Marxism, Globalization, Cuba and “The War on Terror”

 

 

Marx and Engels’ Communist Manifesto and 21^st Century

Capitalism: A Critical Perspective on Globalization, Cuba and

the American Empire’s “War on Terror” through a Marxist

Theoretical Framework

 

                                                   Joshua Blakeney

 

                       

          

 

                 One hundred and sixty years ago Marx and Engels advanced the thesis in The Communist Manifesto that the capitalist system was destined to self-destruct, to be replaced by an alternative less vacuous system which they believed would be classless and communistic in nature. They suggested that the bourgeoisie was producing: “its own grave diggers”[1] based on their perpetual and wanton repression of the working classes. Contemporarily the adduced prophesy has not been vindicated insofar as the capitalist system has neither capitulated nor been emasculated and still continues to afflict humanity on an even more prolific and ubiquitous scale than at any time previously. However many of Marx and Engels’ observations about the nature of nineteenth century capitalism are highly conciliatory with twenty-first century capitalism. One example is their assertion that: “The need of a constantly expanding market for its products chases the bourgeoisie over the whole surface of the globe. It must nestle everywhere, settle everywhere, establish connections everywhere”[2]. Indeed the American Empire has been the leading orchestrator of such capitalist expansionism since 1945 assisting the bourgeoisie in establishing commercial networks globally by facilitating a military industrial complex to penetrate new markets. This monograph will therefore seek to deconstruct the American Empire’s oxymoronic “War on Terror” through a Marxist theoretical framework ostensibly to expose the latent weaknesses, vicissitudes and inadequacies of the prevailing global economic orthodoxy. Moreover the author will seek to critically analyze the predictions made by Marx and Engels so as to comprehend why and how proletarian revolution failed to crystallize in order to envision the conditions which could lead to revolutionary change in the future. 

Marx and Engels refrained from specifying any time frame for the full and unequivocal emancipation of all humanity; they merely said that it was an inevitability. Capitalism in its contemporary globalized form systematically and militarily condemns millions of human beings every year to lives of misery, privation and malnourishment, yet despite this truism, record profits still prevail unabated and relatively unthreatened.  The curious survival of the capitalist system invokes questions of how and why such a monocultural, hegemonic system could stay in existence? Equally pertinent to ponder is how it can be that a mere scintilla of humanity could be free to misanthropically despoil the planet of its wealth and riches while the vast majority stand by supinely as observers? In other words to use a Marxist analogy, why has “class consciousness” not ossified to the extent that Marx and Engels prophesized? Such questions can be unambiguously placed into the context of the so called “War on Terror” which elucidates the methods employed by the ruling class, vis-à-vis the American Empire, to maintain the domination of capital and property and intimidate and stupefy the international proletariat into a state of submission.  Marx and Engels had indeed predicted the globalization of capital in The Communist Manifesto when they adduced: “The conditions of bourgeois society are too narrow to compromise the wealth created by them. And how does the bourgeoisie get over these crises? On the one hand by enforced destruction of a mass of productive forces; on the other, by the conquest of new markets”[3]. Indeed the words destruction and conquest are highly relevant contemporarily with the epochal globalization of state-terrorism visited at the bourgeoisie’s behest by supine political leaders upon the inhabitants of coveted polities.

The “War on Terror” is the epithet ascribed by the US government to its latest wave of imperialist attacks against indigenous peoples inhabiting sovereign polities throughout the world.  Globalized capitalism and US imperialism are now, and always will be, two sides of the same coin in the respect that without each other neither would be able to plague the planet in the pernicious way that each of them do. Indeed the consummation of US imperialism is a world totally dominated by capital and the capitalist elites, and the oppression of humanity through wage-slavery and economic indentureship. Petras et al adduce: “globalization is neither inevitable nor necessary. Like other projects of capitalist development that preceded it -modernization, industrialization, colonialism and development – the new imperialism is fraught with contradictions that generate forces of opposition”[4]. Cuba has been one of capitalism’s most consistently resilient, vociferous and principled opponents for almost fifty years, undertaking the construction of a revolutionary society based on diametrically opposite principles to the capitalist world. The former-president of Cuba, Fidel Castro, upon receiving an award from the World Health Organization summed up the status quo lucidly:

 

“Why in this world which produces almost $30 trillion worth of goods and services per year, do one billion three hundred million people live in absolute poverty receiving less than a dollar a day? Why do 800 million lack the most basic health services when the cost of providing a minimal level of health care protection to all the citizens of the world- an amount estimated at 1998 dollars at $25 million billion- amounts to just 3% of the amount devoted annually to armaments? Why are there 250 million children in the world forced to work? Why do 2 million girls become prostitutes every year? Why do 15% of the world’s population consume 82% of the world’s medicine while the whole rest of the world have access to only 18%?”[5]

 

To begin to comprehend how such an insidious system could prevail and why exactly Marx and Engels’ thesis (with notable exceptions) is yet to be vindicated, it is crucial to understand the imperial “War on Terror” and the subsequent proliferation of capitalism within a historical context. It is axiomatic that all empires need justifications for their anti-democratic systems of purloining and despoliation. The British Empire constructed the highly offensive concept of a “White Man’s Burden” in order to justify its amoral antics to domestic concerned opinion as well as to entice vast swathes of the proletariat in Britain to pick up a bayonet and don a British military uniform to help crush indigenous anti-imperial revolts around the world. As the British Empire declined after World War II, the American Empire entered the center stage as the capitalist world’s sole protagonist. It too embraced racist, Social Darwinian mythology as a means of justifying the plundering of indigenous people’s wealth and resources. The rise of the American behemoth coincided with the rise of the Soviet Union, a nation whose revolutionary beginnings had been greatly inspired by The Communist Manifesto and who gave the American Empire an ideological antithesis to contend with, hence fostering a degree of global equilibrium. The two superpowers competed with each other over spheres of influence in the Third World each installing puppet regimes to collaborate with their informal empires. The US government during this time masked their imperial pursuits behind the mythology of the threat of: “The Red Menace” and under this rubric suggested that nefarious and murderous interventions, both domestically and internationally, were a means to an ends, in order to crush Marxist-inspired egalitarian movements. As Hall asserts: “Ever since the United States entered the Second World War it has maintained the planet’s most active and elaborate apparatus of global intervention. The Cold War provided the rational for the continuing military mobilization of the United States on a global scale. . .the US military machinery was increasingly crafted as capitalism’s ultimate police force.”[6]

