Caesar The Terror
2004-04-06 21:13:46 UTC
The following article is a very good look at the choice between Bush
and Kerry, so I am posting it. The article does, however, fail to
mention the socialist alternatives beyond the Communist Party when
Stephen Gowens correctly states, "They're voting Democrat too".
I must take exception. The Peace and Freedom Party is a socialist
party that is not supporting the Democrats. Our presidential
candidate (when ratified at our August convention) is Leonard
Peltier.
Gowens then points out some very general things about how the system
cannot be changed by who is in power whether they are "Socialist or
conservative".
What Stephen Gowens says about how a socialist president in power
will fail is true only if they maintain the capitalist system.
Socialists, however, should be aware that the obstacles that will be
placed in our way will have to be smashed through mass mobilizations,
the arming of the working class, the abolition of old military and
police forces, and the nationalization of the economy to meet human
and environmental needs and destroy the power base of the capitalist
class.
These are future concerns that are not right around the corner in the
United States. The most immediate concern with running socialist
candidates is making clear to the labor movement, anti-war movement,
and others involved in social struggles that we gain nothing by
supporting our class enemies in the Democrat Party.
-Steve Argue
Kerry vs. Kerry-lite
by Stephen Gowans
http://www3.sympatico.ca/sr.gowans/
March 25, 2004
Some advice to politically Left Americans. Most of you will cast a
vote for John Kerry in November. There's not much doubt about it. And
the reason you'll be backing Kerry is (a) you assume nothing could be
worse than Bush, (b) the Democrats must be marginally better, because
well, because they're Democrats, (c) pressuring elites doesn't seem
to be working and you can't think of anything else to do to
stop "Bush's" drive to war, and (d) all those people who keep warning
you about lesser evilism, can't seem to come up with anything better.
So Kerry's your man. Oh sure, some of you admire Kucinich. Others
even think well of Nader. But you know Kerry's going to be your go-to-
guy come November.
Okay, fine. Leave it at that. When the time comes, head down to the
polling station, and cast your vote. But in the meantime, shut up
about it, because, just between you and me, you're starting to look a
little silly, twisting yourself into knots to explain why it is that
all the things you used to say about the Democrats being the same as
the Republicans, no longer apply.
Of course, you're not going to give up talking the talk, even if
you'll be miles away walking smack dab in the middle of your comfort
zone. There will be no going cold turkey on all the leftist
shibboleths you've been spouting for decades. Like Noam Chomsky,
you'll still point to the Democrats as nothing more than the second
business party [1], kind of like Thing Two to the Republican's Thing
One. And you'll dismiss your go-to-guy as nothing more than Bush-
lite, but hey, a lite beer's still better than the real thing when
you're trying to get rid of those love handles, right?
Except I'm trying to figure out why everyone keeps saying Kerry is
Bush-lite [2], rather than Bush in a different suit, or that Bush is
Kerry-lite. Look at Kerry's record.
For one thing, as much as Bush, Kerry's part of the ruling class
that privileged, hyper-rich stratum of the population that organizes
the domestic and foreign policy of the United States in its own
interests. Not only have corporations showered more contributions on
Kerry than on any other member of the millionaires' club that doubles
as the Senate, he's also the richest millionaire in the club. He and
his wife Teresa Heinz Kerry, boast a net worth of between $200 and
$840 million. [3]
But Kerry's wealth and his fitting into corporate circles like a CEO
into an oversize corner office, isn't all that makes him, at best, a
dead ringer for Bush. His policies do, too. Kerry proposes "a bold
vision of progressive internationalism," a "tough-minded strategy of
international engagement and leadership" in the tradition of such
renowned peaceniks as Woodrow Wilson (WWI), Harry Truman (Hiroshima)
and John F. Kennedy (Vietnam and the Bay of Pigs). [4]
Which may be why "Bush's" drive to war, which we're told, must be
stopped by voting for Kerry, seems to be Kerry's drive to war, too.
[5] After all, he voted for the war on Afghanistan, and supports the
occupation. [6] He voted for the war on Iraq, and says "we now have a
solemn obligation to complete the mission." [7] He promises to add
40,000 troops to the Army and to spend more on defense than the
Republicans, and more on homeland security. [8] Yeah, he sure sounds
different from Bush, though not in any better way.
What's more, not only is he prepared to use military force
unilaterally, ("People will know I'm tough and I'm prepared to do
what is necessary to defend the United States of America, and that
includes the unilateral deployment of troops if necessary," [9] he's
prepared "to target and capture terrorists even before they act" and
says he "will not hesitate to order direct military action when
needed to capture and destroy terrorist groups and their leaders"
[10] -- his own doctrine of preventive war.
Plus he says he will spend more on the National Endowment for
Democracy [11], an organization that does openly what the CIA used to
do covertly -- meddle in the affairs of countries like Haiti,
Venezuela, Serbia and Cuba, that put the interests of the domestic
population ahead of those of corporate America and investors who can
boast net worths of hundreds of millions of dollars, like, let's
see...well, like Kerry.
