Harry Targ : My Nelson Mandela

Nelson Mandela, 1918-2013.

My Nelson Mandela

Real historic figures get lionized, sanitized, and most importantly redefined as defenders of the ongoing order rather than activists who committed their lives to revolutionary changes...

By Harry Targ / The Rag Blog / December 10, 2013

One of the ironies of 21st century historical discourse is that despite significantly increased access to information, historical narratives are shaped by economic and political interest and ideology more than ever before.

Widely distributed accounts about iconic political figures such as Dr. Martin Luther King stun those of us who are knowledgeable about the times in which these figures lived. Real historic figures get lionized, sanitized, and most importantly redefined as defenders of the ongoing order rather than activists who committed their lives to revolutionary changes in the economic and political structures that exploit and oppress people.

Most of the media reviews of the life and achievements of Nelson Mandela fit this model.

However, most of my remembrances of Nelson Mandela are different.

First, he committed his life to the cause of creating an economic and political system in his homeland that would provide justice for all people.

Second, Nelson Mandela was part of the great wave of revolutionary anti-colonial leaders who participated in the mass movements for change in the Global South in the 20th century. These movements for independence led to the achievement of liberation for two-thirds of the world’s population from harsh, inhumane white minority rule. The campaign against apartheid in South Africa was part of this anti-colonial struggle.

Mandela shared the vision of such figures as Mahatma Gandhi, Jawaharial Nehru, Kwame Nkrumah, Amical Cabral, Franz Fanon, Fidel Castro, and Che Guevara. These leaders were spokespersons for mass struggles that transformed the world in the 20th century.

Third, Nelson Mandela gave voice and inspiration to young people in the Global North who sought peace and justice in their own societies. Mandela inspired movements that went beyond the struggle against racism and imperialism to address sexism and homophobia as well.

Nelson Mandela, c.1950. Photo by Apic/Getty Images.

Fourth, Mandela made it clear to many of us (despite sanitized media frames) that he saw himself as part of the movements of people who themselves make history. He worked with all those who shared his vision of a just society: grassroots movements, the South African Communist Party (SACP), the South African labor movement (COSATU), the Black Consciousness Movement, and progressives from faith communities.

To quote from Mandela’s first speech upon release from prison on February 11, 1990:

On this day of my release, I extend my sincere and warmest gratitude to the millions of my compatriots and those in every corner of the globe who have campaigned tirelessly for my release.

I send special greetings to the people of Cape Town, this city which has been my home for three decades. Your mass marches and other forms of struggle have served as a constant source of strength to all political prisoners.

I salute the African National Congress. It has fulfilled our every expectation in its role as leader of the great march to freedom.

I salute our President, Comrade Oliver Tambo, for leading the ANC even under the most difficult circumstances.

I salute the rank and file members of the ANC. You have sacrificed life and limb in the pursuit of the noble cause of our struggle.

I salute combatants of Umkhonto we Sizwe...who have paid the ultimate price for the freedom of all South Africans.

I salute the South African Communist Party for its sterling contribution to the struggle for democracy. You have survived 40 years of unrelenting persecution.

I salute General Secretary Joe Slovo, one of our finest patriots. We are heartened by the fact that the alliance between ourselves and the Party remains as strong as it always was.

I salute the United Democratic Front, the National Education Crisis Committee, the South African Youth Congress, the Transvaal and Natal Indian Congresses and COSATU and the many other formations of the Mass Democratic Movement.

I also salute the Black Sash and the National Union of South African Students. We note with pride that you have acted as the conscience of white South Africa. Even during the darkest days in the history of our struggle you held the flag of liberty high. The large-scale mass mobilisation of the past few years is one of the key factors which led to the opening of the final chapter of our struggle.

I extend my greetings to the working class of our country. Your organised strength is the pride of our movement. You remain the most dependable force in the struggle to end exploitation and oppression...

I pay tribute to the many religious communities who carried the campaign for justice forward when the organisations for our people were silenced...

I pay tribute to the endless heroism of youth, you, the young lions. You, the young lions, have energised our entire struggle.

I pay tribute to the mothers and wives and sisters of our nation. You are the rock-hard foundation of our struggle. Apartheid has inflicted more pain on you than on anyone else.

On this occasion, we thank the world community for their great contribution to the anti-apartheid struggle. Without your support our struggle would not have reached this advanced stage. The sacrifice of the frontline states will be remembered by South Africans forever.

Finally, Nelson Mandela inspired many of us in our own ways to commit to the historical march of people to make a better world. That commitment is powerfully described by a friend, Willie Williamson, a retired teacher from Chicago:

As a young man I learned about Nelson Mandela serving time in prison in South Africa. At that time I was politically ignorant about international affairs, but became curious about the Apartheid racial system because it reminded me so much of the small Mississippi town that I grew up in.

Already angered, after completing a stint in the Vietnam War, I became outraged and somewhat withdrawn. But it was the fight to free Mandela that brought me around to understanding that I had to become a part of a movement with justice at its core. I have Mandela to thank for my understanding of how to relieve an unjust power of its stranglehold. The fight must always be for justice throughout the world!

[Harry Targ is a professor of political science at Purdue University and is a member of the National Executive Committee of the Committees of Correspondence for Democracy and Socialism. He lives in West Lafayette, Indiana, and blogs at Diary of a Heartland Radical. Read more of Harry Targ's articles on The Rag Blog.]

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Harry Targ : STEM and the Tyranny of the Meme

The STEM 'crisis' and the 'fear of falling behind' meme.

The tyranny of the meme:
Commies, the arms race, and now STEM

The threats of the United States falling behind some fictional adversaries is a similar 'meme' to those that have been articulated by economic, political, and military elites at least since the end of World War II.

By Harry Targ / The Rag Blog / November 19, 2013

A spokesperson for Purdue University testified before a Congressional research and technology subcommittee on November 13 warning that the United States is “losing a cadre of innovators that will never come back.” The university spokesperson was echoing warnings that have been coming from his university and major research universities all around the country.

Purdue’s President, Mitch Daniels, not unlike other university presidents, has committed increasing shares of his budget to building so-called STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics) fields. While support for STEM fields in higher education is not in and of itself a danger to higher education, Daniels has been implying that the United States has been falling behind other, potentially economically and/or militarily competitive nations, because of inadequate STEM funding.

And, he has recommended that expanded allocation of resources for scientific and technological research and education should come from cuts in vital programs such as Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid. In addition, as governor, Daniels was a leading proponent of the privatization of social services and public education.

The threats of the United States falling behind some fictional adversaries is a similar “meme” to those that have been articulated by economic, political, and military elites at least since the end of World War II. A “meme” is generally understood to be an “idea, behavior, or style that spreads from person to person within a culture.” It is a framework for bundling ideas into a common theme that can be used in speeches, writings, and rituals. The meme or idea of falling behind some imagined competing or threatening force has been misused by political leaders over and over again.

When World War II was coming to an end, members of the Roosevelt and Truman administrations were concerned that the economy would return to the depression of the 1930s. What stimulated economic recovery during the war, of course, was the mobilization of the military, corporations, universities, and workers to engage in massive research and production of war material to defeat fascism.

In the context of the winding down of the war, one CEO serving in government recommended that the United States create a “permanent war economy” to maintain the high level of economic and military mobilization and thus forestall economic decline.

Support for high levels of military spending and corporate/government/university cooperation required a rationale. This rationale became the “meme” of the international communist threat. It justified the misallocation of societal resources for continued war production that has been a central feature of federal policy ever since.

The threat of “falling behind the Soviets” reverberated in the mass media after the shocking October 1957 Soviet projection of an earth satellite into space. All of a sudden Americans were made to believe that their institutions were inferior to the enemy and that a new commitment of resources was needed to beat the Soviets to the moon and expand dramatically the American war machine.

Three years later the threat of falling behind the enemy was used by presidential candidate John Kennedy to mobilize support and encourage new rounds of huge investments in military expansion. Kennedy warned of a “missile gap” that had emerged between the two super powers, a claim that was admitted to be false within a year of the new president’s assuming office.