The American Empire has intervened in no less than fifty-three nation’s affairs since 1945[7] ostensibly to sustain and proliferate the “war economy” which was incubated in the Second World War. US backed ventures have included heinous crimes such as the massacring of three-million Vietnamese people with chemical weapons, murdering democratically elected presidents such as the Congolese President-elect Patrice Lumumba[8] and the President-elect of Chile Salvador Allende[9] as well as orchestrating coups against Ghana’s Kwame Nkrumah[10], Guatamala’s Benito Arbenz and Indonesia’s Sukarno[11] all of whom equally possessed democratic credentials. All of these men had professed sympathy to the socialist principles which were the manifestation of the class analysis opined by Marx and Engels. Such subventions were the product of overt class antagonism whereby the ruling classes wished to install “comprador” regimes that would suppress all grass-roots, democratic resistance and guarantee preferential access to their people’s resources and markets in exchange for bribery and extortion of the highest kind. Marx and Engles’ description of the capitalization of feudal society is comparable to the Americanization of foreign countries: “into their place stepped free competition, accompanied by a social and political constitution adapted to it, and by the economical and political sway of the bourgeoisie.”[12]

Hence the Cold War incubated and nurtured the rapacious and murderous military industrial complex which emerged victorious in 1991 when the alcohol soaked, western puppet; Boris Yeltsin staged a coup against the Gorbechev government at the behest of Washington, tearing down the world’s only impregnable opponent to US imperialism[13].The post Cold War chimera’s which were propagated by the victorious ruling class suggested that it was “the end of history” and ipso facto capitalism was the only tenable economic system due to the failure of the Soviet experiment. Cuba, now beleaguered by global capitalism, was resolute and offered a different message, one of resistance, socialism and empowerment to indigenous peoples who were struggling to eradicate racism, misogyny, poverty and all other forms of bigotry and inequality. In a speech in Durban, South Africa, entitled: “There is No End of History” Cuban President Fidel Castro continued to light a path for others to follow. He fulminated:

 

“Neoliberal globalization is rapidly destroying our natural environment, poisoning our air and water, deforesting our lands, eroding our soils into wasteland, squandering our natural resources, changing our climate. How and with what shall 10 billion human beings live? International development aid is decreasing…The fact that the population of Africa is left with AIDS. . .and dozens of old and new diseases is not an issue for the multinationals or the blind eye of the world markets. . .the unipolar world and its accompanying world order are wiping out sovereignty and independence. . .Globalization is inevitable, but not the globalization that they want to impose on us, not that neo-liberal globalization. Globalization is a product of science, technology and the development of the productive forces that should be at the service of humankind.”[14]

 

Despite enlightened, foresightful analysts such as Fidel Castro, the aplomb of the post- Cold War bourgeoisie was unremitting and unequivocal. They dismissed Marxism and Socialism (and all other forms of humanism) based solely on failure of the Soviet experiment and believed that they had an unopposed mandate to further globalize their exploitation.  The adduced indefatigability of one monocultural system which could dominate the globe forever was clearly morally vacuous, and from a Marxian perspective dubious from the outset. As already emphasized all empires have historically manufactured a litany of propagandistic myths to justify their cant and double-standards, ostensibly to stymie the aspirations of the working classes, and prevent them from realizing their subjective similarities with the colonized victims of that same system. The global ruling class soon came to realize that they needed a new foe in order to command the fidelity of large sections of the proletariat to their military industrial complex. The international bourgeoisie required somebody who could be scapegoated to justify the corporate crusade which was bubbling under the surface of post-Cold War society. The American Empire was equally bereft of an opponent to perpetuate its “war economy” against. The Cold War had not in fact been “Cold” at all. It was an epoch of military interventions, proxy wars, and colonial occupations all of which had contributed sizably to sustaining the American Empire’s military industrial complex. The prior existence of an alternative system which had purported to be communistic in nature, yet had ultimately failed to edify into a truly communist society, had also provided the international ruling class with an easily sold justification for suppressing any political forces for social change within their own jurisdictions.  The collapse of the Soviet Union had bequeathed the international bourgeoisie the conundrum of having no tenable opponent to contrast their system against, leaving them exposed to scrutiny from class conscious proletarians who were no longer content to nurse their wroth obediently. Hence with the equilibrium lost and with bourgeoisie’s swords sharpened, capitalism looked to Washington for orders.

 Then came September 11^th 2001. Nobody truly knows how, why, or by who, the attacks of September 11^th 2001 occurred. The unproven, uncorroborated, Washington conspiracy theory that three striding buildings could be felled by two planes into a pile of ash, and that the culprits for this massacre were cave-dwelling guerilla fighters in the mountains of Afghanistan, has been exposed as highly tendentious and increasingly incipient as voluminous evidence to the contrary has emerged. Nevertheless the sardonic torque and spin which circumscribed the 9/11 massacre was evidently a boon for US imperialism and its consummation – globalized capitalism. The capitalist classes, who marketed the tragedy as a justification for indiscriminate retribution against an enemy undefined, have by invading the sovereign country of Iraq, caused the deaths of over one-million Iraqi, men, women and children and have engendered a further four-million refugees – many of whom now live lives of misery begging on the streets of Damascus and Oman – testament to the reprehensible and odious crimes of the international ruling class. The retribution for the 9/11 massacre was a flagrantly illegal war crime yet the two war criminals responsible, namely George W Bush and Anthony Blair still walk free and still await impeachment for their violations of International Law. As Mamdani explains:“the emergence of the United States as the world’s only superpower has gone hand in hand with its demand to be exempt from any international rule of law.”[15]By defenestrating all enshrined international protocols, including: The United Nations Charter, The Geneva Convention, and The Genocide Convention Bush and his fellow war criminal Blair have illuminated that capitalisms victory has been to the detriment of humanity and that very little has changed since Marx and Engles published their inspirational manifesto other than the magnitude to which the bourgeoisie have expanded their nefarious activities.