And in case you thought Kerry draws his advisors from a different
stratum of the population than Bush does, you should know that his
national finance chair, Louis Susman, is vice-chairperson of
investment banking for Citigroup [12], and that his foreign policy
adviser, Rand Beers, worked for Bush's National Security Council
until about a year ago. [13]
So explain to me how there's anything lite about Kerry?
My favorite Kerry quote is, "I could never agree with those in the
antiwar movement who dismissed our troops [in Vietnam] as war
criminals or our country as the villain in the drama." [14]
As for Iraq, if Kerry has a problem with Bush, it's that he didn't
drag France, Germany and Russia into the war, preferring to strike a
grabby, it's all mine, pose, rather than the "let's divide up the
loot" approach the Democrats favor. Apparently, a gang rape is better
than a rape carried out by a lone assailant, which, I gather, would
make a gang rapist a rapist-lite, and therefore more worthy of our
backing than a rapist who goes it alone.
But, for the record, Washington hasn't gone it alone in Iraq,
managing to cobble together a coalition, though one lacking France,
Germany and Russia, whose backing, in some perverted twist of
reasoning, is supposed to have invested the rape of Iraq with
legitimacy. Apparently, if you can lure other renowned rapists into a
gang rape, it gives the whole sordid affair moral weight.
So, you'll have to excuse me, but I don't see any redeeming
difference between Kerry and the current Kerry-lite occupant of the
White House, not even a razor-thin one, at least not one that would
lead me to conclude that Kerry's better, if only marginally. And if
there's any logic in the Chomsky claim -- which he's been making for
a while now -- that a minuscule difference can make a big difference
(because the president has so much power, Kerry being even a little
better than Bush can have fairly substantial implications), I'm
afraid it has eluded me, as well. Is it just me, or is Chomsky
staring to sound like those corporate PR flaks, who rather than not
even trying to claim black is white, figure their forensic skills are
so finely honed, that they can pull it off?
And has Michael Parenti, another high-profile American leftist,
joined the club? Of course, he has. He, along with Chomksy and a
gaggle of other left luminaries, wrote a "letter to the left"
sometime late last year, that attributed the drive to war to Bush
[15], as if wars of aggression haven't been a fixture of US foreign
policy, and have suddenly sprung to life fully formed under the Bush
administration's careful nurturing. They coyly avoided saying that
the Left should vote Democrat in the next election, but the message
was plain, and odd, coming from a number of people who say they're
radicals, but then, maybe the meaning of radical changes in "times
when you have to pursue coalition politics against the forces like
the kind we're facing in the White House today." [16]
Not so many years ago -- four to be exact -- pursuing coalition
politics wasn't deemed to be so important. Back then Michael Moore
was directing a Rage Against the Machine video that depicted Al Gore
as a clone of George Bush, and he, and a whole bunch of other US Left
luminaries, were exhorting people to vote for the anti-clone, Nader,
none more zealously than Moore himself. But what made impeccable
sense back then, now seems to make no sense at all. Nader's been
dumped faster than a date with active genital herpes, and Moore slunk
back to the Democrats soon after the election, his self-imposed
estrangement from his political home passed off as temporary
insanity. Eventually, he decided to back the real Butcher of
Belgrade, Wesley Clark, for a run at the Democratic nomination,
touting a war criminal, on record as supporting the rape of Iraq, as
the peace candidate the anti-war Left could really get behind.
My logic isn't infallible, but it seems to me if we accept Moore's
claim that Al Gore is a clone of George W. Bush, then Gore as
president would have been like Bush as president. In other words,
there would have been a war on Afghanistan, which seems pretty likely
given that 99 percent of the establishment, plus a fair number of
liberals, think the whole affair was a pretty good thing. And we can
be sure Gore would have carried out some kind of hostility against
Iraq aimed at regime change, since, after all, this had been the
policy of two administrations, one of which Gore belonged to. All of
which makes one wonder why Moore has decided, along with Chomsky and
Parenti, that coalition politics - - that is a vote for the
Democrats -- has suddenly become vitally important. It's as if
they're all kicking themselves for not voting for Gore when they had
the chance -- even if he is a clone of Bush. Figure that one out.
Maybe it's a poor grasp of logic. All of them talk about the
necessity of voting for the candidate most likely to defeat the
dangerous and repellent Bush, assuming quite unjustifiably that his
successor won't be equally or more dangerous and repellent.
Radical, if it means anything, should refer to the root of a problem,
and given that aggressive foreign policies have been pursued by every
administration, and elsewhere in the world, by governments of various
political hues, it seems highly unlikely that the drive to war is an
anomaly of a group of people in power. It seems far more likely to be
systemic, and therefore, the means to stop the drive to war must be
systemic, as well. And yet the word, radical, it would seem, now
means acting to replace one group of people drawn from the ruling
class, who seek to shape the international security order in line
with US export and investment interests, with another group of people
drawn from the same ruling class, who aim to exercise US power boldly
in the tradition of Wilson, Truman and Kennedy, to do the same.