Twenty years later presidential candidate Ronald Reagan referred to the “window of vulnerability” that had emerged in the 1970s as a result of Soviet/United States arms control negotiations. Although the United States agreed to limitations in arms production, the Soviet Union, he claimed, continued their arms buildup creating this vulnerability to Soviet power. Consequently, President Reagan between 1981 and 1987 spent more on the military than had been spent in the entire period of U.S. history from 1789 to 1981.

With the end of the Cold War, the meme shifted to wars on “drugs,” and today it's “terrorism.” All of these manifestations of the “falling behind” meme led the United States government to waste trillions of dollars and the loss of millions of lives of Americans and peoples in other countries such as Vietnam, Iraq, and Afghanistan.

Returning to “the STEM crisis,” Michael Anft, in a recent article in The Chronicle of Higher Education, points out that there is much research showing that U.S. higher education is not falling behind some possible competing nations, that American universities are producing as many STEM college graduates as are needed, and that the institutional spokespersons, from universities, the corporate sector, technology associations and others, may be motivated more by institutional interest than demonstrated need.

Further, in an article earlier this year, Robert N. Charette challenges a variety of claims made by advocates of more resources for STEM fields. Among these are the following:

• Many workers in STEM fields do not have STEM degrees and those who hold such degrees do not necessarily find work in their fields.
• STEM jobs have changed over time. For example, long-term engineering jobs have been reduced while shorter-term project driven hires have increased.
• With repeated shifts in the economy, it is difficult to project what STEM job needs will be over long periods of time, five or 10 years from now.
• Some studies find that the supply of STEM trained college students exceeds the demand for their labor. In one study by the Economic Policy Institute it was found that more than one-third of computer science graduates in recent years have not been able to find jobs in their chosen field.
• Many STEM jobs have been outsourced. In addition, international workers with STEM qualifications have been enticed to take jobs in the United States, often receiving smaller salaries than American workers.
• Salaries of those working in STEM fields have been stagnant, much like the broader work force. This is so, some economists suggest, because demand for such trained workers has declined over the last several years.

Charette discussed possible reasons for the hyperbolic calls for quantum shifts toward STEM fields in universities and public investment. He refers to a cycle of “alarm, boom, and bust” that has governed phases of the public policy meme affecting foreign and domestic policy. Recently, the federal government has been spending $3 billion each year on 209 STEM-related initiatives, amounting to “about $100 for every U.S. student beyond primary school.”

Charette identifies powerful forces in the country that gain from this massive allocation of societal resources. Corporations want a large pool of trained workers from which to choose, thus cheapening the cost of labor. State governments and the Federal government measure their successes in part by how many scientists and engineers they help produce.

In addition, a third to one-half of the budgets of large universities come from government and corporate research grants in the STEM fields as public funding for universities has declined. And finally, about 50 cents of every dollar in the federal budget goes to the military, homeland security, and space exploration.

As Charette points out; “The result is that many people’s fortunes are now tied to the STEM crisis, real or manufactured.”

[Harry Targ is a professor of political science at Purdue University and is a member of the National Executive Committee of the Committees of Correspondence for Democracy and Socialism. He lives in West Lafayette, Indiana, and blogs at Diary of a Heartland Radical. Read more of Harry Targ's articles on The Rag Blog.]

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Harry Targ : Revisiting 'American Exceptionalism'

Beacon to the world? Image from Wikimedia Commons.

Was Putin right?
Revisiting 'American exceptionalism'

A better future and the survival of the human race require us to realize, as Paul Robeson suggested, that what is precious about humanity is not our differences but our commonalities.

By Harry Targ / The Rag Blog / September 17, 2013

Continued study and research into the origins of the folk music of various peoples in many parts of the world revealed that there is a world body -- a universal body -- of folk music based upon a universal pentatonic (five tone) scale. Interested as I am in the universality of (hu)mankind -- in the fundamental relationship of all peoples to one another -- this idea of a universal body of music intrigued me, and I pursed it along many fascinating paths. -- Paul Robeson, Here I Stand, 1959.

America’s destiny required the U.S. “...to set the world its example of right and honor... We cannot retreat from any soil where providence has unfurled our banner. It is ours to save that soil, for liberty, and civilization... It is elemental... it is racial. God has not been preparing the English-speaking and teutonic peoples for a thousand years for nothing but vain and idle self-contemplation and self-admiration. No! He has made us the master organizers of the world to establish system where chaos reigns. He has given us the spirit of progress to overwhelm the forces of reaction throughout the earth.” -- Senator Albert Beveridge, Indiana, Congressional Record, 56 Congress, I Session, pp.704-712, 1898.

President Vladimir Putin wrote in The New York Times, September 12, 2013, that “it is extremely dangerous to encourage people to see themselves as exceptional, whatever the motivation.” This statement embedded in a generally reasonable statement about the instability of Syria brought an outcry from the liberal media elite and often-quoted academics.

For example a Bloomberg editorial refers to Putin’s “bizarre” “out-of date” analysis. Professor Fouad Ajami wrote that “Arab regimes of plunder and tyranny were both physically close to Russia” and the “lawless Kremlin model.”

Liberal commentators dwelled on the silly pictures of muscular Putin riding a horse without a shirt. Or they reminded viewers of Russia’s recent (and vile) homophobia. Or they referred to Putin’s pedigree as a KGB operative or as the ruler behind the throne manipulating the Russian electoral system in order to return to office after being replaced.

Even considering the source.
Image from Huffington Post.

Although critics were probably correct to challenge his claim that the recent gassing of Syrian citizens was done only by rebels, he did admit that the Assad regime in fact does have such weapons. But both Democrats and Republicans expressed outrage that anyone could challenge the idea that the United States is the “exceptional” nation.

Let’s be clear. United States foreign policy over the last 150 years has been a reflection of many forces including economics, politics, militarism, and the desire to control territory. The most important idea used by each presidential administration to gain support from the citizenry for the pursuit of empire is the claim that America is “exceptional”.

Think about the view of “the city on the hill” articulated by Puritan ancestors who claimed that they were creating a social experiment that would inspire the world. Over 300 years later President Reagan again spoke of “the city on the hill.” Or one can recall public addresses of turn of the twentieth century luminaries such as former President Theodore Roosevelt who claimed that the white race from Europe and North America was civilizing the peoples of what we would now call the Global South. Or Indiana Senator Beveridge’s clear statement: “It is elemental... It is racial.”

From the proclamation of the new nation’s special purpose in Puritan America, to Ronald Reagan’s reiteration of the claim, to similar claims by virtually all politicians of all political affiliations, Americans hear over and over that we are different, special, and a shining example of public virtue that all other peoples should use as their guide to building a better society and polity.

However, looking at data on the United States role in the world, the United States was at war for 201 years from 1776 to 2011. Ten million indigenous people were exterminated as the “new” nation moved westward between the 17th and the 20th centuries and at least 10 million people were killed, mostly from developing countries between 1945 and 2010 in wars in which the United States had some role.

In addition, world affairs was transformed by the singular use of two atomic bombs; one dropped on Hiroshima on August 6, 1945, instantly killing 80,000 people and the other on Nagasaki on August 9, 1945, killing another 70,000.

Comparing the image of exceptionalism with the domestic reality of American life suggests stark contrasts as well: continuous and growing gaps between rich and poor, inadequate nutrition and health care for significant portions of the population, massive domestic gun violence, and inadequate access to the best education that the society has the capacity to provide to all.

Of course, the United States was a slave society for over 200 years, formally racially segregated for another 100, and now incarcerates 15 percent of African-American men in their twenties.

The United States is not the only country that has a history of imperialism, exploitation, violence, and racism, but we must understand that our foreign policy and economic and political system are not exceptional and must be changed.

Finally, a better future and the survival of the human race require us to realize, as Paul Robeson suggested, that what is precious about humanity is not our differences but our commonalities. Exceptionalist thinking separates us. Sharing what we have in common as human beings, both our troubles and our talents, is the only basis for creating a peaceful and just world.

[Harry Targ is a professor of political science at Purdue University and is a member of the National Executive Committee of the Committees of Correspondence for Democracy and Socialism. He lives in West Lafayette, Indiana, and blogs at Diary of a Heartland Radical. Read more of Harry Targ's articles on The Rag Blog.]

