Section D - How does statism and capitalism affect society?
This section of the FAQ indicates how both statism and capitalism affect the society they exist in. It is a continuation of sections B ( Why do anarchists oppose the current system?) and C (What are the myths of capitalist economics?) and it discusses the impact of the underlying social and power relationships within the current system on society.
This section is important because the institutions and social relationships capitalism and statism spawn do not exist in a social vacuum, they have deep impacts on our everyday lives. These effects go beyond us as individuals (for example, the negative effects of hierarchy on our individuality) and have an effect on how the political institutions in our society work, how technology develops, how the media operates and so on. Therefore it is worthwhile to point out how (and why) statism and capitalism affect society as a whole outwith the narrow bounds of politics and economics.
So here we try and sketch some of the impact of concentrations of political and economic power has upon society. While many people attack the results of these processes (like state intervention, ecological destruction, imperialism, etc.) they ignore their causes. This means that the struggle against social evils will be never-ending, like a doctor fighting the symptoms of a disease without treating the disease itself. We have indicated the roots of the problems we face in sections B and C; now we discuss some of the other problems they create. This section of the FAQ explores the interactions of the causes and results and draws out how the authoritarian and exploitative nature of capitalism affects the world we live in.
It is important to remember that most supporters of capitalism refuse to do this. Yes, many of them point out some flaws and problems within society but they never relate them to the system as such. As Noam Chomsky points out, they will attribute the catastrophes of capitalism "to any other cause other than the system that consistently brings them about." [Deterring Democracy, p. 232]
That the system and its effects are interwoven can best be seen from the fact that while right-wing parties have been elected to office promising to reduce the role of the state in society, the actual size and activity of the state has not been reduced, indeed it has usually increased in scope (both in size and in terms of power and centralisation). This is unsurprising, as "free market" implies strong (and centralised) state -- the "freedom" of Management to manage means that the freedom of workers to resist authoritarian management structures must be weakened by state action. Thus, ironically, state intervention within society will continue to be needed in order to ensure that society survives the rigours of market forces and that elite power and privilege are protected from the masses.
Section D - How does statism and capitalism affect society?
Introduction
D.1 Why does state intervention occur?
D.1.1 Does state intervention cause the problems to begin with?
D.1.2 Is state intervention the result of democracy?
D.1.3 Is state intervention socialistic?
D.2 What influence does wealth have over politics?
D.2.1 Is capital flight that powerful?
D.2.2 How extensive is business propaganda?
D.3 How does wealth influence the mass media?
D.3.1 How does the size, concentrated ownership, owner wealth, and profit orientation of the dominant mass-media firms affect media content?
D.3.2 What is the effect of advertising as the primary income source of the mass media?
D.3.3 Why do the media rely on information provided by government, business, and "experts" funded and approved by these primary sources and agents of power?
D.3.4 How is "flak" used by the wealthy and powerful as a means of disciplining the media?
D.3.5 Why do the wealthy and powerful use "anticommunism" as a national religion and control mechanism?
D.3.6 Isn't it a "conspiracy theory" to suggest that the media are used as propaganda instruments by the elite?
D.3.7 Isn't the "propaganda thesis" about the media contradicted by the "adversarial" nature of much media reporting, e.g. its exposes of government and business corruption?
D.4 What is the relationship between capitalism and the ecological crisis?
D.4.1 Why must capitalist firms "grow or die?"
D.5 What causes imperialism?
D.5.1 Has imperialism changed over time?
D.5.2 What is the relationship between imperialism and the social classes within capitalism?
D.5.3 Does globalisation mean the end of imperialism?
D.6 Are anarchists against Nationalism?
D.7 Are anarchists opposed to National Liberation struggles?
D.8 What causes militarism and what are its effects?
D.8.1 Will militarism change with the apparent end of the Cold War?
D.9 What is the relationship between wealth polarisation and authoritarian government?
D.9.1 Why does political power become concentrated under capitalism?
D.9.2 What is "invisible government"?
D.9.3 Why are incarceration rates rising?
D.9.4 Why is government"secrecy and surveillance of citizens on the increase?
D.9.5 But doesn't authoritarian government always involve censorship?
D.9.6 What does the Right want?
D.10 How does capitalism affect technology?
D.11 What causes justifications for racism to appear?
D.11.1 Does free market ideology play a part in racist tendencies to increase?
D.1 Why does state intervention occur?
The state is forced to intervene in society because of the anti-social effects of capitalism. The abstractly individualistic theory on which capitalism is based ("everyone for themselves") results in a high degree of statism since the economic system itself contains no means to combat its own socially destructive workings. The state must also intervene in the economy, not only to protect the interests of the ruling class but also to protect society from the atomising and destructive impact of capitalism. Moreover, capitalism has an inherent tendency toward periodic recessions or depressions, and the attempt to prevent them has become part of the state's function. However, since preventing them is impossible (they are built into the system -- see section C.7), in practice the state can only try to postpone them and ameliorate their severity. Let's begin with the need for social intervention.