Parenti, who talks a militant leftist line, says elections matter,
but boasts that he coined the phrase "two-party monopolies" when he
wrote, "Democracy For the Few," [17] which would kind of suggest
Parenti was thinking that elections don't matter and a vote for the
Democrats equals a vote for the Republicans, or if you extend the
logic, that the drive to war does not belong uniquely to the
Republicans but is owned by the monopoly. So you see elections don't
matter, but they do matter. Figure that one out. I can't decide
whether Parenti's starting to remind me of a guy who writes cryptic
fortune cookie fortunes, or a retired Sprite salesman who's been
claiming for the last four decades that Coke and Pepsi are the same,
but has just put in a call to the regional Pepsi sales office
demanding a Pepsi machine be installed outside his local public gym,
because all that's there now is a Coke machine, and he can't stand
the taste of Coke.
If the US, in Parenti's words, is a democracy for the few, dominated
by the super rich like Kerry and Kerry-lite, what difference do
elections make? At this point the exponents of the view that
elections matter (well, at least this election matters) step forward
and say, "Yes, but the Bush Republicans are a particularly vicious
wing of the ruling class, and while the Democrats are only marginally
better, they are better all the same, and therefore any project that
seeks to put a Democrat in the White House is ameliorative."
Let's ignore the reality that this is like saying death by guillotine
is better than death by hanging, because a hanging death can be long,
drawn out, and gruesome, whereas the guillotine is swift and certain
and marginally more humane. By this reasoning we're supposed to
support death by guillotine and believe we've accomplished something
if we thereby avoid the hangman's noose. Either way, you end up with
a nasty neck-ache, though on the bright side, it only lasts for a
fraction of a second. But I'm not at all sure that the premise --
that the Democrats are marginally better -- is sound.
It's a canard, really -- part of the mythology of the Democrats. It
may have been true seventy years ago, but you'd be hard pressed to
show how any Democrat in power has differed from Republicans in power
on economic or foreign policy since, and certainly now. And yet the
fairy tale lives on, invulnerable to the facts. But then it serves a
useful intellectual function - keeping Americans of the political
left from wrestling with a vexing and troubling question: What the
hell can we do, if we can't vote Democrat? Join the Communist Party?
No, they're voting Democrat too.
What can be done, is to start to ask why it is that no matter who's
in power, Democrat or Republican, conservative or liberal, and
overseas, conservative or Socialist, foreign and economic policy
always seems to head in the same direction: foreign policy is
aggressive, and economic policy abets profit-making at the expense of
wages, working conditions and social security, as it must. It doesn't
seem to be the greed or ignorance or viciousness of a group of people
in power that accounts for this uniformity of direction, any more
than the greed or ignorance or viciousness of CEOs account for
layoffs, which isn't to say that some CEO's aren't greedy or ignorant
or vicious, only that it doesn't matter whether they are.
It's like baseball. It doesn't matter what the players think of the
game, what their aims are, how they feel. All the matters is how many
runs are scored. If they underperform, they're benched, sent down to
the minors, or sent packing. [18] Imagine a CEO who decides to keep
workers on, at the expense of his company's profits. He won't last
long, suffering the corporate equivalent of being pulled from the
game, banished to the minors, or cut loose from the team.
The same applies to leaders of governments in societies integrated
into the global capitalist system, dominated materially and
ideologically by the business community. If they lean to the Left,
chances are they rose to power by progressively bartering away their
principles for respectability and votes. [19] They can be counted on
to pursue corporate interests at home and abroad. If by some unlikely
confluence of events, they have risen to power without first arriving
at a modus vivendi with the corporate class, their tenure is likely
to be short-lived, and unquestionably rocky. Which means they too
will end up like the baseball player who fails to add to the tally of
runs -- given a one-way ticket to the bush leagues, or worst.
The news, in recent days, offers three examples of leaders who have
been sent, or may soon be sent, to the showers.
South Korea's President Roh Moo Hyun has been impeached for a minor
transgression, tantamount to being shot, according to Kim Dong Yune,
a Seoul-based political analyst, for a minor theft. [20] Roh's real
crime: He "came to power promising to be South Korea's Robin Hood"
and "has embraced a left-leaning agenda over his year in office,
including carving out a path more independent of Washington,
establishing warmer ties with North Korea and China, and enacting new
policies to empower the poor and rein in the rich." Roh "levied more
taxes on the rich while spending billions of dollars on new
government housing for the poor," [21] something that will never
secure him a spot in the Baseball Hall of Fame.