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Harry Targ : The CIA's Iranian Coup and 60 Years of 'Blowback'

Supporters of Mohammed Mossadegh demonstrate in Tehran, July 1953. Placard depicts an Iranian fighting off Uncle Sam and John Bull. Image from The Spectator.

The overthrow of Mossadegh:
Sixty years of Iranian 'blowback'

The overthrow of Mossadegh and the backing of the return of the Shah to full control of the regime led to U.S. support for one of the world’s most repressive and militarized regimes.

By Harry Targ /The Rag Blog / August 21, 2013

Chalmers Johnson wrote in The Nation in October 2001, that "blowback"

is a CIA term first used in March 1954 in a recently declassified report on the 1953 operation to overthrow the government of Mohammed Mossadegh in Iran. It is a metaphor for the unintended consequences of the U.S. government's international activities that have been kept secret from the American people. The CIA's fears that there might ultimately be some blowback from its egregious interference in the affairs of Iran were well founded... This misguided "covert operation" of the U.S. government helped convince many capable people throughout the Islamic world that the United States was an implacable enemy.

The CIA-initiated overthrow of the regime of Mohammed Mossadegh 60 years ago on August 19, 1953, was precipitated by what Melvin Gurtov called “the politics of oil and cold war together.” Because it was the leading oil producer in the Middle East and the fourth largest in the world and was geographically close to the former Soviet Union, President Eisenhower was prevailed upon to launch the covert CIA war on Iran long encouraged by Great Britain.

The immediate background for the ouster of Mossadegh was Iran’s nationalization of its oil production. Most Iranians were living in poverty in the 1940s as the Iranian government received only 10 percent of the royalties on its oil sales on the world market. The discrepancy between Iran’s large production of oil and the limited return it received led Prime Minister Mohammed Mossadegh, a liberal nationalist, to call for the nationalization of the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company in 1951.

Despite opposition from Iran’s small ruling class, the parliament and masses of the Iranian people endorsed the plan to seize control of its oil. Mossadegh became the symbol of Iranian sovereignty.

Ironically, Mossadegh assumed the United States would support Iran’s move toward economic autonomy. But in Washington the Iranian leader was viewed as a demagogue, his emerging rival the Shah of Iran (the sitting monarch of Iran) as “more moderate.”

After the nationalization, the British, supported by the United States, boycotted oil produced by the Iranian Oil Company. The British lobbied Washington to launch a military intervention but the Truman administration feared such an action would work to the advantage of the Iranian Communists, the Tudeh Party.

The boycott led to economic strains in Iran, and Mossadegh compensated for the loss of revenue by increasing taxes on the rich. This generated growing opposition from the tiny ruling class, and they encouraged political instability. In 1953, to rally his people, Mossadegh carried out a plebiscite, a vote on his policies. The Iranian people overwhelmingly endorsed the nationalization of Iranian oil. In addition, Mossadegh initiated efforts to mend political fences with the former Soviet Union and the Tudeh Party.

As a result of the plebiscite, and Mossadegh’s openings to the Left, the United States came around to the British view; Mossadegh had to go. As one U.S. defense department official put it:

When the crisis came on and the thing was about to collapse, we violated our normal criteria and among other things we did, we provided the army immediately on an emergency basis... The guns that they had in their hands, the trucks that they rode in, the armored cars that they drove through the streets, and the radio communications that permitted their control, were all furnished through the military defense assistance program... Had it not been for this program, a government unfriendly to the United States probably would now be in power. (Richard Barnet, Intervention and Revolution, 1972)

The Shah, who had fled Iran after the plebiscite, returned when Mossadegh was ousted. A new prime minister was appointed by him who committed Iran to the defense of the “free” world. U.S. military and economic aid was resumed, and Iran joined the CENTO alliance (an alliance of pro-West regional states).

In August 1954, a new oil consortium was established. Five U.S. oil companies gained control of 40 percent of Iranian oil, equal to that of returning British firms. Iran compensated the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company for its losses by paying $70 million, which Iran received as aid from the United States. The Iranian ruling class was accorded 50 percent of profits from future oil sales.

President Eisenhower declared that the events of 1953 and 1954 were ushering in a new era of “economic progress and stability” in Iran and that it was now to be an independent country in “the family of free nations.”

In brief, the United States overthrew a popularly-elected and overwhelmingly-endorsed regime in Iran. The payoff the United States received, with British acquiescence, was a dramatic increase in access by U.S. oil companies to Iranian oil at the expense of the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company.

The overthrow of Mossadegh and the backing of the return of the Shah to full control of the regime led to U.S. support for one of the world’s most repressive and militarized regimes. By the 1970s, 70,000 of the Shah’s opponents were in political prisons. Workers and religious activists rose up against the Shah in 1979, leading to the rapid revolutionary overthrow of his military state.

As Chalmers Johnson suggested many years later, the United States' role in the world is still plagued by “blowback.” Masses of people all across the globe, particularly in the Persian Gulf, the Middle East, and East Asia, regard the United States as the major threat to their economic and political independence. And the covert operation against Mohammed Mossadegh in Iran is one place where such global mistrust began.

[Harry Targ is a professor of political science at Purdue University and is a member of the National Executive Committee of the Committees of Correspondence for Democracy and Socialism. He lives in West Lafayette, Indiana, and blogs at Diary of a Heartland Radical. Read more of Harry Targ's articles on The Rag Blog.]

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Harry Targ : Academic Freedom and the Mitch Daniels/Howard Zinn Kerfuffle

Political cartoon by Gary Varvel / Indianapolis Star

Academic freedom under fire:
The Mitch Daniels/Howard Zinn kerfuffle

If education at any level is to be shaped by the principle of academic freedom it must encourage student exposure to varieties of theories, perspectives, and points of view.

By Harry Targ / The Rag Blog / August 7, 2013

WEST LAFAYETTE, Indiana -- On July 17, 2013, an Associated Press story was published in several newspapers quoting from 2010 e-mails Governor Mitch Daniels of Indiana, now the president of Purdue University, wrote to “top state educational officials.” The e-mails encouraged the suppression of popular historian Howard Zinn’s book, A People’s History of the United States in Indiana public education, including university level teacher training courses.

Upon the death of popular historian Howard Zinn, Daniels e-mailed that “this terrible anti-American academic has finally passed away.”

When challenged on the seeming threats to academic freedom, Daniels claimed that his directives “only” referred to K through 12 instruction despite the fact that his e-mails made it clear he opposed instruction that used Zinn’s writings as tools for in-service training for teachers.

Ninety Purdue University faculty (including this author) signed a letter to President Daniels objecting to his implied threat to academic freedom. In addition to defending the university as a place for debate among competing ideas, the faculty objected to the negative characterization of Zinn’s scholarship as an historian.

They also objected to Daniels’ claim that although he was not interested in censoring scholarship and teaching at the university, when he was governor he had the responsibility to oversee school curricula from kindergarten through high school.

Faculty pointed out that restricting what was being taught to teachers pursuing advanced credits and restricting the right of teachers to use Zinn’s work in pre-college curricula violated academic freedom. Many Purdue faculty believed that extreme statements damning the substance of Zinn’s work cast a pall on the university and made serious reflection on American history in elementary and high schools more difficult for young people and their teachers.

It is important to note that the Daniels e-mails, and their threat to free discussion and debate in educational institutions in Indiana, reflect the deep struggles being waged in the American political system. Rush Limbaugh once remarked on his radio show to the effect that “we” have captured most institutions in the society with the exception of the university.

Since politics is usually about the contestation of ideas and the development of ideas comes from an understanding of the past and its connection to the present and the future, schools and universities can aptly be seen as “contested terrain.” That is teachers and students learn about their world through reading, writing, debating, and advocating policies, ideas, and values in educational settings.

Consequently, if one sector of society wishes to gain and maintain political and economic power they might see particular value in controlling the ideas that are disseminated in educational institutions. During the dark days of the Cold War professors who had the “wrong” ideas were fired. Professional associations in many disciplines rewarded scholars who worked within accepted perspectives on history, or political science, or literature, or sociology and denied recognition to others.

The preferred ideas trickled down to primary and secondary education. In most instances, professors and teachers who suffered as a result of their teaching were merely presenting competing views so that their students would have more informed reasons for deciding on their own what interpretations of subject matter made the most sense.