 Equally reprehensible was the precursor to the Iraq crusade, the illegal imperial war to occupy and colonize Afghanistan, a country which is the door-way to the lucrative Caspian oil fields. Independent journalist John Pilger recently visited occupied Afghanistan and in his account of the conflagration educates the reader: “The potential of the oil and gas reserves of the Caspian basin has excited imperialists since the discovery of oil there at the end of the nineteenth century.”[16] Pilger quotes Hitler as saying that after invading Russia (echoing George W Bush) he intended to ‘take the saving prize of Caspian resources, then drive south for the even greater prize of Persia and Iraq’[17]. In Afghanistan Bush, Blair and their popinjay collaborators propelled NATO forces to fight an enemy which the US and Britain had themselves created, namely the so called mujahedin. Pilger opines: “The Afghani mujahedin-and the Taliban and al-Qaida-were effectively created by the CIA, its Pakistani equivalent the ISI, and Britain’s MI6”[18]. Mamdani expounds: “America learned to distinguish between two types of terrorism theirs and ours – and cultivated an increasingly benign attitude towards ours. But then it turned out that their terrorism was born of ours.”[19] These imperial hypocrites under the banner of NATO have punished the Afghan people, bombing them back into the stone-age, for having a government which the west had itself installed a mere two decades previously to subvert the socialist PDPA government at the time. Pilger quotes a young Afghani women who warmly reminisced about life under the PDPA government which the west colluded to overthrow:

 

 “Every girl could go to high school and university. We could go where we wanted and wear what we liked. . .We used to go to cafes and the cinema to see the latest films. . .It all started to go wrong when the mujahedin started winning. . .They used to kill teachers and burn schools. . .It was funny and sad to think these people the west had supported.”[20]

 

In Afghanistan Canada, Britain, and the US have conducted a bellicose and indiscriminate massacre of tens of thousands of Afghani civilians – often with the use of illegal chemical weapons – all justified under the assumption that the inhabitants whose heads the bombs land upon were: “The Taliban”, in a similar way that the US imperialists in their illegal war against the people of Vietnam justified the death of every Vietnamese villager as having been a feat against the: “Vietcong”, with General Midwinter famously opining: “we had to burn the village to save the villagers.”[21]When a Pentagon spokesman was asked about a wedding party which had been bombed by NATO – killing ninety-three civilians – the spokesman replied: “the people there are dead because we wanted them dead.”[22] Canadian troops have assisted their imperial masters in erecting a gulag known as Bagram Air Base where additional crimes against humanity are known to be committed daily including torture and forced confession. Pilger interviewed one Afghani who had been kidnapped by the NATO occupiers, incarcerated and then: “tortured for sixteen days, standing for ten consecutive days until his legs became so swollen that the shackles around his legs stopped the blood flow.”[23]

 

As a result of these most recent fascistic blunders the world has been made a fantastically more dangerous place, extremism is rife and the west is perceived as the enemy of most of the world. Each western bomb which massacres Afghanis and Iraqis acts as recruiting sergeant, luring alienated young Muslims onto the rocks of obscurantism and sectarianism. Indeed a myriad of questions remain to be posited in order to expound the theories enunciated by Marx and Engels within the context of the so called “War on Terror”. Such questions include: why and how has this unmitigated disaster been able to ensue? Who has benefitted from a more volatile and fragmented planet?  And how do these grotesque crimes against humanity relate to the class analysis which Marx and Engels adumbrated?  

            The pugnacious War of Terror unleashed by the American Empire is only explained cogently and lucidly through a Marxist paradigm. It was often suggested in Trotskyite circles that fascism was merely: “capitalism with its gloves off.”[24] This recent attack against Islam – by the polity which Hall refers to unambiguously as the “American Empire of possessive individualism”, with collaboration from the empire’s potentate regimes in the Middle East – have provided the ruling class with access to strategic bases, vast swathes of oil, justifications for domestic repression of civil liberties as well as the conjuring of a ubiquitous phobia against a whole group of people, namely the Islamic citizens of the globe. Never before has the vilified enemy of an empire been so nebulously defined as the Islamic community has been contemporarily. The Islamic community constitutes around a sixth of humanity and spans across every continent. Despite the scope and diversity of the Islamic world, the media-led demonization process has stigmatized all the totems of Islam and has dehumanized and traduced the non-radical majority thus fostering the racist sentiments amongst non-Muslims which buttresses the bourgeoisie and their iniquitous agenda. Mamdani adduces: “The self-appointed leaders of the ‘the West’. . .(are) taking on an entire civilization. . . the implication is unmistakable and undisguised: whether in Afghanistan, Palestine or Pakistan, Islam must be quarantined and devil exorcized from it. . .This is why the point of the Crusades was not to convert Muslims but to exterminate them. . .the Crusades demonized the Muslim as evil incarnate.”[25] This egregious tactic employed by the ruling class, of using fear to corrode the equanimity of the proletariat, imbuing many proletarians with an affinity to their leaders, serves the bourgeoisie greatly. The fostering of troglodytic perceptions of the planet compounds globalized divisiveness and inculcates fear amongst workers from different polities which fragments solidarity amongst workers and strengthens the hand of the ruling class. The allegiance and obedience of the international proletariat to the hidden agenda of the ruling classes is therefore neither myopia nor a natural occurrence it is an orchestrated, planned tactic to thwart the emancipatory aspirations of the international working class. The hawkish propaganda against Islam encourages the working classes to become patriotic, nationalistic and jingoistic all of which benefits the ruling class and detracts from humanity.