Haiti's Jean-Bertrand Aristide was forced from power by what was
almost certainly a US-engineered coup. He angered the business
community by raising the minimum daily wage beyond $1.30, and failed
to privatize state-owned enterprises, a definite no-no if you expect
to keep your place on the team roster.
Venezuela's Hugo Chavez, once ousted in a short-lived US-backed coup,
hangs on to office despite the fierce opposition of Washington and a
domestic business class backed by contributions from the National
Endowment for Democracy. John Kerry questions Chavez's commitment to
democracy, noting that Chavez is a friend of Fidel Castro. [22] By
this reasoning, George Bush must be a military dictator because the
US government counts Pakistan's Pervez Musharraf as an ally.
Chavez has implemented a program of land reform, imposed a ban on oil
privatization, invited Cuban doctors into Venezuela's slums, and is
using the state-owned oil firm, Pdvsa, to pursue a social spending
program. That's why Washington, and Venezuela's wealthy, are trying
to cut him loose from the team.
In a word, the problem -- and you had better send the kids out of the
room before I say this -- is capitalism. Yeah capitalism, the C-word.
Not neo-liberalism, or globalization, or the Washington Consensus, or
corporate rule, or any of the other synonyms dreamed up to protect
anyone from really striking at the heart of the problem.
Radical Left groups say they're opposed to neo-liberalism and against
globalization. So are social democrats and a whole lot of liberals,
even if social democratic and liberal governments have implemented
neo-liberal policies. Like baseball players, it doesn't mater what
they think of the game, only whether they play it. So, are some
radical Leftists social democrats, or nothing but liberals in
disguise? Based on Chomsky's and Parenti's support of Kerry, it's
difficult to think they're not.
But if capitalism is the problem, rather than the policy choices of
Kerry versus those of Kerry-lite -- which are indistinguishable in
any important way, anyway -- what can be done? There's nothing that
can be done now, but much that can be done on an ongoing basis, most
particularly political organization under the direction of a party
that has the energy, pluck and resolve to replace the existing system
with one that doesn't depend on foreign expansion to resolve its
dilemmas and sets the fulfillment of human requirements, not capital
accumulation, as the primary purpose of economic activity
In the meantime, it doesn't make a whole lot of sense to back a
candidate who must, and will, carry on in the tradition of the
monopoly (to use Parenti's words), with policies as grim, reactionary
and aggressive, or more so, than those of the current occupant of the
White House. At best, voting for Kerry is a pointless act, and at
worst, a backward act, to the extent it fosters the illusion that
change can be achieved by changing the name plate on the Oval Office
desk. Contrary to the reigning mythology, doing something pointless
is not better than doing nothing, where nothing means refusing to
cast a ballot for either Thing One or Thing Two. And calling Emperor
Moore's, Parenti's and Chomsky's strutting about without their
clothes on, what it is, can't hurt either.
REFERENCES
1. "Chomsky backs 'Bush-lite' Kerry," The Guardian, March 20, 2004.
2. Ibid.
3. Center for Responsive Politics, cited in "The fallacy of
the 'anybody but Bush' movement," Workers World, March 25, 2004.
4. Mark Hand, "It's Time to Get Over It: Kerry Tells Anti-War
Movement to Move On," CounterPunch, February 18, 2004.
5. "Bush can be stopped: A letter to the Left".
6. John Pilger, "Bush Or Kerry? Look Closely And The Danger Is The
Same," New Statesman, March 04, 2004; "The fallacy of the 'anybody
but Bush' movement," Workers World, March 25, 2004.
7. From Kerry's Web site, as cited in "The fallacy of the 'anybody
but Bush' movement," Workers World, March 25, 2004.
8. "On foreign policy, Kerry is not far from Bush," The Globe and
Mail, March 3, 2004.
9. "Kerry Condemns Bush for Failing to Back Aristide," The New York
Times, March 7, 2004.
10. Willian Blum, "If Kerry's the answer, what's the question?"
Dissident Voice, March 4, 2004.
11. Ibid.
12. "The fallacy of the 'anybody but Bush' movement," Workers World,
March 25, 2004.
13. Gabriel Kolko, "The US must be isolated and constrained,"
CounterPunch, March 12-14, 2004.
14. See Note #4.
15. "Bush can be stopped: A letter to the Left".
16. Michael Parenti, interviewed by Amy Goodman on Democracy Now!,
February 23, 2004, http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?
sid=04/02/23/1528222
17. Ibid.
18. The analogy was originally used by Paul Baran and Paul Sweezy in
Monopoly Capital: An Essay on the American Economic and Social Order,
(Monthly Review Press, 1966), p. 41.
19. This is paraphrasing Paul Sweezy in The Theory of Capitalist
Development (Monthly Review Press, 1970), p. 352.
20. "Jubilation, Rage in S. Korea Impeachment of President Exposes
Deep Ideological Rift," The Washington Post, March 13, 2004.
21. Ibid.
22. "Senator John Kerry's Statement on Venezuela," The Miami Herald,
March 23, 2004.