American history was a prime example of how controversial teaching would become. Most historians after World War II wrote and taught about the American experience emphasizing that elites made history, men made history more than women, social movements were absent from historical change, history moved in the direction of consensus rather than conflict, and the United States always played a positive role in world history. European occupation of North America, the elimination of Native Peoples, building a powerful economy on the backs of a slave system, and a U.S. pattern of involvement in foreign wars were all ignored or slighted.

Howard Zinn, a creator and product of the intellectual turmoil of the 60s presented us with a new paradigm for examining U.S. history, indeed all history. His classic text, A People’s History of the United States, which has been read by millions, compellingly presented a view of history that highlighted the roles of indigenous people, workers, women, people of color, people of various ethnicities, and all others who were not situated at the apex of economic, political, or educational institutions.

He taught us that we needed to be engaged in the struggles that shaped people’s lives to learn what needs to be changed, how their conditions got to be what they were, and how scholar/activists might help to change the world.

Perhaps most importantly, Zinn demonstrated that participants in people’s struggles were part of a “people’s chain,” that is the long history of movements and campaigns throughout history that have sought to bring about change. As he wrote in his autobiography, You Can’t Be Neutral on a Moving Train: A Personal History of Our Times:

What we choose to emphasize in this complex history will determine our lives. If we see only the worst, it destroys our capacity to do something. If we remember those times and places -- and there are so many -- where people have behaved magnificently, this gives us the energy to act, and at least the possibility of sending this spinning top of a world in a different direction.

And if we do act, in however small a way, we don’t have to wait for some grand utopian future. The future is an infinite succession of presents, and to live now as we think human beings should live, in defiance of all that is bad around us, is itself a marvelous victory.

In the 1970s the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) was formed by wealthy conservatives and corporations such as Koch Industries, ExxonMobil, and AT&T which invested millions of dollars to organize lobby groups, support selected politicians in all 50 states, create “think tanks,” and in other ways strategize about how to transform American society to increase the wealth and power of the few.

ALEC lobbyists and scholars developed programs and legislation around labor, healthcare, women’s issues, the environment, and education that were designed to reverse the progressive development of government and policy that social movements had long advocated.

Speakers at ALEC events have included Governors Rick Perry, Scott Walker, Jan Brewer, John Kasich, and Mitch Daniels. ALEC legislative programs include lobbying for charter schools, challenging teachers unions, revisiting school curricula to include materials that deny climate change, and more effectively celebrate the successes of the Bill of Rights in U.S. history.

The conservative Bradley Foundation, has awarded $400 million over the last decade to organizations supporting school vouchers, right-to-work laws, traditional marriage laws, and global warming deniers. Two of the four recipients of the organization's 2013 award for support of “American democratic capitalism” were Roger Ailes, CEO of Fox News, and Purdue President Mitch Daniels.

Associations which lobby for restricting academic freedom in higher education include David Horowitz’s Freedom Center and the National Association of Scholars, funded by the conservative Sarah Scaife, Bradley, and Olin Foundations among others. NAS seeks to bring together scholars whose work opposes multiculturalism, affirmative action, concerns about climate change, and the “liberal” bias in academia.

NAS current president Peter Wood contributed a blog article in the Chronicle on Higher Education on July 18, 2013, entitled “Why Mitch Daniels Was Right About Howard Zinn.” Wood wrote that “a governor worth his educational salt should be calling out faculty members who cannot or will not distinguish scholarship from propaganda, or who prefer to substitute simplistic storytelling for the complexities of history.”

Howard Zinn’s A Peoples History of the United States is a history of how social movements of workers, women, people of color, native peoples, and others often left out of conventional accounts have made and can make history. This is a part of history that political and economic elites, influential organizations such as ALEC, the Bradley Foundation, and education-oriented groups like NAS do not want included in course curricula; in middle school, high school, or the university.

If education at any level is to be shaped by the principle of academic freedom it must encourage student exposure to varieties of theories, perspectives, and points of view. It is in an environment of discussion and debate that rigorous and critical thought emerges. Efforts to expunge certain scholars such as Howard Zinn from educational curricula contradict the spirit of free and rigorous thought.

A version of this essay appeared in the Fort Wayne Journal Gazette, August 5, 2013.

[Harry Targ is a professor of political science at Purdue University and is a member of the National Executive Committee of the Committees of Correspondence for Democracy and Socialism. He lives in West Lafayette, Indiana, and blogs at Diary of a Heartland Radical. Read more of Harry Targ's articles on The Rag Blog.]

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Harry Targ : Egypt, Popular Uprisings, and 21st Century Social Movements

Gamal Abdel Nasser emerged as a powerful charismatic figure in Middle East politics. Image from The Majalla.

Egypt, popular uprisings, and complexity
of 21st century social movements

On one side are those who remember military coups supported by the United States all around the world. On the other, the case can be made that each rupture in a society must be understood in its own historical context.

By Harry Targ / The Rag Blog / July 13, 2013

Egyptian history

Egypt secured its formal independence from British colonial control in 1922. Nevertheless, the British continued to dominate Egyptian military and political life until 1952 when the “Free Officers” Movement led by Gamal Abdel Nasser launched a coup that toppled King Farouk, the British man in Egypt.

Following Egypt’s real independence Nasser emerged as a powerful charismatic figure in Middle East politics, seeking to create a zone of  "Arab Socialism.” He established economic and political ties with the former Soviet Union, initiated efforts to construct a “United Arab Republic” with Syria, and militarily opposed former European colonial powers and Israel in reference to control of the Suez Canal in 1956 and the “Six Day War” against Israel in 1967.

Nasser died in 1970 and his successor Anwar El Sadat led the Arab assault on Israel in the Yom Kippur War of 1973.

Before Sadat was assassinated in 1981, Egypt reversed course, ending ties with the Soviet Union; tilted toward the West; signed the Camp David Accords with Israel under the tutelage of President Jimmy Carter; and began its long-term relationship with the United States, despite anger from the Arab world.

Egypt became one of the major recipients of United States military assistance from 1980 to the present (receiving $1.3 billion per annum). By the 1980s, the Egyptian military gained control of a large portion of the economy of the country. After Sadat’s assassination Hosni Mubarak, the third leader from the military, began his 30-year rule.

Arab Spring, the massive street mobilizations in the Middle East which started in Tunisia in January 2011, quickly spread to Egypt and elsewhere in the region. These revolts had large representations from the working class, youth, and women and others demanding democratization.

As a result of the revolt in Cairo’s Tahrir Square in February 2011, the military stepped in to replace the former dictator, Hosni Mubarak, to stabilize a country on the verge of fundamental social and economic change; established an interim military government; and constructed a new constitution that would mollify protestors, provide for elections, and at the same time would maintain its own institutional power.

Elections were held in 2012 and Muslim Brotherhood candidate Mohammed Morsi was elected president. In the year Morsi served as Egyptian president, he declared the presidency’s ultimate power over the courts, used his position to expand the influence of the Muslim Brotherhood over the political system, repressed the 10 percent of the population affiliated with the Coptic Christian Church, stalled efforts to expand the rights of women in Egyptian society, and most recently declared Egypt’s full support of the rebels fighting against the government of Syria.

Two weeks ago a movement of young people calling themselves the rebels (the Tamarrud) circulated a call to rally in Tahrir Square. On June 30, a massive mobilization (some say the largest in modern history) was launched demanding the ouster of Morsi from office. The military issued a statement urging the Egyptian president to achieve some sort of compromise with the protestors and, when he refused, they carried out a coup putting in place an acting president. Subsequent to the coup there have been massive mobilizations in opposition to and in support of Morsi.


Economic context

In a recent article in The Guardian (July 4, 2013), Dr. Nafeez Ahmed, executive director of the Institute for Policy Research and Development, scholar and reporter, discussed the state of the Egyptian economy.

Generally he characterized the Egyptian economic policy embraced at least since the 1990s as involving “structural failures rooted in an unsustainable global model of industrial civilization -- addicted to fossil fuels, wedded fanatically to casino capitalism, and convinced, ostrich-like, that somehow technology alone will save us.”

