Democratic Governance vs. The
State,
Voodoo Economics: The Third Worldization of America,
Real Alternatives
excerpted from the book
Against Empire
The Brutal Realities of U.S. Global
Domination
by Michael Parenti
City Lights Books, 1995, paper
Democratic Governance vs. The State
p139
The late FBI chief J. Edgar Hoover noted in a 1970 interview that
"justice is merely incidental to law and order. It's a part
of law and order but not the whole of it." Indeed, the whole
of it, the indispensable goal of the law enforcement agencies
of the state, Mr. Hoover made clear by his actions on many occasions,
was the preservation of existing class relations, safeguarding
the socio-economic structure from fundamental reform and revolutionary
change. The preservation of public safety and justice are secondary
concerns of the state. The state will violate both when it is
deemed necessary to secure the dominant social order.
p141
In 1947, President Harry Truman created the Central Intelligence
Agency to gather and coordinate foreign intelligence. As ex-senator
George McGovern noted (Parade, August 9, 1987):
Almost from the beginning, the CIA engaged
not only in the collection of intelligence information, but also
in covert operations which involved rigging elections and manipulating
labor unions abroad, carrying on paramilitary operations, overturning
governments, assassinating foreign officials, protecting former
Nazis and lying to Congress.
In a book about J. Edgar Hoover, Anthony
Summers noted that the FBI retained close links with organized
crime. Former CIA operative Robert Morrow in his book Firsthand
Knowledge records how unsettling it was to discover that the CIA
was cozy with the mob. Over the years, several congressional investigative
committees uncovered links between the CIA and the narcotics trade.
With its deep operations, laundering of funds, drug trafficking,
and often illegal use of violence, the national security state
stands close to organized crime. And with its assassinations,
intimidation of labor, expropriation of wealth, and influence
in high places, organized crime stands close to the state.
Perhaps it should come as no surprise
that the USA's most famous mobster, Al Capone, when reflecting
on the wider political universe (Liberty Magazine, 1929), sounded
unnervingly like J. Edgar Hoover:
The American system of ours, call it Americanism,
call it capitalism, call it what you like, gives each and every
one of us a great opportunity if we only seize it with both hands
and make the most of it .... Bolshevism is knocking at our gates.
We can't afford to let it in. We have got to organize ourselves
against it, and put our shoulders together and hold fast. We must
keep America whole and safe and unspoiled. We must keep the worker
away from Red literature and Red ruses; we must see that his mind
remains healthy.
In other "Western democracies"
secret paramilitary forces of neofascist persuasion (the most
widely publicized being Operation Gladio in Italy) were created
by NATO, to act as resistance forces should anticapitalist revolutionaries
take over their countries. Short of that, these secret units were
involved in terrorist attacks against the Left. They helped prop
up a fascist regime in Portugal, participated in the Turkish military
coups of 1971 and 1980, and the 1967 coup in Greece. They drew
up plans to assassinate social democratic leaders in Germany,
and stage "preemptive" attacks against socialist and
communist organizations in Greece and Italy. They formed secret
communication networks and drew up detention lists of political
opponents to be rounded up in various countries.
p144
The framers of the U.S. Constitution repeatedly asserted in their
private talks and letters to one another that an essential purpose
of government was to resist the leveling tendencies of the masses
and secure the interests of affluent property holders against
the competing demands of small farmers, artisans, and debtors.
They wanted a stronger state in order to defend the haves from
the have-nots.
p144
it is ironic that those conservative interests-so overweeningly
dependent on government grants, tax credits, land giveaways, price
supports, and an array of other public subsidies-keep denouncing
the baneful intrusions of government. However, there is an unspoken
consistency to it, for when conservatives say they want less government,
they are referring to human services, environmental regulations,
consumer protections, and occupational safety, the kind of things
that might cut into business profits. These include all forms
of public assistance that potentially preempt private markets
and provide alternative sources of income to working people, leaving
them less inclined to work for still lower wages.
While conservative elites want less government
control, they usually want more state power to limit the egalitarian
effects of democracy. Conservatives, and some who call themselves
liberals, want strong, intrusive state action to maintain the
politico-economic status quo. They prefer a state that restricts
access to information about its own activities, taps telephones,
jails revolutionaries and reformers on trumped-up charges, harasses
dissidents, and acts punitively not toward the abusers of power
but toward their victims. Conservatives also support repressive
crime bills; limitations on the rights of women, minorities, gays
and lesbians; censorship of films, art, literature, and television.