The British 18^thcentury, anti-imperialist, parliamentarian Dr Johnson referred to the unenlightened concept of patriotism tersely as: “The last refuge of the scoundrel.”[26]British jingoism was only able to perpetuate whilst the ruling classes were able to control the minds of the proletariat. Once working class men and women begun to identify with the anti-colonial struggles being led by the so called “terrorists” of the epoch, such as Gandhi and Nehru in India, Nkrumah in Ghana, Kenyatta in Kenya, Archbishop Makarios in Cyprus[27]and many more, the ruling class were bereft of the clout and authority which they required to maintain their oblique existence, resulting in the dismantling of the British imperial despoliation machine. Indeed contemporarily the globalization of capital has not led to the globalization of people. The ruling classes still incarcerate the proletariat within the confines of the nation-state so as to diffuse class conscious internationalism and ensure an abundance of young men and women willing to fight at the behest of their masters. Proletarian internationalism and globalized capitalism are two diametrically opposite, irreconcilable concepts; the former is yet to come into fruition whilst the latter is in its most unfettered and rapacious expression currently.   

            Marx and Engels irrefutably made many astute observations in regard to the capitalist system. However less conciliatory was their proposition that: “Of all the classes that stand face to face with the bourgeoisie today, the proletariat alone is a really revolutionary class” and in regard to the bourgeoisie specifically: “It’s fall and the victory of the proletariat are equally inevitable.”[28]Whilst revolutions did occur, the counter-revolutions were always invariably stronger. Marx and Engles hypothesized that: “The weapons with which the bourgeoisie felled feudalism to the ground are now turned against the bourgeoisie itself. . .the bourgeoisie forged the weapons that bring death to itself.”[29]This proposition must be seen as axiomatically fanciful in light of the truism that the bourgeoisie since 1848 has in fact ossified its economic position rather than engendering “it’s own grave diggers.”[30] Whilst humanity’s foot soldiers sported tattered green berets and fought with decrepit Kalashnikovs, the defenders of capitalism had US trained mercenaries toting AK47s, Nuclear tipped missiles and a plethora of Weapons of Mass Destruction, allowing them to preserve their economic interests. The hypothetical “weapons with which the bourgeoisie felled feudalism” from the nineteenth century, became real weapons -refined by workers in factories and improved by scientists in laboratories – in the twentieth century, and then were utilized by the bourgeoisie to fell class conscious proletarians into the twenty-first century. For every inspirational movement which attempted to overthrow the bourgeoisie in the latter half of the twentieth century, the American Empire used its hegemonic influence, money, and military might to subvert the revolutionaries by buttressing their “comprador” colluders, funneling guns and dollars to them aboundingly.

Cuba is the one country which has defied the American Empire, despite the barrage of hostilities directed against them. When the Cuban people arose against the US backed tyrant Fulgencio Batista in 1959, and rapidly constructed a more just and egalitarian society, the American Empire and its comprador puppets in Latin America collaborated to visit sabotage, subterfuge and terror attacks upon the besieged island in order to subvert the revolution. The wrathfulness arose exactly because Cuba was an example to the world of another way to organize a society. Due to the repugnance evoked by the humanism and collectivism displayed by the Cuban revolution, the US trained and armed terrorists who invaded Cuba at the Bay of Pigs, blew up power stations and infrastructure, and since have tried to murder Fidel Castro over six-hundred times.[31]The American Empire has also illegally imposed a forty-six year long embargo upon the island in a failed attempt to strangle the island’s economy and diffuse the revolutionary fervor. Whenever revolutions have occurred throughout the world, the American Empire and its supine collaborators have been able to employ coercion, propaganda and terror attacks to overwhelm all with the exception of Cuba’s revolution.

            Thus Marx and Engels’ prescribed destiny for the working classes, namely the formation of a classless and non-exploitative society, has not in anyway lost its resonance. Neither were they misguided when they asserted that: “Modern bourgeois society with its relations of production, of exchange and of private property, a society that has conjured up such gigantic means of production and of exchange, is like a sorcerer, who is no longer able to control the powers of the nether world whom he has called up by his spells.”[32] In fact the statement is arguably more applicable to the modern era that is was in 1848 when the manifesto was published. Rather it was the two author’s underestimation of the international bourgeoisie’s ability to overwhelm the international proletariat which is where the two sages’ thesis is rendered bereft. Nevertheless it is also evident that the American Empire is overstretched and the system it represents is increasingly discredited throughout the world; a truism which perhaps offers sanguine prospects to humanists, socialists and communists contemporarily. Almost two decades after capitalism declared “the end of history”, the left has made a decent revival. Nepal recently elected Maoists, Cyprus have recently elected the Communist Party as have Moldova. Spain is lead by a party also purporting to be socialist and anti-imperialist. Latin America has made a significant shift to the left led by Venezuela where the sagacious Hugo Chavez has lit a path, along with Cuba, for others to follow. The Venezuelan revolution is eradicating illiteracy and poverty, providing universal healthcare and nationalizing the means of production in a gradualist manor, whilst subverting the embargo on Cuba, paying off the IMF loans of other Latin American countries, and encouraging unity and solidarity against the leviathan to the north. In Nicaragua the Sandinista leader Daniel Ortega, whose revolution was subverted by the American Empire in the 1980s, is now the president elect of the country. Evo Morales in Bolivia has become the first indigenous president in the Americas running on a leftist platform. In Ecuador, President-elect Rafael Correa, a man of Quechua ancestry, is contributing stoically to the Bolivarian revolution which is taking place hemispherically. The American Empire is undoubtedly in decline and the People’s Republic of China is rising which raises the potential for a globalized, multi-polar world, more conducive to collectivism, redistribution and ultimately revolutionary change. China is a country which was founded on Marxist principles and whose revolution has dragged more people out of poverty than any government has in the history of humanity. A multi-polar world would not implicitly expunge all forms of social inequality neither would each power necessarily be governed by paragons of virtue. However with the Marxist leanings of countries like China and the countries which make up the Bolivarian movement in Latin America – who are equally embracing Marxism with indigenous characteristics as their guiding philosophy – if further empowered will stand to fetter the rapacious corporate crusade which afflicts the world currently. Fidel Castro’s analysis of Marx’s legacy is apposite:

 

“Marx knew more about capitalism than he did about socialism, because Marx conceived socialism as a society that would come afterwards. He did not try to describe how a socialist system would be, and even less to say how a socialist constitution should be. He was well aware it was not his task. His task was to thoroughly study a social system, a historical law. He was absolutely certain that that society would inevitably have to be replaced by another, not because of anybody’s whim, nor because of anybody’s wish, but as a real and objective need of human development”[33]

 

Marx and Engels envisaged revolution not reformation, they envisaged systemic breakdown not systemic evolution. This was all prophesized prior to the production of nuclear weapons and the commodification of knowledge via the corporate media. Previously for the proletariat to arm themselves and militarize was a legitimate threat to the exploitative minority. Currently this is not the case. Lenin defined the noun gun, as “a weapon with a worker at both ends”, currently the same is true for the imperial wars where proletarians are being pitched against fellow proletarian. But contemporary revolution is not conducive to the militarized class consciousness of yore because the agents of state-terror can massacre workers and commit pogroms with their stealth bombers and apache helicopters without any real need for confrontations to ensue. Rigoberta Menchú exposed the extent to which the ruling classes would go to visit pogroms in her native Guatemala. Her book: I, Rigoberta Menchu: An Indian Woman in Guatemala [34] expounds the truism that the bourgeoisie are better equipped and better funded that any indigenous inhabitants of any polity.  The proletariat must hence follow Castro, Chavez, Morales, Correa, and the other socialists as foot soldiers in the “battle for ideas” and struggle to recalibrate the world, redefine sovereignty and ferment grass roots politics, which will engender genuine socialist societies. As Chavez says: “Our ideology, our conviction, our awareness and our constitution are all weapons.”[35]Fidel Castro endorsed the non-violent solution to the world’s afflictions at a ministerial meeting:

 

“The world’s problems cannot be solved with nuclear weapons. Bombs can kill the hungry, the sick and the ignorant, but they cannot kill hunger, disease, ignorance or the people’s just rebellion. In a holocaust, the rich will also die. They have the most to lose. Let us try to solve the world’s problems in a civilized way. That is our responsibility, and the indispensible requirement for mankind’s survival”[36]

 

In conclusion it is true that Marx and Engels’ prophesies were astute and noble, but their methods were ambiguous and unsubstantiated. The Cuban revolution occurred in a different epoch with different conditions and therefore to aspire to replicate the 1959 defenestrating of the bourgeoisie – in the style Fidel’s army illuminated – would be undoubtedly futile in contemporary conditions. The revolution is however forthcoming but it will be through internal power struggles within the multi-polar context which will eventually inosculate the working classes leading to proletarian internationalism and the classless society aspired to by Marx and Engles. 

                                               

                                       Bibliography

 

 

Aguilera, Pilar and Fredes, Ricardo. Chile: The Other September 11.Melbourne: Ocean Press, 2006.

 

Birmingham, David. Makers of the Twentieth Century: Kwame Nkrumah London: Cardinal Books, 1990.

 

Castro, Fidel. Capitalism in Crisis: Globalization and World Politics Today Melbourne: Ocean Press, 2000.

 

Chomsky, Noam. Profit Over People: Neo Liberalism and Global Order. New York Seven Stories Press, 2003.

 

Blum, William. Killing Hope: US Military and CIA Interventions Since World War II. Common Courage Press, 1995.

 

Fryer, Peter. Black People in the British Empire. London: Pluto Press, 1988.

 

Galloway, George. I’m Not the Only One. London: Penguin Books, 2005.

 

Galloway, George. The Fidel Castro Handbook. New York: MQP, 2006.

 

Guevara, Aleda. Chavez, Venezuela and The New Latin America. Melbourne: Ocean Press, 2005.

 

Hall, Anthony J. The American Empire and the Fourth World. McGill Queen’s University Press, 2003.

 

Hochschilds, Adam. King Leopold’s Ghost. New York: First Marina Books, 1999.

 

Mamdani, Mahmood. Good Muslim, Bad Muslim: America, The Cold War and The Roots of Terror. New York: Three Leaves Press, 2005.

 

Mann, Michael. American Empires: Past and Present. University of Saskatchewan, 2006.

 

Marx, Karl and Engles, Frederick. The Communist Manifesto. London: Verso, 1998.

 

Pilger, John. Freedom Next Time. London: Bantam Press, 2006.

 

Petras, James and Veltmeyer, Henry. Globalization Unmasked. Nova Scotia: Fernwood Publishing Ltd, 2001.

 

Richardson, Al. Blows Against The Empire: Trotskyism in Ceylon. London: Socialist Platform Ltd, 1997.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[1]Karl Marx and Frederick Engles, The Communist Manifesto (London: Verso,1998),18.

[2] Marx et al, 39.

[3] Marx et al, 42.

[4] James Petras and Henry Veltmeyer, Globalization Unmasked (Nova Scotia: Fernwood Publishing Ltd, 2001), 12.

[5] Anthony J Hall, The American Empire and The Fourth World (Quebec: McGill Queen’s University Press, 2003), 520.

[6] Hall, 471.

[7] William Blum, Killing Hope: US Military and CIA Interventions Since World War II (Common Courage Press, 1995), 15.

[8] Adam Hochschilds, King Leopold’s Ghost (New York: First Marina Books,1999), 301.

[9] Pilar Aguilera and Ricardo Fredes, Chile: The Other September 11(Melbourne: Ocean Press, 2006), 5.