Ahmed pointed out that oil production has declined by 26 percent since 1996 and a once food sustaining economy now requires the importation of 75 percent of its wheat. Inflation has increased in recent years, particularly regarding the price of food. Egyptian debt constitutes over 80 percent of GDP and the Egyptian government began to institute neoliberal structural adjustment policies in the 1990s. The population has experienced declining safety net policies and generalized programs of austerity as experienced elsewhere in the world.

Meanwhile, financial support of the military remains unchanged. Austerity programs and increased taxes have been designed to get approval for a new $4.8 billion IMF loan. And most critical, “with 40 percent of Egyptians already below the UN poverty line of less than 2 pounds a day, Morsi’s IMF-inspired policies amounted to a form of economic warfare on the Egyptian people.”


What Now?

Debate about the legitimacy of the ouster of Morsi from office has begun to occur within the peace movement. On one side are those who remember, with good reason, military coups supported by the United States all around the world.

The brutality of the U.S.-sponsored coup in Chile on September 11, 1973, comes to mind. The Chilean people suffered from a brutal dictatorship leading to thousands of assassinations and people “disappeared,” the end to formal democracy, the crushing of trade unions, and the imposition of a brutal program of neoliberal economic policies that increased economic inequality, reduced the quality of life of most Chileans, and conformed to the dictates of the transnational capitalist class.

On the other hand, the case can be made that each rupture in a society must be understood in its own historical context.

• First, the mobilizations of June 30 can be seen as continuation of a “revolutionary” process that began in 2011 (if not earlier). Many activists at that time argued that the ouster of Mubarak is just the beginning of what will be a long process of societal transformation. They articulated the view that there were no “quick fixes;” that Mubarak, the military, and the rest of the capitalist class were the product of a larger global political economy.


• Second, even though powerful military forces should not in the main be relied on for social transformation, contexts and militaries vary. For example, Hugo Chavez came out of the Venezuelan military and he was saved from a U.S.-engineered coup by his military comrades. Most important in the Egyptian case, the military has dominated Egyptian political life since the Nasser-led ouster of British/American Egyptian puppet, King Farouk. Nasser remained enormously popular with his people until his death. On the other hand, as Democracy Now!’s Sharif Abdel Kouddous points out, the political instability brought on by Morsi’s policies threatened not only his regime but the special status of the military.


• Third, Egyptian history, conveniently forgotten by the media and political pundits, suggests that Nasser led a campaign to create a coalition of secular states, even using the word “socialism” to describe his vision. Even though his vision and practice were flawed, Nasser was one of those first generation of post-colonial leaders supporting what Vijay Prashad called “the third world project.” In other words, he was a secular, radical nationalist. From the 1950s on, ironically, United States policy has often tilted toward supporting “Political Islam,” that is regimes and movements which embrace religious fundamentalism and represent little or no threat to the global political economy. United States funding of Osama Bin Laden in his war against the secular regime in Afghanistan is a glaring example.


• Fourth, political analysts, from academia and the Left, have a fetishized conception of democracy. Democracy as it is conventionally understood is about process. While important, periodically going to a voting booth and choosing between a selection of candidates for public office is only part of a more holistic conception of democracy. Democracy is procedural and it is substantive. In other words, democracy is about choosing candidates and policies and it is also about providing for the fulfillment of human needs. If 40 percent of the population lives below the poverty line, democracy in the substantive sense is woefully inadequate.


• Finally, what we may call 21st century social movements are spreading all across the globe. Tunisia, Tahrir Square in Egypt, Greece, Spain, Chile, Quebec, the industrial heartland of the United States, and occupiers everywhere constitute a new politics that only partially conform to traditional models of mobilizing for social change. Indeed we celebrate the mass movements for the eight-hour day, the right of industrial workers to form unions, poor people’s campaigns, anti-war mobilizations, and public campaigns to save the environment.

The historic role of socialist organizations and visions remains critical to 21st century social transformations. But the programmatic character of contemporary mobilizations; the inspirational connectivity of movements across borders, classes, genders, and races; and the recognition by participants that each is part of a historic process may be somewhat new.

Social movements today often see the need to “compromise” with institutions such as the military to advance the condition of the people. At the same time, as the movement in Egypt suggests, they remain mindful of the limitations of alliances of convenience.

Therefore, there are lessons from Egypt for the peace movement in the United States. Peace activists should analyze moments of instability and change in their historical, economic, cultural, and political complexity. They need to assess specific situations to understand which social forces are more likely to represent the values that they support.

Then in each concrete case they should ask how activism in the United States can best support the just struggles of 21st century social movements.

[Harry Targ is a professor of political science at Purdue University and is a member of the National Executive Committee of the Committees of Correspondence for Democracy and Socialism. He lives in West Lafayette, Indiana, and blogs at Diary of a Heartland Radical. Read more of Harry Targ's articles on The Rag Blog.]

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Harry Targ : Waist Deep in the Big Muddy, Again!

Smoke from fighting in the northern Syrian city of Aleppo, December 1, 2012. Photo by Javier Manzano / AFP / Getty Images.

One more time:
Waist deep in the Big Muddy

The case is clear that increasing the United States' military involvement in Syria has negative consequences for the Middle East, international relations, the inspiration of Arab Spring, American politics, and the people of Syria.

By Harry Targ / The Rag Blog / June 20, 2013

In 2011 the grassroots revolts that spread all across the Middle East caught the traditional imperial powers in the region -- the United States, Great Britain, and France -- by surprise. Even more so, the Middle East theocracies and dictatorships -- Saudi Arabia, Tunisia, Egypt, Bahrain, Jordan, Kuwait, Qatar, and others -- were threatened by those young people, workers, unemployed, and women, who took to the streets motivated by the vision of another world.

The United States watched the street protests hoping against hope that the authoritarian regimes in Tunisia and Egypt would weather the storm. The Obama administration did not move publicly to aid these regimes to crush the protest but withheld its endorsement of the grassroots democracy movement.

The idea of popular revolt spread to places all across the globe including Madison, Wisconsin; Santiago, Chile; Athens, Greece; Madrid, Spain; and Quebec, Canada. The Occupy Movement in the United States expanded.

Globally, movements for a 21st century democratization seemed to be replicating 1968.

In this historic context, the imperial powers needed to transform the Middle East narrative from demands for jobs, worker rights, women’s rights, and democratization, to the more traditional religious and ethnic conflict model of Middle East politics.

The United States organized a United Nations/NATO coalition to intervene to encourage rebellion in Libya coupled with a game-changing air war against the Libyan military. The result was the overthrow of the government of Muammar Gaddafi and its replacement by a quarrelsome ungovernable regime rife with ethnic strife.

The UN/NATO war on Libya was billed as the next phase of Arab Spring, while actually it imposed religious and ethnic conflict on a relatively stable but authoritarian regime.

The anger over the U.S. encouragement and military intervention in the Libyan civil war was reflected in the killings by Libyan terrorists of CIA operatives in Benghazi, Libya, in September 2012. What intervention in Libya did was to destabilize that society and eliminate its former dictator who was opposed to the growing U.S. military expansion in North Africa.

Most important, it took off the front pages and the hearts and minds of youth, the poor, women, and trade unionists the hope of mass movements to bring about democratic change in the region.

U.S. covert and military intervention has shifted now from Libya to Syria. Mobilization against the Bashar al-Assad dictatorship in Syria was applauded by the United States. As the protest escalated into civil war in that country with contestants including secular and religious groups fighting against Assad’s army, the United States, Sunni countries of the Arab League, and NATO countries escalated their support to the rebels.

Another Libya-style UN/NATO military operation was thwarted by strong opposition from Russia and China and the threat of growing military support for the Syrian regime by Iran.

Part of the ongoing story of Syria is the following:

1. The United States launched its diplomatic involvement in the Syrian civil war by insisting that Bashar al-Assad must step down. This precluded any possibility of a diplomatic settlement of the civil war and the eventual dismantling of the Assad regime. Most important, the United States' non-negotiable demand made diplomatic collaboration between the United States and Russia all but impossible.


2. Support for various rebel factions, diplomatic and presumably covert, has encouraged the escalation of opposition violence which has been matched by state violence.