Capitalism is based on turning both labour and land into commodities. As Karl Polyani points out, however, "labour and land are no other than the human beings themselves of which every society consists and the natural surroundings in which it exists; to include labour and land in the market mechanism means to subordinate the substance of society itself to the laws of the market." [The Great Transformation, p. 71] And this means that "human society has become an accessory to the economic system," with humanity placing itself fully in the hands of supply and demand. But such a situation "could not exist for any length of time without annihilating the human and natural substance of society; it would have physically destroyed man and transformed his surroundings into a wilderness." [Ibid., pp. 41-42]
To expect that a community would remain indifferent to the scourge of unemployment, dangerous working conditions, 16-hour working days, the shifting of industries and occupations, and the moral and psychological disruption accompanying them -- merely because economic effects, in the long run, might be better -- is an absurdity. Similarly, for workers to remain indifferent to, for example, poor working conditions, peacefully waiting for a new boss to offer them better conditions, or for citizens to wait passively for capitalists to start voluntarily acting responsibly toward the environment, is to assume a servile and apathetic role for humanity. Luckily, labour power refuses to be a commodity and citizens refuse to stand idly by while the planet's ecosystems are destroyed.
Therefore state intervention occurs as a form of protection against the workings of the market. As capitalism is based on atomising society in the name of "freedom" on the competitive market, it is hardly surprising that defence against the anti-social workings of the market should take statist forms -- there being few other structures capable of providing such defence (as such social institutions have been undermined, if not crushed, by the rise of capitalism in the first place). Thus, ironically, "individualism" produces a "collectivist" tendency within society as capitalism destroys communal forms of social organisation in favour of ones based on abstract individualism, authority, and hierarchy -- all qualities embodied in the state. In a free (i.e. communal) society, social self-defence would not be statist but would be similar in nature to trade unionism and co-operatives -- individuals working together in voluntary associations to ensure a free and just society (see section I).
In addition to social protection, state intervention is required to protect a country's economy (and so the economic interests of the ruling class). As Noam Chomsky points out, even the USA, home of "free enterprise," was marked by "large-scale intervention in the economy after independence, and conquest of resources and markets. . . [while] a centralised developmental state [was constructed] committed to [the] creation and entrenchment of domestic manufacture and commerce, subsidising local production and barring cheaper British imports, constructing a legal basis for private corporate power, and in numerous other ways providing an escape from the stranglehold of comparative advantage." [World Orders, Old and New, p. 114]
In the case of Britain and a host of other countries (and more recently in the cases of Japan and the Newly Industrialising Countries of the Far East, like Korea) state intervention was, oddly enough, the key to development and success in the "free market." In other "developing" countries which have had the misfortune to be subjected to "free-market reforms" (e.g. neo-liberal Structural Adjustment Programs) rather than following the interventionist Japanese and Korean models, the results have been devastating for the vast majority, with drastic increases in poverty, homelessness, malnutrition, etc. (for the elite, the results are somewhat different of course).
In the nineteenth century, states only turned to laissez-faire once they could benefit from it and had a strong enough economy to survive it. "Only in the mid-nineteenth century, when it had become powerful enough to overcome any competition, did England [sic!] embrace free trade." [Noam Chomsky, Op. Cit., p. 115] Before this, protectionism and other methods were used to nurture economic development. And once laissez-faire started to undermine a country's economy, it was quickly revoked. For example, protectionism is often used to protect a fragile economy and militarism has always been a favourite way for the ruling elite to help the economy, as is still the case, for example, in the "Pentagon System" in the USA (see section D.8).
State intervention has been a feature of capitalism from the start. As Kropotkin argued, "nowhere has the system of 'non-intervention of the State' ever existed. Everywhere the State has been, and still is, the main pillar and the creator, direct and indirect, of Capitalism and its powers over the masses. Nowhere, since States have grown up, have the masses had the freedom of resisting the oppression by capitalists. . . The state has always interfered in the economic life in favour of the capitalist exploiter. It has always granted him protection in robbery, given aid and support for further enrichment. And it could not be otherwise. To do so was one of the functions -- the chief mission -- of the State." [Evolution and Environment, pp. 97-8] Its limited attempts at laissez-faire have always been failures, resulting in a return to its statist roots. The process of selective laissez-faire and collectivism has been as much a feature of capitalism in the past as it is now. Indeed, as Noam Chomsky argues, "[w]hat is called 'capitalism' is basically a system of corporate mercantilism, with huge and largely unaccountable private tyrannies exercising vast control over the economy, political systems, and social and cultural life, operating in close co-operation with powerful states that intervene massively in the domestic economy and international society. That is dramatically true of the United States, contrary to much illusion. The rich and privileged are no more willing to face market discipline than they have been in the past, though they consider it just fine for the general population." ["Anarchism, Marxism and Hope for the Future", Red and Black Revolution, issue 2]
Therefore, contrary to conventional wisdom, state intervention will always be associated with capitalism due to: (1) its authoritarian nature; (2) its inability to prevent the anti-social results of the competitive market; (3) its fallacious assumption that society should be "an accessory to the economic system"; (4) the class interests of the ruling elite; and (5) the need to impose its authoritarian social relationships upon an unwilling population in the first place.
