you're not a socialist, are you a liberal? Are you progressive? One
word?"

"No, I'm not going to engage in that", replied the president. {12}

The next day he called the Times reporter, telling him: "It was hard for
me to believe that you were entirely serious about that socialist
question". Obama then gave the reporter several examples of why his
policies show that he isn't a socialist. {13}

He didn't have to convince me. Obama's centrist bent is clear to anyone
who bothers to look. But after the Times incident - which apparently
bothered him - he may have felt the need to be more clear about his
ideological leanings to avoid any further silly "socialist" episodes.
The next day, meeting at the White House with members of the New
Democrat Coalition, a group of centrist Democratic members of the House,
Obama said at one point: "I am a New Democrat". {14}

Most conservatives will probably continue to see him as a dangerous
leftist. They should be happy that Obama is the president and not any
kind of real progressive or socialist or even a genuine liberal, but the
right wing is greedy.

Notes

1. Washington Post, March 29 2009

2. "Russia Now", in Washington Post, March 25 2009

3. Los Angeles Times, September 02 1994

4. Frank Bernack, Jr, Hearst Corp. President, address to the American
Bar Association, early 1987, reported in In These Times magazine
(Chicago), June 24 - July 7 1987

5. William Blum, "Rogue State: A Guide to the World's Only Superpower",
chapter 26

6. Washington Post, March 05 2009

7. The Middle East Media Research Institute, "Inquiry and Analysis", No
95, May 30 2002; also see Wikipedia, entry for Mahmoud Abbas, "Doctoral
Dissertation" section.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mahmoud_Abbas#Doctoral_dissertation

8. Los Angeles Times, March 29 2009. See William Blum, "Killing Hope: US
Military and CIA Interventions Since World War Two", chapter 16 for what
was left out.

9. Washington Post, March 21 2009

10. Miami Herald, March 28 2009

11. Washington Post, March 22 2009

12. New York Times, March 07 2009

13. New York Times, March 08 2009

14. Politico magazine, online, March 10 2009
http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0309/19862.html


William Blum is the author of:-

Killing Hope: US Military and CIA Interventions Since World War Two
(Common Courage Press, 1995)

Rogue State: A Guide to the World's Only Superpower (Zed Books, 2002)

West-Bloc Dissident: A Cold War Memoir (Soft Skull Press, 2002)

Freeing the World to Death: Essays on the American Empire (Common
Courage Press, 2004)


Portions of the books can be read, and copies purchased, at
http://www.killinghope.org and previous Anti-Empire Reports can be read
at this website.

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