3. Rebel factions, ironically, have included groups with profiles that resemble the terrorists who were responsible for the 9/11 murders in the United States and terrorist attacks on various targets in the Middle East and Afghanistan.


4. Violence and political instability have begun to spread to Lebanon, Turkey, and Jordan, and have drawn Israel and Iran closer into regional war.


5. As the Syrian civil war has escalated it has become a “proxy” war between the United States and Russia and Sunni and Shia Muslims.


6. In the United States, the civil war in Syria has rekindled the war factions. These include the “neoconservatives” who were responsible for the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. Using 9/11 and lies about weapons of mass destruction, the neoconservatives influenced the Bush administration to pursue their agenda to use United States power to transform the globe in its interests.

The neoconservatives, advocates of United States military intervention in Syria, are now joined by the “humanitarian interventionists” who in the Clinton Administration supported bombing campaigns in Iraq, Serbia, and Bosnia and live by the ideology that the United States must use its military power to promote human rights around the world.

It is important to note that recent polling data suggests that only a small percentage of the American people, about 20 percent, give any support to United States involvement in Syria. Most Americans are suffering from declining jobs, income, and social safety nets, and reject the war economy and militarism that has characterized the U.S. role in the world since 1945.


7. The escalation of the civil war, the growing military role of the United States, Russia, Iran, Turkey, NATO, Hezbollah from Lebanon, and Israel has led to nearly 100,000 Syrian deaths and more than a million refugees. As in most international wars, innocent people suffer and die as military decisions are made in government capitals.

The case is clear that increasing the United States' military involvement in Syria has negative consequences for the Middle East, international relations, the inspiration of Arab Spring, American politics, and the people of Syria.

The hope for a more just and peaceful future requires support for the resumption of the spirit and vision of the original Arab Spring that began in Tunisia and Egypt and spread all across the globe. Otherwise the United States will once again be “waist deep in the big muddy” as in Vietnam, Iraq, and Afghanistan.

[Harry Targ is a professor of political science at Purdue University and is a member of the National Executive Committee of the Committees of Correspondence for Democracy and Socialism. He lives in West Lafayette, Indiana, and blogs at Diary of a Heartland Radical. Read more of Harry Targ's articles on The Rag Blog.]

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Harry Targ : Benghazi is the Perfect 'Scandal'

Political cartoon by Daryl Cagle / Cagle Cartoons.

Benghazi:
The perfect 'scandal'

The real 'scandal' is the cover-up of what the U.S. was doing in Libya.

By Harry Targ / The Rag Blog / May 30, 2013

On the night of September 11, 2012, an armed group attacked a diplomatic post in the city of Benghazi in eastern Libya. The next morning a CIA annex was attacked. Out of these two attacks four United States citizens were killed including U.S. Ambassador Christopher Stevens.

According to a November 2012 Wall Street Journal article (quoted by Conor Friedersdorf in The Atlantic, May 13, 2013):

The U.S. effort in Benghazi was at its heart a CIA operation, according to officials briefed on the intelligence. Of the more than 30 American officials evacuated from Benghazi following the deadly assault, only seven worked for the State Department. Nearly all the rest worked for the CIA, under diplomatic cover, which was a principal purpose of the consulate, these officials said.

On March 17, 2011, the United Nations Security Council passed Resolution 1973 authorizing humanitarian intervention in Libya. It endorsed “Member States, acting nationally or through regional organizations or arrangements, to take all necessary measures to protect civilians under threat of attack in the country, including Benghazi, while excluding a foreign occupation force of any form on any part of Libyan territory...” Five Security Council members abstained from support of this resolution: Brazil, China, Germany, India, and Russia.

Passage of the resolution was followed by a NATO-led air war on targets in that country. The North Atlantic Treaty Organization was established in 1949 as a military alliance to defend Europe from any possible aggression initiated by the Soviet Union. If words mattered, NATO should have dissolved when the Soviet Union collapsed.

The United States, so concerned for the human rights of people in the Persian Gulf and Middle East, including in Libya, was virtually silent as nonviolent revolutions overthrew dictatorial regimes in Tunisia and Egypt earlier in 2011.

The United States continued to support regimes in Bahrain and Yemen in the face of popular protest and violent response and remained the primary rock-solid supporter of the state of Israel as it continued to expand settlements in the West Bank and blockaded the transfer of goods to Palestinians in Gaza.

And, of course, in the face of growing ferment in the Middle East and Persian Gulf for democratization not a word was said by way of criticism of the monarchical system in Saudi Arabia.

So as the Gaddafi regime in Libya fought its last battles, leading ultimately to the capture and assassination of the Libyan dictator, the NATO alliance and the United States praised themselves for their support of movements for democratization in Libya.

What seemed obvious to observers except most journalists was the fact that the overthrow of the Libyan regime, for better or worse, could not have occurred without the massive bombing campaign against military and civilian targets throughout Libya carried out by NATO forces.

From the vantage point of the Benghazi crisis of September 11, 2012, humanitarian intervention, which in Benghazi included 23 (of some 30) U.S. representatives who were CIA operatives, suggests that the attacks on U.S. targets might have had something to do with the history of U.S interventionism in the country. Great powers, such as the United States, continue to interfere in the political life of small and poor countries. And, the mainstream media continues to provide a humanitarian narrative of imperialism at work.

The post-9/11 Benghazi story is one of Republicans irresponsibly focusing on inter-agency squabbles and so-called contradictory Obama “talking points” after the killings of the four U.S. representatives in Benghazi. They chose not to address the real issue of the United States pattern of interference in the internal affairs of Libya.

And the Obama Administration defends itself by denying its incompetence in the matter, desperately trying to avoid disclosing the real facts in the Benghazi story which might show that the CIA and the Ambassador’s staff were embedded in Benghazi to interfere in the political struggles going on between factions among the Libyan people.

As Alexander Cockburn put it well in reference to the war on Libya in The Nation in June 2011:

America’s clients in Bahrain and Riyadh can watch the undignified pantomime with a tranquil heart, welcoming this splendid demonstration that they have nothing to fear from Obama’s fine speeches or Clinton’s references to democratic aspirations, well aware that NATO’s warplanes and helicopters are operating under the usual double standard -- with the Western press furnishing all appropriate services.

If Cockburn were alive today he would have added that the Libyan operation was about U.S. covert interventionism, anger on the part of sectors of the Benghazi citizenship, and not about the United States encouraging “democratic aspirations” of the Libyan people.

Neither Republicans nor Democrats want to have a conversation about U.S. interventionism but prefer to debate about a “scandal.” The real “scandal” is the cover-up of what the U.S. was doing in Libya.

[Harry Targ is a professor of political science at Purdue University and is a member of the National Executive Committee of the Committees of Correspondence for Democracy and Socialism. He lives in West Lafayette, Indiana, and blogs at Diary of a Heartland Radical. Read more of Harry Targ's articles on The Rag Blog.]

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Harry Targ : The REAL Scandal at the IRS

"Can't make 'em see the light? Make 'em feel the heat" -- Hugh Fike, coordinator of the Heritage Society for America's "Sentinel" program.

The IRS 'scandal' is not
what opportunists claim it is

If the Internal Revenue Service is to be criticized, the attacks should be leveled at the government’s inadequate scrutiny of political lobbying groups who are granted tax exempt status

By Harry Targ / The Rag Blog / May 20, 2013

"Heritage Action for America is a unique combination of top-notch conservative policy analysis, a widely respected governmental relations team and dedicated grassroots activists that advance conservative policy.

"...As a 501(c)(4) organization, Heritage Action for America allows unprecedented coordination and communication with concerned citizens who want to be part of their national dialogue. We speak directly to the American people and help them break through the establishment in Washington." -- from Heritage Action for America website.

According to the Internal Revenue Code organizations may apply and be eligible for tax exempt status under Section 501(c)(4) if they engage primarily in “social welfare activities.” Contributors to 501(c)(4) organizations need not disclose their names.

In a recent website update on legislative issues being debated in the House of Representatives, Heritage Action for America, a 501(c)(4) advocated the repeal of the Affordable Care Act; endorsed the Full Faith and Credit Act, which would prioritize debt payment before financing federal spending; and supported legislation, the Preventing Greater Uncertainty in Labor-Management Relations Act, suspending the National Labor Relations Board from acting until such time as the Senate approves appointments to the Board.