State intervention is as natural to capitalism as wage labour. As Polyani summarises, "the countermove against economic liberalism and laissez-faire possessed all the unmistakable characteristics of a spontaneous reaction. . . [and] a closely similar change from laissez-faire to 'collectivism' took place in various countries at a definite stage of their industrial development, pointing to the depth and independence of the underlying causes of the process." [Op. Cit., pp. 149-150] For "government cannot want society to break up, for it would mean that it and the dominant class would be deprived of sources of exploitation; nor can it leave society to maintain itself without official intervention, for then people would soon realise that government serves only to defend property owners. . . and they would hasten to rid themselves of both." [Errico Malatesta, Anarchy, p. 22]
And neither should it be forgotten that state intervention was required to create the "free" market in the first place. To quote Polyani again, "[f]or as long as [the market] system is not established, economic liberals must and will unhesitatingly call for the intervention of the state in order to establish it, and once established, in order to maintain it." [Op. Cit., p. 149] Protectionism and subsidy (mercantilism) -- along with the liberal use of state violence against the working class -- was required to create and protect capitalism and industry in the first place (see section F.8 - What role did the state take in the creation of capitalism?).
In short, although laissez-faire may be the ideological basis of capitalism -- the religion that justifies the system -- it has rarely if ever been actually practised. So, while the ideologues are praising "free enterprise" as the fountainhead of modern prosperity, corporations and companies are gorging at the table of the State.
The recent enthusiasm for the "free market" is in fact the product of an extended boom, which in turn was a product of a state co-ordinated war economy and highly interventionist Keynesian economics (a boom that the apologists of capitalism use, ironically, as "evidence" that "capitalism" works) plus an unhealthy dose of nostalgia for a past that never existed. It's strange how a system that has never existed has produced so much!
D.1.1 Does state intervention cause the problems to begin with?
Usually, no. This does not mean that state intervention cannot have bad effects on the economy or society. Given the state's centralised, bureaucratic nature, it would be impossible for it not to have bad effects. State intervention can and does make bad situations worse in many cases. As Malatesta notes, "the practical evidence [is] that whatever governments do is always motivated by the desire to dominate, and is always geared to defending, extending and perpetuating its privileges and those of the class of which it is both the representative and defender." [Anarchy, p. 21].
However, for economic liberals (or, as we would call them today, neo-liberals or "conservatives"), state intervention is the root of all evil, and for them, it is precisely the state's interference with the market which causes the problems that society blames on the market.
But such a position is illogical, for "whoever says regulation says limitation: now, how conceive of limiting privilege before it existed? ... [I]t would be an effect without a cause" and so "regulation was a corrective to privilege" and not vice versa. [P-J Proudhon, System of Economic Contradictions, p. 371] As Polyani explains, the neo-liberal premise is false, because state intervention always "dealt with some problem arising out of modern industrial conditions or, at any rate, in the market method of dealing with them." [Karl Polyani, Op. Cit., p. 146] In fact, these "collectivist" measures were usually carried out by convinced supporters of laissez-faire, who were as a rule uncompromising opponents of all forms of socialism (and often introduced to undermine support for socialist ideas caused by the excesses of "free market" capitalism).
Thus state intervention did not spring out of thin air, but occurred in response to pressing social and economic needs. This can be observed in the mid 19th century, which saw the closest approximation to laissez-faire in the history of capitalism. As Takis Fotopoules argues, "the attempt to establish pure economic liberalism, in the sense of free trade, a competitive labour market and the Gold Standard, did not last more than 40 years, and by the 1870s and 1880s, protectionist legislation was back. . . . It was also significant. . . [that all major capitalist powers] passed through a period of free trade and laissez-faire, followed by a period of anti-liberal legislation" ["The Nation-state and the Market," p. 48, Society and Nature, Vol. 3, pp. 44-45].
The reason for the return of protectionist legislation was the Depression of 1873-86, which marked the end of the first experiment with pure economic liberalism. Paradoxically, then, the attempt to liberalise the markets led to more regulation. In light of our previous analysis, this is not surprising. Neither the owners of the country nor the politicians desired to see society destroyed, the result to which unhindered laissez-faire leads. Apologists of capitalism overlook the fact that "[a]t the beginning of the Depression, Europe had been in the heyday of free trade" [Polyani, Op. Cit., p. 216]. State intervention came about in response to the social disruptions resulting from laissez-faire. It did not cause them.
Similarly, it is a fallacy to state, as Ludwig Von Mises does, that "as long as unemployment benefit is paid, unemployment must exist." This statement is not only ahistoric but ignores the existence of the involuntary unemployment which caused the state to start paying out a dole in order eliminate the possibility of crime as well as working class self-help, which could conceivably have undermined the status quo. The elite was well aware of the danger in workers organising for their own benefit.
Sadly, in pursuing of ideologically correct answers, capitalist apologists often ignore common sense. If one believes people exist for the economy and not the economy for people, one becomes willing to sacrifice people and their society today for the supposed economic benefit of future generations (in reality, current profits). If one accepts the ethics of mathematics, a future increase in the size of the economy is more important than current social disruption. Thus Polyani again: "a social calamity is primarily a cultural not an economic phenomenon that can be measured by income figures" [Op. Cit., p. 157]. And it is the nature of capitalism to ignore and despise what cannot be measured.
D.1.2 Is state intervention the result of democracy?
No. Social and economic intervention by the modern state began long before universal suffrage became widespread. For example, in Britain, "collectivist" measures were introduced when property and sexual restrictions on voting rights still existed. The centralist and hierarchical nature of "representative" democracy means that the population at large has little real control over politicians, who are far more influenced by big business, business lobby groups, and the state bureaucracy. This means that truly popular and democratic pressures are limited within the capitalist state and the interests of elites are far more decisive in explaining state actions.