For all their complaints about "cultural
elites" and "liberal media," right-wingers worked
hard to abolish the fairness doctrine, which mandated that persons
attacked in the broadcast media had to be given air time to respond.
Conservatives, including some in the Democratic party like President
Clinton, have supported government subsidies to business and an
expansion of the national security establishment.
Conservative propaganda that is intended
for mass consumption implicitly distinguishes between government
and state. It invites people to see government as their biggest
problem. At the same time, such propaganda encourages an uncritical
public admiration for the state, its flag and other symbols, and
the visible instruments of its power such as the armed forces.
p146
Nesting within the executive is that most virulent purveyor of
state power: the national security state, an informal configuration
of military and intelligence agencies, of which the CIA is a key
unit.' The president operates effectively as head of the national
security state as long as he stays within the parameters of its
primary dedication which is the maximization of power on behalf
of corporate interests and capitalist global hegemony...
p147
A president who works closely with the national security state
usually can operate outside the laws of democratic governance
with impunity. Thus President Reagan violated several provisions
of the Arms Export Control Act, including one requiring that he
report to Congress when major military equipment is transferred
to another country. He violated the Constitution by engaging in
a war against Grenada without congressional approval. He violated
the Constitution when he refused to spend monies allocated by
Congress for various human services.
Reagan and other members of his administration
refused to hand over information when specific actions of theirs
were investigated by Congress. By presidential order, he removed
Congress's restrictions on the CIA's surveillance of domestic
organizations and activities, even though a presidential order
does not supercede an act of Congress. His intervention against
Nicaragua was ruled by the World Court, in a 13 to 1 decision,
to be a violation of international law, but Congress did nothing
to call him to account. He was up to his ears in the Iran-Contra
conspiracy but was never called before any investigative committee
while in office.
p150
During the Iran-Contra hearings, Representative Jack Brooks (DTex.),
taking his investigative functions seriously, asked Lieutenant
Colonel Oliver North if there was any truth to the story that
he had helped draft a secret plan, code-named Rex Alpha 84, to
suspend the Constitution and impose martial law in the USA. A
stunned expression appeared on North's face and the committee
chair, Senator Daniel Inouye, stopped Brooks from pursuing the
question, declaring in stem tones "I believe the question
touches upon a highly sensitive and classified area. So may I
request that you not touch upon that, sir."
Brooks responded that he had read in several
newspapers that the National Security Council had developed "a
contingency plan in the event of emergency that would suspend
the American Constitution, and I was deeply concerned about it."
Inouye again cut him off. It was a tense moment. The committee's
leadership was inadvertently admitting that it would refrain from
asking about a secret, illegal plan, devised by persons within
the national security state for a military coup d'etat in the
United States.
*
Voodoo Economics: The Third Worldization
of America
p164
One of the great victories of Reaganomics was the abolition of
the progressive income tax. When Reagan came into office, the
top tax bracket was 70 percent. By the time he left, it had been
reduced to 28 percent, the same as that of ordinary working people,
a flat tax. Both the factory worker who earns $25,000 and the
CEO who runs the factory and makes $2,500,000 pay roughly the
same tax rate. The situation is even more inequitable because
the CEO enjoys a host of deductions that are not available to
the worker.
p170
Today, the conservative goal is the Thirdworldization of America,
to reduce the US. working populace to a Third World condition,
having people work harder and harder for less and less. This includes
a return to the "free market," free of environmental
regulations, free of consumer protections, minimum wages, occupational
safety, and labor unions, a market crowded with underemployed
labor, so better to depress wages and widen profit margins. Conservatives
also seek the abolition of human services and other forms of public
assistance that give people some buffer against free-market forces.
Underemployment is a necessary condition
for Third Worldization. Alan Budd, professor of economics at the
London Business School candidly observed (Observer, June 21, 1992)
that the Thatcher government's cuts in public spending were a
cover to bash workers: "Raising unemployment was a very desirable
way of reducing the strength of the working classes. What was
engineered-in Marxist terms-was a crisis in capitalism, which
recreated a reserve army of labor, and has allowed the capitalists
to make high profits ever since."
p173
A key reason why the United States is becoming increasingly like
the Third World is because corporate America is going Third World,
literally, not only downgrading jobs and downsizing, but moving
whole industries to Asia, Latin America, and Africa.