Indiana Congressman Todd Rokita (4th Congressional District) wrote his constituents on May 17, 2013 that “...the IRS had specifically targeted legally-established non-profit conservative groups by singling them out for extra scrutiny when they applied for tax-exempt status.”

Heritage Action for America assigned Rokita a grade of 79 (out of 100) for his legislative record in the last session of Congress, not far behind long-time right-winger Dan Burton and new Indiana governor Mike Pence. Conservative former Democratic Congressman, now Senator, Joe Donnelly received a score of 23.

The principle of granting tax exemptions for groups that engage in social welfare was introduced in the Revenue Act of 1913 and revised in the tax code of the 1950s. Once groups are declared eligible, such as the Heritage Foundation’s Heritage Action for America, donors can contribute anonymously. Meanwhile the organizations so approved can advertise on television, radio, and the print media against programs advocated by those with different political orientations.

Ironically groups like Heritage Action for America define their political advocacy for tax purposes as social welfare. And, most important, organizations supporting the candidacy of right-wing Republicans such as Todd Rokita are receiving tax exemptions.

In short, Rokita has a high Heritage Action for America favorability score for opposing affordable health care for most Americans; federal programs for childhood nutrition, education, and emergency health services for the elderly; and government protection for worker rights.

If the Internal Revenue Service is to be criticized, the attacks should be leveled at the government’s inadequate scrutiny of political lobbying groups who are granted tax exempt status contrary to the intention of the law.

Those of us who are concerned about the undue intrusion of big money in politics should be working to insist that the tax code be applied as it was intended so that politicians like Rokita cannot get away with railing against “big government” while they benefit from how it has been applied to them.

[Harry Targ is a professor of political science at Purdue University and is a member of the National Executive Committee of the Committees of Correspondence for Democracy and Socialism. He lives in West Lafayette, Indiana, and blogs at Diary of a Heartland Radical. Read more of Harry Targ's articles on The Rag Blog.]

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Harry Targ : Speaking Truth About Violence

Window into violence: A boy and his bird in Gaza. Image from chemicalcollisions / Tumblr.

Towards a just society:
Speaking truth about violence

Violence engendered by the rich and powerful and responses from the poor and powerless are embedded in the system of structural violence.

By Harry Targ / The Rag Blog / May 1, 2013

Establishing causal connections between “variables” and violence is a form of mystification. The reality of this world is that of grotesque inequalities in wealth, power, respect for humankind and the environment, a world awash in instrumentalities of death, and a global culture that celebrates it. Recent reports from the World Bank and the World Economic Forum (of all places) document the continuing and growing inequalities in wealth and income on a worldwide basis.

Could it be a surprise that seemingly indiscriminate acts of violence occur all across the globe? Only a humane global movement for fundamental change can radically transform the world we live in but movements of protest can make constructive changes along the way.

-- Harry Targ, Facebook, April 23, 2013

Each violent tragedy in the United States brings an outpouring of wrenching and “expert” analyses of what was behind the acts that led to so much pain and suffering. Most of the soul-searching about tragedies from Arizona, to Colorado, to Connecticut, to Boston is about domestic events (the repeated killings of Iraqis, Afghan peoples, Pakistanis, Yemenis and others generate much less empathy).

Explanations usually involve deranged “others,” usually poor “others,” “others” of color, and “others with fundamentalist religious beliefs.” Their crimes are described as perpetrated against victims who are the “normal” people.

Make no mistake about it, violence against any individuals, communities, and nations must be opposed, even among those who in the end are the root cause of it. But we need to be clear about the economic, social, political, cultural, and military/police context in which violence occurs. And, in no small measure, violence itself is celebrated in the societies where it is most prevalent.

Peace researchers have written about “direct,” “cultural,” and “structural” violence for years. While each of these is seen as having its own characteristics and causes, for the most part analysts regard the three as inextricably interconnected.

Direct violence refers to physical assault, shooting, bombing, gassing, and torture. It is about killing people. Cultural violence refers to dominant cultures whose apparatuses, such as the media and laws, portray their own institutions and values as superior to others and rituals that seek to honor the violence engaged in by one’s own country or group while demeaning other countries or groups. What is most vicious about cultural violence is its effort to make the victimized groups hate themselves.

Structural violence occurs when economic, political, cultural, and military institutions create relationships in which some human beings gain disproportionately from the labor, the talents, and the pain and suffering of others. Structural violence is institutionalized violence most often organized around class exploitation, racism, and patterns of gendered forms of domination and subordination. The key concepts that shape efforts to understand the causes and effects of structural violence are class, race, and gender.

Ironically, reports issued this year between the Newtown and Boston massacres by the World Bank and the World Economic Forum tell us much about the fundamentals of structural violence on a worldwide basis. These reports clearly describe why we do not live in a better world, why people do not treat each other with more respect, and why vast majorities of humanity and their natural habitats are in danger of extinction.

And they imply that violence engendered by the rich and powerful and responses from the poor and powerless are embedded in the system of structural violence.


The World Bank Report

The World Bank issued a press release on April 17, 2013 summarizing “The State of the Poor: Where are the Poor and Where are the Poorest?” It reported that the number of the world’s citizens living on less than $1.25 a day has declined markedly between 1981 and 2010 from half the world’s population to 21 percent. But still, they say, 1.2 billion people live in extreme poverty (below $1.25 per day). Sub-Saharan Africa accounts for more than one-third of those who live in such poverty worldwide.

A World Bank spokesperson noted that “We have made strides in cutting down poverty, but with nearly one-fifth of the world population still below the poverty line, not enough.” (This particular World Bank report does not include data on those living just above the poverty line. For example, another 20 percent live on $2 per day.)


Oxfam reports on the World Economic Forum’s “Global Risk Report”

In an Oxfam Media Briefing (January 18, 2013), the authors site a recent World Economic Forum warning that rising global inequality constitutes one of the top “global risks of 2013.” Oxfam points out that lifting masses of people out of absolute poverty has been the goal of economic elites over the last decade but “inequality and the extreme wealth that contributes to it were seen as either not relevant, or a prerequisite for the growth that would also help the poorest, as the wealth created trickled down to the benefit of everyone.”

The Oxfam Media Briefing suggests reasons why the WEF might correctly regard growing global inequality as a “risk.” They highlight the following:

• Extreme wealth and inequality are reaching levels never before seen in history and are getting worse. Inequality is growing in the industrial developed countries such as the United States and Great Britain, rapidly developing economies such as China and South Africa, and many of the poorest countries in the world. The incomes of the top 1 percent have increased by 60 percent over the last 20 years. The top 100 billionaires added $240 billion to their wealth in 2012. “The IMF has said that inequality is dangerous and divisive and could lead to civil unrest.”


• Extreme wealth and inequality is politically corrosive. Oxfam makes the obvious but important point that growing inequality in wealth and income relates to growing inequality in political power. They quote economist Joseph Stiglitz who contends that financial deregulation in the largest capitalist countries led to greater economic inequality and further consolidation of political power by financial elites.


• Extreme wealth and inequality is socially divisive. For Oxfam, the consolidation of wealth and power reduces the life chances and even human sustainability of the vast majority of populations. People work harder for less and suffer more. “If rich elites use their money to buy services, whether it is private schooling or private healthcare, they have less interest in public services or paying taxes to support them.” And, as Oxfam reminds us, inequality is linked to growing alienation, mental disorders, crime, anomic violence, and sheer desperation.


• Extreme wealth and inequality is environmentally destructive. Oxfam reiterates the fact that rising inequality increases demands by the rich for access to and consumption of scarce resources that the earth can no longer provide. “Those in the 1 percent have been estimated to use as much as 10,000 times more carbon than the average U.S. citizen.”

So if you grow up in urban America or rural Africa, the Middle East, or almost anywhere else, and you are young, intelligent, and experience the world through the globalization of a racist, sexist, violent media, does your view of the world look bright? No job, no respect, hungry, alienated, and imbued with the cultural values about violence and racism that are used to define you, you may act in the same ways the rich and powerful act against you and your people.