The "New Deal" and the post-war Keynesianism measures of limited state intervention to stimulate economic recovery from the Depression were motivated by more material reasons than democracy. Thus Takis Fotopoules argues that "[t]he fact . . .that 'business confidence' was at its lowest could go a long way in explaining the much more tolerant attitude of those controlling production towards measures encroaching on their economic power and profits. In fact, it was only when -- and as long as -- state interventionism had the approval of those actually controlling production that it was successful" ["The Nation-state and the Market", p. 55, Society and Nature, Vol. 3, pp. 44-45]
An example of this principle can be seen in the 1934 Wagner Act in the USA, which gave US labour its first and last political victory. The act made it legal for unions to organise, but this placed labour struggles within the boundaries of legal procedures and so meant that they could be more easily controlled. In addition, this concession was a form of appeasement whose effect was to make those involved in union actions less likely to start questioning the fundamental bases of the capitalist system. Once the fear of a militant labour movement had passed, the Wagner Act was undermined and made powerless by new laws, laws which made illegal the tactics which forced the politicians to pass the Wagner Act in the first place and increased the powers of bosses over workers.
Needless to say, the implication of classical liberal ideology that popular democracy is a threat to capitalism is the root of the fallacy that democracy leads to state intervention. The notion that by limiting the franchise the rich will make laws which benefit all says more about the classical liberals' touching faith in the altruism of the rich than it does about their understanding of human nature or their grasp of history. The fact that they can join with John Locke and claim with a straight face that all must abide by the rules that only the few make also says a lot about their concept of "freedom."
Of course some of the more modern classical liberals (for example, right-wing libertarians) advocate a "democratic state" which cannot intervene in economic matters. This is no solution, however, as it only gets rid of the statist response to real and pressing social problems caused by capitalism without supplying anything better in its place.
Anarchists agree that the state, due to its centralisation and bureaucracy, crushes the spontaneous nature of society and is a handicap to social progress and evolution. However, leaving the market alone to work its course fallaciously assumes that people will happily sit back and let market forces rip apart their communities and environment. Getting rid of state intervention without getting rid of capitalism and creating a free, communal society would mean that the need for social self-protection would still exist but that there would be even less means of achieving it than now. The results of such a policy, as history shows, would be a catastrophe for the working class (and the environment, we must add) and beneficial only for the elite (as intended, of course).
The implication of the false premise that democracy leads to state intervention is that the state exists for the benefit of the majority, which uses the state to exploit the rich minority! Amazingly, many capitalist apologists accept this as a valid inference from their premise, even though it's obviously a reductio ad absurdum of that premise as well as going against the facts of history.
D.1.3 Is state intervention socialistic?
No. Libertarian socialism is about self-liberation and self-management of one's activities. Getting the state to act for us is the opposite of these ideals. In addition, the question implies that socialism is connected with its nemesis, statism, and that socialism means even more bureaucratic control and centralisation. The identification of socialism with the state is something that Stalinists and capitalist apologists both agreed upon. However, as we'll see in section H.2, "state socialism" is in reality just state capitalism-- the turning of the world into "one office and one factory" (to use Lenin's expression). Little wonder that most sane people join with anarchists in rejecting it. Who wants to work under a system in which, if one does not like the boss (i.e. the state), one cannot even quit?
The theory that state intervention is "creeping socialism" takes the laissez-faire ideology of capitalism at its face value, not realising that it is ideology rather than reality. Capitalism is a dynamic system and evolves over time, but this does not mean that by moving away from its theoretical starting point it is negating its essential nature and becoming socialistic. Capitalism was born from state intervention, and except for a very short period of laissez-faire which ended in depression, has always depended on state intervention for its existence.
The claim that state intervention is "socialist" also ignores the realities of power concentration under capitalism. Real socialism equalises power by redistributing it to the people, but as Noam Chomsky points out, "[in] a highly inegalitarian society, it is most unlikely that government programs will be equalisers. Rather, it is to be expected that they will be designed and manipulated by private power for their own benefits; and to a significant degree the expectation is fulfilled" [The Chomsky Reader, p. 184]. "Welfare equals socialism" is nonsense.
Similarly, in Britain and the nationalisation of roughly 20% of the economy (the most unprofitable sections of it as well) in 1945 by the Labour Government was the direct result of ruling class fear, not socialism. As Quintin Hogg, a Tory M.P. at the time, said, "If you don't give the people social reforms they are going to give you social revolution." Memories of the near revolutions across Europe after the First World War were obviously in many minds, on both sides. Not that nationalisation was particularly feared as "socialism." As anarchists at the time noted, "the real opinions of capitalists can be seen from Stock Exchange conditions and statements of industrialists [rather] than the Tory Front bench. . . [and from these we] see that the owning class is not at all displeased with the record and tendency of the Labour Party" [Vernon Richards, ed., Neither Nationalisation nor Privatisation -- Selections from Freedom 1945-1950, p. 9].
So where do anarchists stand on state intervention? Usually we are against it, although most of us think state health care services and unemployment benefits (for example) are more socially useful than arms production, and in lieu of more anarchistic solutions, better than the alternative of "free market" capitalism. This does not mean we are happy with state intervention, which in practice undermines working class self-help, mutual aid and autonomy. Also, state intervention of the "social" nature is often paternalistic, run by and for the "middle classes" (i.e. professional/managerial types and other self-proclaimed "experts"). However, until such time as a viable anarchist counterculture is created, we have little option but to "support" the lesser evil (but let's make no mistake, it is an evil).