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and Kerry, so I am posting it. The article does, however, fail to
mention the socialist alternatives beyond the Communist Party when
Stephen Gowens correctly states, "They're voting Democrat too".
I must take exception. The Peace and Freedom Party is a socialist
party that is not supporting the Democrats. Our presidential
candidate (when ratified at our August convention) is Leonard
Peltier.
Gowens then points out some very general things about how the system
cannot be changed by who is in power whether they are "Socialist or
conservative".
What Stephen Gowens says about how a socialist president in power
will fail is true only if they maintain the capitalist system.
Socialists, however, should be aware that the obstacles that will be
placed in our way will have to be smashed through mass mobilizations,
the arming of the working class, the abolition of old military and
police forces, and the nationalization of the economy to meet human
and environmental needs and destroy the power base of the capitalist
class.
These are future concerns that are not right around the corner in the
United States. The most immediate concern with running socialist
candidates is making clear to the labor movement, anti-war movement,
and others involved in social struggles that we gain nothing by
supporting our class enemies in the Democrat Party.
-Steve Argue
Kerry vs. Kerry-lite
by Stephen Gowans
http://www3.sympatico.ca/sr.gowans/
March 25, 2004
Some advice to politically Left Americans. Most of you will cast a
vote for John Kerry in November. There's not much doubt about it. And
the reason you'll be backing Kerry is (a) you assume nothing could be
worse than Bush, (b) the Democrats must be marginally better, because
well, because they're Democrats, (c) pressuring elites doesn't seem
to be working and you can't think of anything else to do to
stop "Bush's" drive to war, and (d) all those people who keep warning
you about lesser evilism, can't seem to come up with anything better.
So Kerry's your man. Oh sure, some of you admire Kucinich. Others
even think well of Nader. But you know Kerry's going to be your go-to-
guy come November.
Okay, fine. Leave it at that. When the time comes, head down to the
polling station, and cast your vote. But in the meantime, shut up
about it, because, just between you and me, you're starting to look a
little silly, twisting yourself into knots to explain why it is that
all the things you used to say about the Democrats being the same as
the Republicans, no longer apply.
Of course, you're not going to give up talking the talk, even if
you'll be miles away walking smack dab in the middle of your comfort
zone. There will be no going cold turkey on all the leftist
shibboleths you've been spouting for decades. Like Noam Chomsky,
you'll still point to the Democrats as nothing more than the second
business party [1], kind of like Thing Two to the Republican's Thing
One. And you'll dismiss your go-to-guy as nothing more than Bush-
lite, but hey, a lite beer's still better than the real thing when
you're trying to get rid of those love handles, right?
Except I'm trying to figure out why everyone keeps saying Kerry is
Bush-lite [2], rather than Bush in a different suit, or that Bush is
Kerry-lite. Look at Kerry's record.
For one thing, as much as Bush, Kerry's part of the ruling class
that privileged, hyper-rich stratum of the population that organizes
the domestic and foreign policy of the United States in its own
interests. Not only have corporations showered more contributions on
Kerry than on any other member of the millionaires' club that doubles
as the Senate, he's also the richest millionaire in the club. He and
his wife Teresa Heinz Kerry, boast a net worth of between $200 and
$840 million. [3]
But Kerry's wealth and his fitting into corporate circles like a CEO
into an oversize corner office, isn't all that makes him, at best, a
dead ringer for Bush. His policies do, too. Kerry proposes "a bold
vision of progressive internationalism," a "tough-minded strategy of
international engagement and leadership" in the tradition of such
renowned peaceniks as Woodrow Wilson (WWI), Harry Truman (Hiroshima)
and John F. Kennedy (Vietnam and the Bay of Pigs). [4]
Which may be why "Bush's" drive to war, which we're told, must be
stopped by voting for Kerry, seems to be Kerry's drive to war, too.
[5] After all, he voted for the war on Afghanistan, and supports the
occupation. [6] He voted for the war on Iraq, and says "we now have a
solemn obligation to complete the mission." [7] He promises to add
40,000 troops to the Army and to spend more on defense than the
Republicans, and more on homeland security. [8] Yeah, he sure sounds
different from Bush, though not in any better way.
What's more, not only is he prepared to use military force
unilaterally, ("People will know I'm tough and I'm prepared to do
what is necessary to defend the United States of America, and that
includes the unilateral deployment of troops if necessary," [9] he's
prepared "to target and capture terrorists even before they act" and
says he "will not hesitate to order direct military action when
needed to capture and destroy terrorist groups and their leaders"
[10] -- his own doctrine of preventive war.
Plus he says he will spend more on the National Endowment for
Democracy [11], an organization that does openly what the CIA used to
do covertly -- meddle in the affairs of countries like Haiti,
Venezuela, Serbia and Cuba, that put the interests of the domestic
population ahead of those of corporate America and investors who can
boast net worths of hundreds of millions of dollars, like, let's
see...well, like Kerry.