The conversation that should come out of Newtown, Boston, and West, Texas, or Baghdad, Kabul, and Gaza, or almost anyplace else, is how to change the structural violence that gave rise to direct and cultural violence. This discussion should lead to the mobilization of progressives to create a just society, one in which people will not want to kill each other.

[Harry Targ is a professor of political science at Purdue University and is a member of the National Executive Committee of the Committees of Correspondence for Democracy and Socialism. He lives in West Lafayette, Indiana, and blogs at Diary of a Heartland Radical. Read more of Harry Targ's articles on The Rag Blog.]

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Harry Targ : Global Challenges to the International Order

Women protest in Cairo during Arab Spring. Image from Organizing Upgrade.

The empire in disarray:
Global challenges to the international order

Latin American and African dependency theorists and “bottom-up” historians have argued for a long time that resistance must be part of the understanding of any theory of imperialism.

By Harry Targ / The Rag Blog / April 10, 2013

A whole generation of activists has “grown up” conversant with the central place of empire in human history. Children of the Cold War and the “Sixties” generation realized that the United States was the latest of a multiplicity of imperial powers which sought to dominate and control human beings, physical space, natural resources, and human labor power.

We learned from the Marxist tradition, radical historians, scholar/activists with historical roots in Africa, and revolutionaries from the Philippines and Vietnam to Southern Africa, to Latin America. But we often concluded that imperialism was hegemonic; that is it was all powerful, beyond challenge.

A “theory of imperialism” for the 21st century should include four interconnected variables that explain empire building as well as responses to it.

First, as an original motivation for empire, economic interests are primary. The most recent imperial power, the United States, needed to secure customers for its products, outlets for manufacturing investment opportunities, an open door for financial speculation, and vital natural resources such as oil.

Second, the pursuit of military control parallels and supports the pursuit of economic domination. The United States, beginning in the 1890s, built a two-ocean navy to become a Pacific power, as well as institutionalizing its control of the Western Hemisphere. It crushed revolutionary ferment in the Philippines during the Spanish, Cuban, American War and began a program of military intervention in Central American and the Caribbean. The “Asian pivot” of the 21st century and continued opposition to the Cuban and Bolivarian revolutions reflect the 100-year extension of the convergence of economics and militarism in U.S. foreign policy.

Third, as imperial nations flex their muscles on the world stage they need to rationalize exploitation and military brutality to convince others and their own citizens of the humanistic goals they wish to achieve. In short, ideology matters. In the U.S. case, “manifest destiny” and the “city on the hill,” that is the dogma that the United States has a special mission as a beacon of hope for the world, have been embedded in the dominant national narrative of the country for 150 years.

However, what has often been missing from the left-wing theoretical calculus is an understanding of resistance. Latin American and African dependency theorists and “bottom-up” historians have argued for a long time that resistance must be part of the understanding of any theory of imperialism. In fact, the imperial system is directly related to the level of resistance the imperial power encounters.

Resistance generates more attempts at economic hegemony, political subversion, the application of military power, and patterns of “humanitarian interventionism” and diplomatic techniques, called “soft power,” to defuse it. But as recent events sugge, resistance of various kinds is spreading throughout global society.

The impetus for adding resistance to any understanding of imperialism has many sources including Howard Zinn’s seminal history of popular movements in the United States, The People’s History of the United States. Zinn argued convincingly that in each period of American history ruling classes were challenged, shaped, weakened, and in a few cases defeated because of movements of indigenous people, workers, women, people of color, middle class progressives, and others who stood up to challenge the status quo.

More recently, Vijay Prashad, author of The Darker Nations, compiled a narrative of post-World War II international relations that privileged the resistance from the Global South. World history was as much shaped by anti-colonial movements, the construction of the non-aligned movement, conferences and programs supporting liberation struggles and women’s rights, as it was by big power contestation. The Prashad book was subtitled A People’s History of the Third World.

The 21st century has witnessed a variety of forms of resistance to global hegemony and the perpetuation of neoliberal globalization all across the face of the globe. First, various forms of systemic resistance have emerged. These often emphasize the reconfiguration of nation-states and their relationships that have long been ignored.

The two largest economies in the world, China and India, have experienced economic growth rates well in excess of the industrial capitalist countries. China has developed a global export and investment program in Latin America and Africa that exceeds that of the United States and Europe.

In addition, the rising economic powers have begun a process of global institution building to rework the international economic institutions and rules of decision-making on the world stage. On March 26-27, 2013, the BRICS met in Durban, South Africa. While critical of BRICS shortcomings Patrick Bond, Senior Professor of Development Studies and Director of the University of KwaZulu-Natal Centre for Civil Society, in a collection of readings on the subject, introduces BRICS with an emphasis on its potential:

In Durban, five heads of state meet to assure the rest of Africa that their countries’ corporations are better investors in infrastructure, mining, oil and agriculture than the traditional European and U.S. multinationals. The Brazil-Russia-India-China-SA summit also includes 16 heads of state from Africa, including notorious tyrants. A new "BRICS bank" will probably be launched. There will be more talk about monetary alternatives to the U.S. dollar.

On the Latin American continent, most residents of the region are mourning the death of Hugo Chavez, the leader of the Bolivarian Revolution. Under Chavez’s leadership, inspiration, and support from oil revenues, Venezuela launched the latest round of state resistance to the colossus of the north, the United States.

Along with the world’s third largest trade bloc MERCOSUR (Argentina, Brazil, Paraguay, Uruguay, Venezuela and associate memberships including Bolivia, Chile, Colombia, Ecuador, and Peru), Latin Americans have participated in the construction of financial institutions and economic assistance programs to challenge the traditional hegemony of the International Monetary Fund, the World Bank, and the World Trade Organization.

The Bolivarian Revolution also has stimulated political change based on various degrees of grassroots democratization, the construction of workers’ cooperatives, and a shift from neoliberal economic policy to economic populism. With a growing web of participants, Bolivia, Ecuador, Brazil, Argentina, Uruguay, Nicaragua, El Salvador, and, of course, Cuba, the tragic loss of Chavez will not mean the end to the Bolivarian Revolution. It might lead to its deepening.

But the story of 21st century resistance is not just about countries, alliances, new economic institutions that mimic the old. Grassroots social movements have been spreading like wildfire all across the face of the globe. The story can begin in many places and at various times: the new social movements of the 1980s; the Zapatistas of the 1990s; the anti-globalization/anti-IMF campaigns going back to the 1960s and continuing off and on until the new century; or repeated mass mobilizations against a Free Trade Agreement for the Americas.

Since 2011, the world has been inspired by Arab Spring, workers’ mobilizations all across the industrial heartland of the United States, student strikes in Quebec, the state of California, and in Santiago, Chile. Beginning in 2001 mass organizations from around the world began to assemble in Porto Alegre, Brazil, billing their meeting of some 10,000 strong, the World Social Forum.

They did not wish to create a common political program. They wished to launch a global social movement where ideas could be shared, issues and demands from the base of societies could be raised, and in general the neoliberal global agenda reinforced at the World Economic Forum in Switzerland could be challenged.

The World Social Forum has been meeting annually ever since in Latin America, Asia, Africa, and the United States. Most recently, the last week in March, 2013, 50,000 people from 5,000 organizations in 127 countries from five continents met in Tunis, the site of the protest that sparked Arab Spring two years ago. Planners wanted to bring mass movements from the Middle East and North Africa into the collective narrative of this global mobilization.

Medea Benjamin, founder of Code Pink, reported that a Tunisian student, when asked whether the Social Forum movement should continue, answered in the affirmative. The student paid homage to the Tunisian street vendor, Mohamed Bouazizi, who committed suicide and launched Arab Spring. He declared that “for all those who have died struggling for justice, we must continue to learn from each other how to build a world that does not respond to the greed of dictators, bankers or corporations, but to the needs of simple people like Mohamed Bouazizi.”

[Harry Targ is a professor of political science at Purdue University and is a member of the National Executive Committee of the Committees of Correspondence for Democracy and Socialism. He lives in West Lafayette, Indiana, and blogs at Diary of a Heartland Radical. Read more of Harry Targ's articles on The Rag Blog.]

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