This is not to deny that in many ways such state "support" can be used as a means of regaining some of the power and labour stolen from us by capitalists in the first place. State intervention can give working people more options than they otherwise would have. If state action could not be used in this way, it is doubtful that capitalists and their hired "experts" would spend so much time trying to undermine and limit it. As the capitalist class happily uses the state to enforce its power and property rights, working people making whatever use they can of it is to be expected. Be that as it may, this does not blind anarchists to the negative aspects of the welfare state and other forms of state intervention (see section J.5.15 for anarchist perspectives on the welfare state).
One problem with state intervention, as Kropotkin saw, is that the state's absorption of social functions "necessarily favoured the development of an unbridled, narrow-minded individualism. In proportion as the obligations towards the State grew in numbers, the citizens were evidently relieved from their obligations towards each other" [Mutual Aid, p. 183]. In the case of state "social functions," such as the British National Health Service, although they were created as a result of the social atomisation caused by capitalism, they have tended to reinforce the individualism and lack of personal and social responsibility that produced the need for such action in the first place. (Forms of community and social self-help and their historical precedents will be discussed in section J.5.16).
The example of nationalised industries is a good indicator of the non-socialist nature of state intervention. Nationalisation meant replacing the capitalist bureaucrat with a state one, with little real improvement for those subjected to the "new" regime. At the height of the British Labour Party's post-war nationalisations, anarchists were pointing out its anti-socialist nature. Nationalisation was "really consolidating the old individual capitalist class into a new and efficient class of managers to run. . . state capitalism" by "installing the really creative industrialists in dictatorial managerial positions" [Vernon Richards, Op. Cit., p. 10].
Anarchists are in favour of self-directed activity and direct action to get improvements and defend reforms in the here and now. By organising strikes and protests ourselves, we can improve our lives. This does not mean that using direct action to get favourable laws passed or less-favourable ones revoked is a waste of time. Far from it. However, unless ordinary people use their own strength and grassroots organisations to enforce the law, the state and employers will honour any disliked law purely in the breach. By trusting the state, social self-protection against the market and power concentrations becomes hollow. In the end, what the state gives (or is pressurised into giving), it can take away but what we create and run ourselves is always responsive to our desires and interests. We have seen how vulnerable state welfare is to pressures from the capitalist class to see that this is a truism.
D.2 What influence does wealth have over politics?
The short answer is: a great deal of influence, directly and indirectly. We have already touched on this in section B.2.3 ("How does the ruling class maintain control of the state?") Here we will expand on those remarks.
State policy in a capitalist democracy is usually well-insulated from popular influence but very open to elite influence and money interests. Let's consider the possibility of direct influence first. It's obvious that elections cost money and that only the rich and corporations can realistically afford to take part in a major way. Even union donations to political parties cannot effectively compete with those from the business classes. For example, in the 1972 US presidential elections, of the $500 million spent, only about $13 million came from trade unions. The vast majority of the rest undoubtedly came from Big Business and wealthy individuals. For the 1956 elections, the last year for which direct union-business comparisons are possible, the contributions of 742 businessmen matched those of unions representing 17 million workers. And this was at a time when unions had large memberships and before the decline of organised labour.
Therefore, logically, politics will be dominated by the rich and powerful -- in fact if not in theory -- since only the rich can afford to run and only parties supported by the wealthy will gain enough funds and favourable press coverage to have a chance (see section D.3, "How does wealth influence the mass media?"). Even in countries with strong union movements which support labour-based parties, the political agenda is dominated by the media. As the media are owned by and dependent upon advertising from business, it is hardly surprising that independent labour-based political agendas are difficult to follow or be taken seriously. Moreover, the funds available for labour parties are always less than those of capitalist supported parties, meaning that the ability of the former to compete in "fair" elections is hindered. And this is ignoring the fact that the state structure is designed to ensure that real power lies not in the hands of elected representatives but rather in the hands of the state bureaucracy (see section J.2.2) which ensures that any pro-labour political agenda will be watered down and made harmless to the interests of the ruling class.
To this it must be added that wealth has a massive indirect influence over politics (and so over society and the law). We have noted above that wealth controls the media and their content. However, beyond this there is what can be called "Investor Confidence," which is another important source of influence. If a government starts to pass laws or act in ways that conflict with the desires of business, capital may become reluctant to invest (and may even disinvest and move elsewhere). The economic downturn that results will cause political instability, giving the government no choice but to regard the interests of business as privileged. "What is good for business" really is good for the country, because if business suffers, so will everyone else.