And in case you thought Kerry draws his advisors from a different
stratum of the population than Bush does, you should know that his
national finance chair, Louis Susman, is vice-chairperson of
investment banking for Citigroup [12], and that his foreign policy
adviser, Rand Beers, worked for Bush's National Security Council
until about a year ago. [13]
So explain to me how there's anything lite about Kerry?
My favorite Kerry quote is, "I could never agree with those in the
antiwar movement who dismissed our troops [in Vietnam] as war
criminals or our country as the villain in the drama." [14]
As for Iraq, if Kerry has a problem with Bush, it's that he didn't
drag France, Germany and Russia into the war, preferring to strike a
grabby, it's all mine, pose, rather than the "let's divide up the
loot" approach the Democrats favor. Apparently, a gang rape is better
than a rape carried out by a lone assailant, which, I gather, would
make a gang rapist a rapist-lite, and therefore more worthy of our
backing than a rapist who goes it alone.
But, for the record, Washington hasn't gone it alone in Iraq,
managing to cobble together a coalition, though one lacking France,
Germany and Russia, whose backing, in some perverted twist of
reasoning, is supposed to have invested the rape of Iraq with
legitimacy. Apparently, if you can lure other renowned rapists into a
gang rape, it gives the whole sordid affair moral weight.
So, you'll have to excuse me, but I don't see any redeeming
difference between Kerry and the current Kerry-lite occupant of the
White House, not even a razor-thin one, at least not one that would
lead me to conclude that Kerry's better, if only marginally. And if
there's any logic in the Chomsky claim -- which he's been making for
a while now -- that a minuscule difference can make a big difference
(because the president has so much power, Kerry being even a little
better than Bush can have fairly substantial implications), I'm
afraid it has eluded me, as well. Is it just me, or is Chomsky
staring to sound like those corporate PR flaks, who rather than not
even trying to claim black is white, figure their forensic skills are
so finely honed, that they can pull it off?
And has Michael Parenti, another high-profile American leftist,
joined the club? Of course, he has. He, along with Chomksy and a
gaggle of other left luminaries, wrote a "letter to the left"
sometime late last year, that attributed the drive to war to Bush
[15], as if wars of aggression haven't been a fixture of US foreign
policy, and have suddenly sprung to life fully formed under the Bush
administration's careful nurturing. They coyly avoided saying that
the Left should vote Democrat in the next election, but the message
was plain, and odd, coming from a number of people who say they're
radicals, but then, maybe the meaning of radical changes in "times
when you have to pursue coalition politics against the forces like
the kind we're facing in the White House today." [16]
Not so many years ago -- four to be exact -- pursuing coalition
politics wasn't deemed to be so important. Back then Michael Moore
was directing a Rage Against the Machine video that depicted Al Gore
as a clone of George Bush, and he, and a whole bunch of other US Left
luminaries, were exhorting people to vote for the anti-clone, Nader,
none more zealously than Moore himself. But what made impeccable
sense back then, now seems to make no sense at all. Nader's been
dumped faster than a date with active genital herpes, and Moore slunk
back to the Democrats soon after the election, his self-imposed
estrangement from his political home passed off as temporary
insanity. Eventually, he decided to back the real Butcher of
Belgrade, Wesley Clark, for a run at the Democratic nomination,
touting a war criminal, on record as supporting the rape of Iraq, as
the peace candidate the anti-war Left could really get behind.
My logic isn't infallible, but it seems to me if we accept Moore's
claim that Al Gore is a clone of George W. Bush, then Gore as
president would have been like Bush as president. In other words,
there would have been a war on Afghanistan, which seems pretty likely
given that 99 percent of the establishment, plus a fair number of
liberals, think the whole affair was a pretty good thing. And we can
be sure Gore would have carried out some kind of hostility against
Iraq aimed at regime change, since, after all, this had been the
policy of two administrations, one of which Gore belonged to. All of
which makes one wonder why Moore has decided, along with Chomsky and
Parenti, that coalition politics - - that is a vote for the
Democrats -- has suddenly become vitally important. It's as if
they're all kicking themselves for not voting for Gore when they had
the chance -- even if he is a clone of Bush. Figure that one out.
Maybe it's a poor grasp of logic. All of them talk about the
necessity of voting for the candidate most likely to defeat the
dangerous and repellent Bush, assuming quite unjustifiably that his
successor won't be equally or more dangerous and repellent.
Radical, if it means anything, should refer to the root of a problem,
and given that aggressive foreign policies have been pursued by every
administration, and elsewhere in the world, by governments of various
political hues, it seems highly unlikely that the drive to war is an
anomaly of a group of people in power. It seems far more likely to be
systemic, and therefore, the means to stop the drive to war must be
systemic, as well. And yet the word, radical, it would seem, now
means acting to replace one group of people drawn from the ruling
class, who seek to shape the international security order in line
with US export and investment interests, with another group of people
drawn from the same ruling class, who aim to exercise US power boldly
in the tradition of Wilson, Truman and Kennedy, to do the same.