[10] David Birmingham, Makers of the Twentieth Century: Kwame Nkrumah (London: Cardinal Books,1990),94.

[11] Michael Mann, American Empires: Past and Present (University of Saskatchewen 2007),17.

[12] Marx et al, 41.

[13] Mann, 26.

[14] Fidel Castro, Capitalism in Crisis: Globalization and World Politics Today (Melbourne: Ocean Press, 2000), 78-101.

[15] Mahmood Mamdani, Good Muslim, Bad Muslim: America, The Cold War And The Roots of Terror (New York: Three Leaves Press, 2005), 78.

[16] John Pilger, Freedom Next Time (London: Transworld Publishers, 2007), 371.

[17] Pilger, 371.

[18] Pilger, 364.

[19] Mamdani,87.

[20] Pilger, 365.

[21]Mark Hamilton Lytle, America’s Uncivil Wars: The Sixties Era from Elvis to the Fall of Richard Nixon (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005), 191.

[22] Pilger, 351.

[23] Pilger, 386.

[24]Noam Chomsky, Profit Over People: Neo Liberalism and Global Order (New York Seven Stories Press, 2003),9.

[25] Mamdani, 24-25.

[26] George Galloway, I’m Not the Only One (London: Penguin Books, 2005), 62.

[27] David Birmingham, Decolonization of Africa (Ohio: Ohio University Press, 1995), 1.

[28] Marx et al,50.

[29] Marx et al,50.

[30] Marx et al,50.

[31] See the movie: “638 Ways To Kill Castro”.

 

[32] Marx et al,41.

[33] Castro, 37.

[34] Rigoberta Menchu, I, Rigoberta Menchu: An Indian Woman in Guatemala (London: Verso 1984).

[35] Aleda Guevara, Chavez, Venezuela and The New Latin America (Melbourne: Ocean Press), 18.

[36] Castro, 327.

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Breaking the Silence: Truth and Lies in the War on Terror. A documentary by John Pilger

Part 1

Part 2

Part 3

Part 4

Part 5

9/11 Truth Documentary – Grave Implications

9/11 and the Global Community hosted by Dr Anthony J Hall www.globalizationstudies.ca

PART 1

PART 2 (featuring student contributions from Lethbridge)

Castro: Qaeda helps US advance agenda (www.presstv.ir)

Former Cuban president Fidel Castro says al-Qaeda terrorists have been engineered in order to advance the Bush administration’s agenda.

In an essay published on Sunday, Castro said the terrorist group “was born from the empire’s own entrails”, using the term “empire” to refer to the United States.

After the Sept. 11 attacks, the Bush administration vowed to capture al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden, who has reportedly taken responsibility for the deadly attacks on US soils.

“[Al-Qaeda] is a typical example of an enemy that the hegemonic power dangles in a place of its choosing where it needs to justify its actions, as it has done throughout its history, fabricating enemies and attacks destined to strengthen its plans of domination,” the former Cuban leader argued.

According to Castro, the American public has been mislead by the US government about the real extent of the terrorist attacks in 2001. Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez has also suggested that Washington could have been somehow involved in the planning of the attacks.

In the aftermath of the attacks, the White House launched the ‘War on Terror’ in a bid to disband al-Qaeda. While many civilians have been killed since the 2001 invasions of Afghanistan, followed by the 2003 invasion of Iraq, the US has failed to achieve its objectives in the region.

A Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) program called “Operation Cyclone” is reportedly responsible for the creation of the terrorist group, when the CIA funded native Afghan militants in the conflict with the Soviet Union.

The al-Qaeda leader is reportedly planning a new terror attack against the US as President-elect Barack Obama takes office from the incumbent president, George W. Bush.

Earlier this month, a source close to the group claimed that Bin Laden is supervising preparations for another attack which will be far greater than those of 9/11.

US Vice President-elect Joe Biden had warned in October that Obama would face an international crisis early in his presidency.

Bolivarian government retains majority of provisional governments (www.granma.cu)

CARACAS, November 24.— The Bolivarian government won the majority of provincial governments disputed in Sunday’s elections, but the opposition took the capital district and another three states. The elections took place in a peaceful atmosphere and with an unprecedented turnout, given that 65.45% of the electorate went to the polls.

The candidates from the United Socialist Party of Venezuela (PSUV) will govern the states of Yaracuy, Delta Amacuro, Vargas, Apure, Aragua, Barinas, Bolívar, Cojedes, Falcón, Guárico, Lara, Mérida, Monagas, Portuguesa, Trujillo, Sucre, Anzoátegui, and the municipality of Libertador in Caracas.

However, the capital district will be in the hands of the right wing, as will the provincial governments of Zulia, Miranda and Nueva Esparta. According to information provided by Tibisay Lucena, by the end of the day, the result of the vote in the states of Carabobo and Táchira had still not been decided and so the official results have yet to be announced.

The opposition had declared that it expected to win no less than 14 provincial governments, a figure it reduced during the electoral campaign. Alberto Müller, vice president of the PSUV, praised the fact that party of the Bolivarian Revolution would continue to dominate the national geopolitical map, in the majority of cases with a strong lead over its rivals.

Israeli police head-butting Palestinians (www.presstv.ir)

A human rights group has released a video showing an Israeli policeman head-butting a Palestinian woman during the demolition of a house.

The footage released by B’Tselem on Monday shows the helmeted policeman head-butting the woman during the demolition of her operation in Silwan, east Jerusalem (al-Quds) on November 5.

Seconds later, the policeman could be seen head-butting another resident of the house.

“During the eviction of its residents, a helmeted policeman head butted two of the residents,” B’Tselem said in a statement accompanying the video.

“What happened was filmed by a B’Tselem member. The footage was handed to the military police that have opened an inquiry but B’Tselem has yet to be notified of its findings,” the human rights watchdog added.