David Noble provides a good summary of the effects of such indirect pressures when he writes firms "have the ability to transfer production from one country to another, to close a plant in one and reopen it elsewhere, to direct and redirect investment wherever the 'climate' is most favourable [to business]. . . . [I]t has enabled the corporation to play one workforce off against another in the pursuit of the cheapest and most compliant labour (which gives the misleading appearance of greater efficiency). . . [I]t has compelled regions and nations to compete with one another to try and attract investment by offering tax incentives, labour discipline, relaxed environmental and other regulations and publicly subsidised infrastructure. . . Thus has emerged the great paradox of our age, according to which those nations that prosper most (attract corporate investment) by most readily lowering their standard of living (wages, benefits, quality of life, political freedom). The net result of this system of extortion is a universal lowering of conditions and expectations in the name of competitiveness and prosperity." [Progress Without People, pp. 91-92]
And, we must note, even when a country does lower its standard of living to attract investment or encourage its own business class to invest (as the USA and UK did by means of recession to discipline the workforce by high unemployment), it is no guarantee that capital will stay. US workers have seen their companies' profits rise while their wages have stagnated and (in reward) hundreds of thousands have been "down-sized" or seen their jobs moved to Mexico or South East Asia sweatshops. In the far east, Japanese, Hong Kong, and South Korean workers have also seen their manufacturing jobs move to low wage (and more repressive/authoritarian) countries such as China and Indonesia.
As well as the mobility of capital, there is also the threat posed by public debt. As Doug Henwood notes, "[p]ublic debt is a powerful way of assuring that the state remains safely in capital's hands. The higher a government's debt, the more it must please its bankers. Should bankers grow displeased, they will refuse to roll over old debts or to extend new financing on any but the most punishing terms (if at all). The explosion of [US] federal debt in the 1980s vastly increased the power of creditors to demand austere fiscal and monetary policies to dampen the US economy as it recovered . . . from the 1989-92 slowdown." [Wall Street, pp. 23-24] And, we must note, Wall street made a fortune on the debt, directly and indirectly.
Commenting on Clinton's plans for the devolution of welfare programmes from Federal to State government in America, Noam Chomsky makes the important point that "under conditions of relative equality, this could be a move towards democracy. Under existing circumstances, devolution is intended as a further blow to the eroding democratic processes. Major corporations, investment firms, and the like, can constrain or directly control the acts of national governments and can set one national workforce against another. But the game is much easier when the only competing player that might remotely be influenced by the 'great beast' is a state government, and even middle-sized enterprise can join in. The shadow cast by business [over society and politics] can thus be darker, and private power can move on to greater victories in the name of freedom." [Noam Chomsky, "Rollback III", Z Magazine, March, 1995]
Economic blackmail is a very useful weapon in deterring freedom.
D.2.1 Is capital flight really that powerful?
Yes. By capital flight, business can ensure that any government which becomes too independent and starts to consider the interests of those who elected it will be put back into its place. Therefore we cannot expect a different group of politicians to react in different ways to the same institutional influences and interests. It's no coincidence that the Australian Labour Party and the Spanish Socialist Party introduced "Thatcherite" policies at the same time as the "Iron Lady" implemented them in Britain. The New Zealand Labour government is a case in point, where "within a few months of re-election [in 1984], finance minister Roger Douglas set out a programme of economic 'reforms' that made Thatcher and Reagan look like wimps. . . .[A]lmost everything was privatised and the consequences explained away in marketspeak. Division of wealth that had been unknown in New Zealand suddenly appeared, along with unemployment, poverty and crime." [John Pilger, "Breaking the one party state," New Statesman, 16/12/94]
An extreme example of capital flight being used to "discipline" a naughty administration can be seen in the 1974 to '79 Labour government in Britain. In January, 1974, the FT Index for the London Stock Exchange stood at 500 points. In February, the Miner's went on strike, forcing Heath (the Tory Prime Minister) to hold (and lose) a general election. The new Labour government (which included many left-wingers in its cabinet) talked about nationalising the banks and much heavy industry. In August, 1974, Tony Benn announced plans to nationalise the ship building industry. By December, the FT index had fallen to 150 points. By 1976 the Treasury was spending $100 million a day buying back its own money to support the pound [The Times, 10/6/76].
The Times noted that "the further decline in the value of the pound has occurred despite the high level of interest rates. . . . [D]ealers said that selling pressure against the pound was not heavy or persistent, but there was an almost total lack of interest amongst buyers. The drop in the pound is extremely surprising in view of the unanimous opinion of bankers, politicians and officials that the currency is undervalued." [27/5/76]
The Labour government, faced with the power of international capital, ended up having to receive a temporary "bailing out" by the IMF, which imposed a package of cuts and controls, to which Labour's response was, in effect, "We'll do anything you say," as one economist described. The social costs of these policies were disastrous, with unemployment rising to the then unheard-of-height of one million. And let's not forget that they "cut expenditure by twice the amount the IMF were promised" in an attempt to appear business-friendly. it [Peter Donaldson, A Question of Economics, p. 89]
Capital will not invest in a country that does not meet its approval. In 1977, the Bank of England failed to get the Labour government to abolish its exchange controls. Between 1979 and 1982 the Tories abolished them and ended restrictions on lending for banks and building societies:
"The result of the abolition of exchange controls was visible almost immediately: capital hitherto invested in the U.K. began going abroad. In the Guardian of 21 September, 1981, Victor Keegan noted that 'Figures published last week by the Bank of England show that pension funds are now investing 25% of their money abroad (compared with almost nothing a few years ago) and there has been no investment at all (net) by unit trusts in the UK since exchange controls were abolished'" [Robin Ramsay, Lobster no. 27, p. 3].