Parenti, who talks a militant leftist line, says elections matter,
but boasts that he coined the phrase "two-party monopolies" when he
wrote, "Democracy For the Few," [17] which would kind of suggest
Parenti was thinking that elections don't matter and a vote for the
Democrats equals a vote for the Republicans, or if you extend the
logic, that the drive to war does not belong uniquely to the
Republicans but is owned by the monopoly. So you see elections don't
matter, but they do matter. Figure that one out. I can't decide
whether Parenti's starting to remind me of a guy who writes cryptic
fortune cookie fortunes, or a retired Sprite salesman who's been
claiming for the last four decades that Coke and Pepsi are the same,
but has just put in a call to the regional Pepsi sales office
demanding a Pepsi machine be installed outside his local public gym,
because all that's there now is a Coke machine, and he can't stand
the taste of Coke.
If the US, in Parenti's words, is a democracy for the few, dominated
by the super rich like Kerry and Kerry-lite, what difference do
elections make? At this point the exponents of the view that
elections matter (well, at least this election matters) step forward
and say, "Yes, but the Bush Republicans are a particularly vicious
wing of the ruling class, and while the Democrats are only marginally
better, they are better all the same, and therefore any project that
seeks to put a Democrat in the White House is ameliorative."
Let's ignore the reality that this is like saying death by guillotine
is better than death by hanging, because a hanging death can be long,
drawn out, and gruesome, whereas the guillotine is swift and certain
and marginally more humane. By this reasoning we're supposed to
support death by guillotine and believe we've accomplished something
if we thereby avoid the hangman's noose. Either way, you end up with
a nasty neck-ache, though on the bright side, it only lasts for a
fraction of a second. But I'm not at all sure that the premise --
that the Democrats are marginally better -- is sound.
It's a canard, really -- part of the mythology of the Democrats. It
may have been true seventy years ago, but you'd be hard pressed to
show how any Democrat in power has differed from Republicans in power
on economic or foreign policy since, and certainly now. And yet the
fairy tale lives on, invulnerable to the facts. But then it serves a
useful intellectual function - keeping Americans of the political
left from wrestling with a vexing and troubling question: What the
hell can we do, if we can't vote Democrat? Join the Communist Party?
No, they're voting Democrat too.
What can be done, is to start to ask why it is that no matter who's
in power, Democrat or Republican, conservative or liberal, and
overseas, conservative or Socialist, foreign and economic policy
always seems to head in the same direction: foreign policy is
aggressive, and economic policy abets profit-making at the expense of
wages, working conditions and social security, as it must. It doesn't
seem to be the greed or ignorance or viciousness of a group of people
in power that accounts for this uniformity of direction, any more
than the greed or ignorance or viciousness of CEOs account for
layoffs, which isn't to say that some CEO's aren't greedy or ignorant
or vicious, only that it doesn't matter whether they are.
It's like baseball. It doesn't matter what the players think of the
game, what their aims are, how they feel. All the matters is how many
runs are scored. If they underperform, they're benched, sent down to
the minors, or sent packing. [18] Imagine a CEO who decides to keep
workers on, at the expense of his company's profits. He won't last
long, suffering the corporate equivalent of being pulled from the
game, banished to the minors, or cut loose from the team.
The same applies to leaders of governments in societies integrated
into the global capitalist system, dominated materially and
ideologically by the business community. If they lean to the Left,
chances are they rose to power by progressively bartering away their
principles for respectability and votes. [19] They can be counted on
to pursue corporate interests at home and abroad. If by some unlikely
confluence of events, they have risen to power without first arriving
at a modus vivendi with the corporate class, their tenure is likely
to be short-lived, and unquestionably rocky. Which means they too
will end up like the baseball player who fails to add to the tally of
runs -- given a one-way ticket to the bush leagues, or worst.
The news, in recent days, offers three examples of leaders who have
been sent, or may soon be sent, to the showers.
South Korea's President Roh Moo Hyun has been impeached for a minor
transgression, tantamount to being shot, according to Kim Dong Yune,
a Seoul-based political analyst, for a minor theft. [20] Roh's real
crime: He "came to power promising to be South Korea's Robin Hood"
and "has embraced a left-leaning agenda over his year in office,
including carving out a path more independent of Washington,
establishing warmer ties with North Korea and China, and enacting new
policies to empower the poor and rein in the rich." Roh "levied more
taxes on the rich while spending billions of dollars on new
government housing for the poor," [21] something that will never
secure him a spot in the Baseball Hall of Fame.
Haiti's Jean-Bertrand Aristide was forced from power by what was
almost certainly a US-engineered coup. He angered the business
community by raising the minimum daily wage beyond $1.30, and failed
to privatize state-owned enterprises, a definite no-no if you expect
to keep your place on the team roster.