Earlier in July, B’Tselem released another video showing an Israeli soldier shooting at a 27-year-old handcuffed and blindfolded Palestinian in the West Bank village of Nilin.

Compelling evidence to suggest that the Washington Conspiracy Theory for 9/11 is false.

An Analysis of a Childless Double Income Family Through a Marxist Theoretical Framework

An Analysis of a Childless Double Income Family Through a Marxist Theoretical Framework

 

                                       Joshua Blakeney

        The noun “family” when deciphered within the context of contemporary Canadian society becomes an ambiguous platitude unattributable to prototypical dwelling arrangements or to specific biological relationships. When conceptualizing various “family” scenarios, sociologists must attempt to encompass holistically, the complex nuances of each family type. A childless, heterosexual couple will be influenced by esoteric experiences and unique opportunities when compared to alternative family types. Indeed the “double income, no children” family type when analysed through a Marxist paradigm evokes many interesting narratives which can enhance our understanding of “the family” within capitalist societies such as Canada. In this study the family in question will be assumed to be white collar workers who work in the private sector. Studying the couple through a Marxist lens will allow for a better understanding of the nature of the increasingly pernicious and unfettered capitalist system which afflicts all aspects of Canadian society. Moreover the role of the family as an economic unit of survival will need to be addressed due to the potential difficulties, as well as the increased opportunities, afforded to those whom do not have children. The prescribed role of children in buttressing the family economy and providing a new generation of wage earners to supplement parents through retirement will have to be explored in order to comprehend the potential economic vacuum a childless couple could encounter upon retirement. Equally conciliatory is the notion of children, in an increasingly exclusive society, becoming a “luxury” which many working class families will often find “too expensive”, to produce.

It is evidently important to begin by adumbrating a definition of “family” in order to summarise and compress the vast cornucopia which constitutes the modern family in Canada. Family as defined by Mandel et al is: “a social ideal, generally referring to a unit of economic co-operation, typically thought to include only those related by blood, but revised by feminists to include those forming an economically co-operative, residential unit bound by feelings of common ties and strong emotions” (Mandel et al, 2007). This succinct and ambiguous definition of the family necessarily allows much room for interpretation. Indeed the definition could have included pets or other sources of comfort as aspects of the “family”. The inclusion of the terms: “social ideal” and “economically co-operative” are of interest as they imply that the family is the product of society, and the economy both of which are prominent totems of Marxist discourse. Hence when analysing a childless couple whose occupations are in the private sector (i.e. they are both wage-labourers within the realm of capital and commerce), the structures which circumscribe the lives of the couple invoke a critical analysis. The definition would also have been improved by contemplating individual risk within the confines of the family. In particular the family member’s ability to take risks knowing that the other members of the family would be able to offer a safety net in times of hardship. Capitalism is predicated on individuals taking risks, whether in business, consumerism or in education; all the market principles require individual risk to proliferate. Therefore the ideology of the welfare state and of the family should be forged synonymously as an antidote to the vulnerability of the individual in a capitalist society. The evident truism that upward mobility in a capitalist society is always suffused with the possibility of downward mobility, twinned with the tendentiousness of wage-labourers on the market, renders the family as a vital source of sustenance in the face of prohibitive economic circumstances and overt class hegemony. Therefore this study hopes to critique the structures of capitalist society in order to further understand the increased mobility as well as the predicaments that are indicative to childless couples in Canada.

  Marxian sociologists take interest in the class struggles undertaken for the survival of humanity within a class-based, capitalist economic system that places onus upon the individual rather than the collective whole, thus separating the family and production in the economy. As Zaretsky opines: “As the rise of industrial capitalism progressively removed goods production from the home, men and women came to see the family as a separate sphere of life divorced from the larger society” (1972, 78). The dynamics of a “double-income no children” family within Canadian society would therefore be markedly different from other family types and from other societies. An influential text on the role of the family in capitalist society is The Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State by Frederick Engels. In this inspirational tract Engels attempts to situate the family, and the oppression of women, in relation to the historical development of production. Engles adduces that personal oppression within the family results from its place within a mode of production based upon the concept of private property along with capitalism’s rapacious class antagonism. Engles, writing in the nineteenth century, was convinced that proletarian family life was being obliterated by the rise of capital. This extrapolation by Engles, in light of the rise of twentieth-century corporate capitalism, which conceived and incubated the starker class divisions which have ensued, offers important vistas for our understanding of why many couple’s would choose to refrain from indulging in children in exchange for increased employment prospects.

Currently most women are fettered by capitalism’s latent patriarchal bias. Engles referred to the rise of capitalism in this regard as: “the world historic defeat of the female sex” based on the notion of property ownership: “the man seized the reins in the house also, the woman was degraded, enthralled, the slave of man’s lust, a mere instrument for breeding children. . .the wife became the first domestic servant pushed out of participation in social production” (1884, 225-240). Little has changed contemporarily within the confines of the modern corporation which is the current refuge of patriarchal and class hegemony. In order to “market” themselves more attractively to (predominantly male) employers and other (predominantly male) members of the ruling class, many women are forced to choose between a career, or taking time out to produce and nurture new human beings. Capitalists often propagate the notion that: “time is money” and that profits are optimum. With this philosophy in mind, when considering the potential upward mobility of a would be mother – who requires maternity leave, child care, and who will incur increased stresses from the unpaid labour which is implicit to producing and nurturing new humans – contrasted against the childless female, undeniably the former will be less attractive than the autonomous latter to the self interested employer. Ranson adduces: “Socio-economic class and the concomitant level of access to material and cultural resources are major influences on parenting” (2007, 76). Thus capitalism’s vicissitudes have mutated humanity’s progression to a nefarious extreme, where even the most basic prerequisite of human existence, namely the ability to procreate, has now become a luxury. Women therefore are increasingly postponing childbirth apprehensively, lest it muster the wroth or hinder the profits of the ruling class who enjoy minority privileges over the majority of working people in Canada. As Engles noted about the implicit contradiction within capitalist society as early as 1884: “According to the materialistic conception, the determining factor in history is, in the last resort, the production and reproduction of immediate life. But this itself is a twofold character. On the one hand, the production of the means of subsistence. . .on the other, the production of human beings themselves, the propagation of the species. . .Social institutions. . .are conditioned by both kinds of production: by the stage of development of labour, on the one hand, and of the family, on the other” (1884, 170-171).   