Why? What was so bad about the UK? Simply stated, the working class was too militant, the trade unions were not "shackled by law and subdued," as The Economist recently put it [February 27, 1993], and the welfare state could be lived on. The partial gains from previous struggles still existed, and people had enough dignity not to accept any job offered or put up with an employer's authoritarian practices. These factors created "inflexibility" in the labour market, so that the working class had to be taught a lesson in "good" economics.
By capital flight a rebellious population and a slightly radical government were brought to heel.
D.2.2 How extensive is business propaganda?
Business spends a lot of money to ensure that people accept the status quo. Referring again to the US as an example (where such techniques are common), various means are used to get people to identify "free enterprise" (meaning state-subsidised private power with no infringement of managerial prerogatives) as "the American way." The success of these campaigns is clear, since many working people now object to unions as having too much power or irrationally rejecting all radical ideas as "Communism" regardless of their content.
By 1978, American business was spending $1 billion a year on grassroots propaganda (known as "Astroturf" by PR insiders, to reflect the appearance of popular support, without the substance, and "grasstops" whereby influential citizens are hired to serve as spokespersons for business interests). In 1983, there existed 26 general purpose foundations for this purpose with endowments of $100 million or more, as well as dozens of corporate foundations. These, along with media power, ensure that force -- always an inefficient means of control -- is replaced by the "manufacture of consent": the process whereby the limits of acceptable expression are defined by the wealthy.
This process has been going on for some time. For example "[i]n April 1947, the Advertising Council announced a $100 million campaign to use all media to 'sell' the American economic system -- as they conceived it -- to the American people; the program was officially described as a 'major project of educating the American people about the economic facts of life.' Corporations 'started extensive programs to indoctrinate employees,' the leading business journal Fortune reported, subjected their captive audiences to 'Courses in Economic Education' and testing them for commitment to the 'free enterprise system -- that is, Americanism.' A survey conducted by the American Management Association (AMA) found that many corporate leaders regarded 'propaganda' and 'economic education' as synonymous, holding that 'we want our people to think right'. . . [and that] 'some employers view. . . [it] as a sort of 'battle of loyalties' with the unions' -- a rather unequal battle, given the resources available." [Noam Chomsky, World Orders, Old and New, pp. 89-90]
Various institutions are used to get Big Business's message across, for example, the Joint Council on Economic Education, ostensibly a charitable organisation, funds economic education for teachers and provides books, pamphlets and films as teaching aids. In 1974, 20,000 teachers participated in its workshops. The aim is to induce teachers to present corporations in an uncritical light to their students. Funding for this propaganda machine comes from the American Bankers Association, AT&T, the Sears Roebuck Foundation and the Ford Foundation.
As G. William Domhoff points out, "[a]lthough it [and other bodies like it] has not been able to bring about active acceptance of all power elite policies and perspectives, on economic or other domestic issues, it has been able to ensure that opposing opinions have remained isolated, suspect and only partially developed." [Who Rules America Now?, pp. 103-4] In other words, "unacceptable" ideas are marginalised, the limits of expression defined, and all within a society apparently based on "the free marketplace of ideas."
The effects of this business propaganda are felt in all other aspects of life, ensuring that while the US business class is extremely class conscious, the rest of the American population considers "class" a swear word!
D.3 How does wealth influence the mass media?
Anarchists have developed detailed and sophisticated analyses of how the wealthy and powerful use the media to propagandise in their own interests. Perhaps the best of these analyses is the "Propaganda Model" expounded in Manufacturing Consent by Noam Chomsky and Edward Herman, whose main theses we will summarise in this section (See also Chomsky's Necessary Illusions for a further discussion of this model of the media).
Chomsky and Herman's "propaganda model" of the media postulates a set of five "filters" that act to screen the news and other material disseminated by the media. These "filters" result in a media that reflects elite viewpoints and interests and mobilises "support for the special interests that dominate the state and private activity." [Manufacturing Consent, p. xi]. These "filters" are: (1) the size, concentrated ownership, owner wealth, and profit orientation of the dominant mass-media firms; (2) advertising as the primary income source of the mass media; (3) the reliance of the media on information provided by government, business, and "experts" funded and approved by these primary sources and agents of power; (4) "flak" (negative responses to a media report) as a means of disciplining the media; and (5) "anticommunism" as a national religion and control mechanism.
"The raw material of news must pass through successive filters leaving only the cleansed residue fit to print," Chomsky and Herman maintain. The filters "fix the premises of discourse and interpretation, and the definition of what is newsworthy in the first place, and they explain the basis and operations of what amount to propaganda campaigns" [Manufacturing Consent, p. 2]. We will briefly consider the nature of these five filters below (examples are mostly from the US media).
We stress again, before continuing, that this is a summary of Herman's and Chomsky's thesis and we cannot hope to present the wealth of evidence and argument available in either Manufacturing Consent or Necessary Illusions. We recommend either of these books for more information on and evidence to support the "propaganda model" of the media.
D.3.1 How does the size, concentrated ownership, owner wealth, and profit orientation of the dominant mass-media firms affect media content?