Venezuela's Hugo Chavez, once ousted in a short-lived US-backed coup,
hangs on to office despite the fierce opposition of Washington and a
domestic business class backed by contributions from the National
Endowment for Democracy. John Kerry questions Chavez's commitment to
democracy, noting that Chavez is a friend of Fidel Castro. [22] By
this reasoning, George Bush must be a military dictator because the
US government counts Pakistan's Pervez Musharraf as an ally.
Chavez has implemented a program of land reform, imposed a ban on oil
privatization, invited Cuban doctors into Venezuela's slums, and is
using the state-owned oil firm, Pdvsa, to pursue a social spending
program. That's why Washington, and Venezuela's wealthy, are trying
to cut him loose from the team.
In a word, the problem -- and you had better send the kids out of the
room before I say this -- is capitalism. Yeah capitalism, the C-word.
Not neo-liberalism, or globalization, or the Washington Consensus, or
corporate rule, or any of the other synonyms dreamed up to protect
anyone from really striking at the heart of the problem.
Radical Left groups say they're opposed to neo-liberalism and against
globalization. So are social democrats and a whole lot of liberals,
even if social democratic and liberal governments have implemented
neo-liberal policies. Like baseball players, it doesn't mater what
they think of the game, only whether they play it. So, are some
radical Leftists social democrats, or nothing but liberals in
disguise? Based on Chomsky's and Parenti's support of Kerry, it's
difficult to think they're not.
But if capitalism is the problem, rather than the policy choices of
Kerry versus those of Kerry-lite -- which are indistinguishable in
any important way, anyway -- what can be done? There's nothing that
can be done now, but much that can be done on an ongoing basis, most
particularly political organization under the direction of a party
that has the energy, pluck and resolve to replace the existing system
with one that doesn't depend on foreign expansion to resolve its
dilemmas and sets the fulfillment of human requirements, not capital
accumulation, as the primary purpose of economic activity
In the meantime, it doesn't make a whole lot of sense to back a
candidate who must, and will, carry on in the tradition of the
monopoly (to use Parenti's words), with policies as grim, reactionary
and aggressive, or more so, than those of the current occupant of the
White House. At best, voting for Kerry is a pointless act, and at
worst, a backward act, to the extent it fosters the illusion that
change can be achieved by changing the name plate on the Oval Office
desk. Contrary to the reigning mythology, doing something pointless
is not better than doing nothing, where nothing means refusing to
cast a ballot for either Thing One or Thing Two. And calling Emperor
Moore's, Parenti's and Chomsky's strutting about without their
clothes on, what it is, can't hurt either.
REFERENCES
1. "Chomsky backs 'Bush-lite' Kerry," The Guardian, March 20, 2004.
2. Ibid.
3. Center for Responsive Politics, cited in "The fallacy of
the 'anybody but Bush' movement," Workers World, March 25, 2004.
4. Mark Hand, "It's Time to Get Over It: Kerry Tells Anti-War
Movement to Move On," CounterPunch, February 18, 2004.
5. "Bush can be stopped: A letter to the Left".
6. John Pilger, "Bush Or Kerry? Look Closely And The Danger Is The
Same," New Statesman, March 04, 2004; "The fallacy of the 'anybody
but Bush' movement," Workers World, March 25, 2004.
7. From Kerry's Web site, as cited in "The fallacy of the 'anybody
but Bush' movement," Workers World, March 25, 2004.
8. "On foreign policy, Kerry is not far from Bush," The Globe and
Mail, March 3, 2004.
9. "Kerry Condemns Bush for Failing to Back Aristide," The New York
Times, March 7, 2004.
10. Willian Blum, "If Kerry's the answer, what's the question?"
Dissident Voice, March 4, 2004.
11. Ibid.
12. "The fallacy of the 'anybody but Bush' movement," Workers World,
March 25, 2004.
13. Gabriel Kolko, "The US must be isolated and constrained,"
CounterPunch, March 12-14, 2004.
14. See Note #4.
15. "Bush can be stopped: A letter to the Left".
16. Michael Parenti, interviewed by Amy Goodman on Democracy Now!,
February 23, 2004, http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?
sid=04/02/23/1528222
17. Ibid.
18. The analogy was originally used by Paul Baran and Paul Sweezy in
Monopoly Capital: An Essay on the American Economic and Social Order,
(Monthly Review Press, 1966), p. 41.
19. This is paraphrasing Paul Sweezy in The Theory of Capitalist
Development (Monthly Review Press, 1970), p. 352.
20. "Jubilation, Rage in S. Korea Impeachment of President Exposes
Deep Ideological Rift," The Washington Post, March 13, 2004.
21. Ibid.
22. "Senator John Kerry's Statement on Venezuela," The Miami Herald,
March 23, 2004.
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