Hence the prerequisite to upward mobility for white-collar female workers, in order to appeal to their predominantly male oppressors, is to sacrifice the ultimate gift possessed by all human beings, namely parenthood. Capitalism has therefore morphed the family into a product for speculation and internal cost cutting. As Marx adduced in The Communist Manifesto: “The bourgeoisie had torn away from the family its sentimental veil and has reduced the family relation to a mere money relation” (1848, 46).  The transcendentalism of the ruling class has imbued the working people of Canada with a corporate style competitiveness which has led to utilitarianism overruling the collective needs of humanity. In this light a Marxian sociologist can question what factors could dissuade the childless couple from having children.

 As is evident from Engles’ thoughts, the “production of the means of subsistence” and “the production of human beings themselves” are two closely interwoven, often competing, variables. But the nature of contemporary capitalist society and nineteenth century society differs slightly in that the nineteenth century oppression of women was unashamed and deemed unequivocal. Contrastingly contemporary Canadian society upholds a façade of women’s total emancipation premised on the extension of certain olive branches by the forces of patriarchy in the ruling class (e.g. universal suffrage, and a few token employment rights) to the beleaguered opposite sex. One important facet to this illusion needs to be unmasked to fully understand the dynamics of employment and the plight of female wage-labourers contemporarily. Canada’s secondary industry is minimal when compared with the Third World (where the relations of production are grotesquely similar to those observed by Marx and Engles in nineteenth century Europe) and thus a profusion of part-time work and pink collar jobs have become the orchestrated domain of many Canadian women. When viewing these truisms through the “double income, no children” family’s perspective, in which both the woman and the man attempt uphold carers, the “all or nothing” career choice imposed upon females in Canada is illuminated. If this couple had decided to have children then they would have found it more difficult to both pursue careers which compounds the evidence already emblazoned. What is axiomatic is that women’s reproductive labour is not appreciated or compensated for by the state. Many women have to divorce themselves from their maternal aspirations in order to economically emancipate themselves. Crittenden asserts: “the entire society benefits from well-raised children, without sharing more than a fraction of the costs of producing them. And that free ride on female labour is enforced by every major institution, starting with the workplace” (2007, 146).

It becomes almost surreal when one comprehends the irrationality of the orchestrated status quo. Those who need wealth and upward mobility the most, notably families with children whom have reproduced and benefitted Canada’s ageing population, are the exact people who the ruling class bequeath wealth to the least. Thus “double income no children” families who have far less unpaid labour to contend with and have far more productive capacity in the public sphere, are those whom Canadian capitalism rewards most lucratively amongst the non-bourgeois classes. Indeed the class based status quo, which Engles enunciated in 1884 is still thriving in the shape of corporate Canada. With the dismantling of the state as a major characteristic of neo-liberal doctrine, and with capitalist fundamentalists imposing “structural adjustments” upon the bereft citizens of Canada, people are left at the behest of the market and ipso facto the ruling class who pull it’s strings. These unelected and rapacious plutocrats have defenestrated many of the progressive policies of the twentieth century, and in doing so they have recalibrated the power relations within Canadian families. With the decline of the welfare-state as a social safety net, the family becomes, as when Engles was writing, an important sanctuary for working people as a buffer between poverty, privation and basic sustenance. Therefore in light of the plutocracy’s utter disregard for the inequality which they foster, a “double income no children” family appears highly vulnerable, in the event that they were to experience downward mobility of any kind.       

There are also many benefits to producing children, namely that the new generation will have their own productive capacity which could diffuse the tendentious situation of their ageing parents, through the selling of their own labour. Thus twenty-first century capitalism in Canada has regressed society to the stage where, state programs such as pensions, retirement ages, and employment rights are all in the control of the unelected oligarchy and with this so are the life expectancies of the working classes whom they exploit for profit. Were the “double income no children couple” to fall victim to the fluctuating market and find themselves cast into redundancy, the state with its fawning role as an organ of the ruling class, would care little about the plight of the citizens in question. The couple’s status as childless, and without the new generation of wage-earners to provide the wherewithal for retirement, could well find themselves experiencing rapid downward mobility and potentially a shortening of their lives through stress and a prolonged work life.

 It becomes evident when analysing contemporary Canadian society, that the depoliticising and dismantling of government has elevated the importance of the family to unfathomable heights. With the shift in the commanding heights of the economy from state control into the market, the citizens of Canada are being compelled into a Darwinian struggle for survival and are being forced to make utilitarian decisions, not based on the humanity’s betterment, but rather on their own individual self interests. It is within this context that a “double income no children” family must be understood. One attractive way for working people to break their shackles is to refrain from one of the most costly commodities: “children”. Thus twenty-first century capitalism, having commodified almost every nuance of the globe has created an environment where citizens have to choose between upward mobility and procreation. Many Canadians, particularly women, often understandably abrogate the former in favour of the latter in the hope of enhancing their own personal longevity and to fend of the threat of privation.

   

                                                 Bibliography

Cheal, David (2007). Canadian Families Today. New York: Oxford University Press.

Engles, Frederik. (1972).The Origin of the Family, Private  Property and The State. New York: International Publishers.

Marx, Karl (1998). The Communist Manifesto. London: Verso Press.

Olson, David. (1983). Families: What Makes Them Work. London: Sage Publications.

Zaretsky, Eli. (1973). Capitalism, The Family, And Personal Life. Toronto: Fitzhenry and Whiteside Ltd.

 

  

 

 

Galloway sums up western hypocrisy in parliament!