The aim of modern imperialism is not to
accumulate colonies nor even just to provide outlets for capital
investment and access to natural resources. The economist Paul
Sweezy noted that the overall purpose is to turn Third World nations
into economic appendages of the industrialized countries, encouraging
the growth of those kinds of economic activities that complement
the advanced capitalist economies and thwarting those kinds that
might compete with them. Perhaps Sweezy relies too much on the
nation-state as the unit of analysis. The truth is, the investor
class also tries to reduce its own population to a client-state
status. The aim of imperialism is not a national one but an international
class goal, to exploit and concentrate power not only over Guatemalans,
Indonesians, and Saudis, but Latin Americans, Canadians, and everyone
else.
*
Real Alternatives
p198
The "moderate" Democrats led by President Bill Clinton,
who acceded to the White House in 1993, have proven about as faithful
in their service to corporate America as their Republican predecessors.
During his first two years in office, Clinton repeatedly noted
that economic recovery "must come through the private sector."
He fought like a lion for the North American Free Trade Agreement
(NAFTA) and the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT),
both of which bypass the gains made in environmental, consumer,
and labor protections-by circumventing the sovereign power of
the nation-states themselves, bestowing upon unelected secret
international tribunals the right to set standards for investments,
thereby circumventing popular sovereignty.
In addition, the Clinton administration
has done next to nothing about the environmental crisis, nothing
about putting the nation's transportation systems on an ecologically
sane course, nothing in regard to developing alternative energy
sources. It has made no real changes in foreign policy, offering
little support to democratic forces in the Third World, while
continuing to prop up murderous antidemocrats such as Jonas Savimbi
in Angola. The Clinton administration has given full backing to
the CIA and its covert actions throughout the world and to the
global military empire, its gargantuan budget and grandiose goals.
When it comes to empire at home and abroad, a change in political
party brings little change in state policy. US. imperialism remains
an unexamined, unchallenged, and largely unperceived phenomenon
in this country.
In a few limited ways Clinton has attempted
to deal with the wreckage caused by the Reagan-Bush years. He
did introduce a $21 billion expansion of tax credits for low-wage
workers and created some new housing, job training, and community
development programs. While grossly inadequate in scope, these
initiatives represented a departure from the punitive policies
of his predecessors. For the most part, however, in regard to
policies of empire and republic, the Clinton administration manifested
a continuity with previous ones that is no less dismaying for
being expected.
The ruling politico-economic elites conveniently
believe that the environment is doing just fine, certainly on
their estates, resorts, and ranches. They dislike what they think
are the overheated jeremiads of the environmentalists, who call
for the kind of regulations that limit the prerogatives of industrial
capital. They equate the wellbeing of their class and their investments
with the national interest, and see the poor and the working multitudes
as deserving of lesser consideration because they supposedly contribute
so little.
Fundamental reform is so difficult because
it does not serve the powers that be. But it should be no mystery
what needs to be done to improve our economy and the life conditions
of our people.
p207
... top-down class warfare by the ruling elites against the middle
and lower classes is what we already have as an everyday occurrence.
It is only when the many begin to fight back against the few that
class warfare is condemned by political and media elites.
Witness the case of Haiti, a country with
generations of brutal class oppression, where the military and
the rich have lived off the impoverished people and regularly
made war upon them. Yet U.S. media and U.S. political leaders
started using the term "class warfare" only when the
people elected Jean-Bertrand Aristide as president, a populist
reformer who attacked the crimes and privileges of the rich. So
in other countries and in this one too: the moment the common
populace begin to fight back, even peaceably and democratically,
the moment democracy infringes upon powerful class interests,
ruling-class leaders and their media mouthpieces denounce "class
warfare." In the early 1990s in the United States, when some
liberal Democrats started talking about taxing the rich, they
were accused of class warfare. But when the rich advance their
interests at our expense in ways too numerous to delineate here,
it is called "national policy."
In his last State of the Union message,
George Bush said that people who challenge the prerogatives of
the rich are driven by envy and jealousy. I suspect it is not
envy that most of us feel when we see somebody ride by in a Rolls
Royce-and someone else sleeping in a doorway. We feel outrage.
We just do not want to live in a society where millions must suffer
acute privation and insecurity so that the very rich can maintain
their lavish lifestyle. We do not want to change places with the
opulent; we just want to get them off our backs. We want to stop
the ruination of our society and environment by the conglomerates
of wealth, those who engineer and finance national elections,
who manage national policy and use crimes of state to eviscerate
and trivialize democratic governance at home and abroad. If challenging
and stopping such class power is class warfare, then let us have
more of it.
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