Even a century ago, the number of media with any substantial outreach was limited by the large size of the necessary investment, and this limitation has become increasingly effective over time. As in any well developed market, this means that there are very effective natural barriers to entry into the media industry. Due to this process of concentration, the ownership of the major media has become increasingly concentrated in fewer and fewer hands. As Ben Bagdikian's stresses in his book Media Monopoly, the 29 largest media systems account for over half of the output of all newspapers, and most of the sales and audiences in magazines, broadcasting, books, and movies. The "top tier" of these -- somewhere between 10 and 24 systems -- along with the government and wire services, "defines the news agenda and supplies much of the national and international news to the lower tiers of the media, and thus for the general public" [Ibid., p. 5]
The twenty-four top-tier companies are large, profit-seeking corporations, owned and controlled by very wealthy people. Many of these companies are fully integrated into the financial market, with the result that the pressures of stockholders, directors, and bankers to focus on the bottom line are powerful. These pressures have intensified in recent years as media stocks have become market favourites and as deregulation has increased profitability and so the threat of take-overs.
The media giants have also diversified into other fields. For example GE, and Westinghouse, both owners of major television networks, are huge, diversified multinational companies heavily involved in the controversial areas of weapons production and nuclear power. GE and Westinghouse depend on the government to subsidise their nuclear power and military research and development, and to create a favourable climate for their overseas sales and investments. Similar dependence on the government affect other media.
Because they are large corporations with international investment interests, the major media tend to have a right-wing political bias. In addition, members of the business class own most of the mass media, the bulk of which depends for their existence on advertising revenue (which in turn comes from private business). Business also provides a substantial share of "experts" for news programmes and generates massive "flak." Claims that they are "left-leaning" are sheer disinformation manufactured by the "flak" organisations described below.
Thus Herman and Chomsky:
"the dominant media forms are quite large businesses; they are controlled by very wealthy people or by managers who are subject to sharp constraints by owners and other market-profit-oriented forces; and they are closely interlocked, and have important common interests, with other major corporations, banks, and government. This is the first powerful filter that effects news choices." [Ibid., p. 14]
Needless to say, reporters and editors will be selected based upon how well their work reflects the interests and needs of their employers. Thus a radical reporter and a more mainstream one both of the same skills and abilities would have very different careers within the industry. Unless the radical reporter toned down their copy, they are unlikely to see it printed unedited or unchanged. Thus the structure within the media firm will tend to penalise radical viewpoints, encouraging an acceptance of the status quo in order to further a career. This selection process ensures that owners do not need to order editors or reporters what to do -- to be successful they will have to internalise the values of their employers.
D.3.2 What is the effect of advertising as the primary income source of the mass media?
The main business of the media is to sell audiences to advertisers. Advertisers thus acquire a kind of de facto licensing authority, since without their support the media would cease to be economically viable. And it is affluent audiences that get advertisers interested. As Chomsky and Herman put it, "The idea that the drive for large audiences makes the mass media 'democratic' thus suffers from the initial weakness that its political analogue is a voting system weighted by income!" [Ibid., p.16].
Political discrimination is therefore structured into advertising allocations by the emphasis on people with money to buy. In addition, "many companies will always refuse to do business with ideological enemies and those whom they perceive as damaging their interests." Thus overt discrimination adds to the force of the "voting system weighted by income." Accordingly, large corporate advertisers almost never sponsor programs that contain serious criticisms of corporate activities, such as negative ecological impacts, the workings of the military-industrial complex, or corporate support of and benefits from Third World dictatorships. More generally, advertisers will want "to avoid programs with serious complexities and disturbing controversies that interfere with the 'buying mood.'" [Ibid., p. 18].
This also has had the effect of placing working class and radical papers at a serious disadvantage. Without access to advertising revenue, even the most popular paper will fold or price itself out of the market. Chomsky and Herman cite the UK pro-labour and pro-union Daily Herald as an example of this process. The Daily Herald had almost double the readership of The Times, the Financial Times and The Guardian combined, but even with 8.1% of the national circulation it got 3.5% of net advertising revenue and so could not survive on the "free market".
As Herman and Chomsky note, a "mass movement without any major media support, and subject to a great deal of active press hostility, suffers a serious disability, and struggles against grave odds." [Ibid., pp. 15-16] With the folding of the Daily Herald, the labour movement lost its voice in the mainstream media.
Thus advertising is an effective filter for new choice (and, indeed, survival in the market).
D.3.3 Why do the media rely on information provided by government, business, and "experts" funded and approved by government and business?
Two of the main reasons for the media's reliance on such sources are economy and convenience: Bottom-line considerations dictate that the media concentrate their resources where important news often occurs, where rumours and leaks are plentiful, and where regular press conferences are held. The White House, Pentagon, and the State Department, in Washington, D.C., are centres of such activity.
Government and corporate sources also have the great merit of being recognisable and credible by their status and prestige; moreover, they have the most money available to produce a flow of news that the media can use. For example, the Pentagon has a public-information service employing many thousands of people, spending hundreds of millions of dollars every year, and far outspending not only the public-information resources of any dissenting individual or group but the aggregate of such groups.
Only the corporate sector has the resources to produce public information and propaganda on the scale of the Pentagon and other government bodies. The Chamber of Commerce, a business collective, had a 1983 budget for research, communications, and political activities of $65 million. Besides the US Chamber of Commerce, there are thousands of state and local chambers of commerce and trade associations also engaged in public relations and lobbying activities.
To maintain their pre-eminent position as sources, government and business-news agencies expend much effort to make things easy for news organisations. They provide the media organisations with facilities in which to gather, give journalists advance copies of speeches and upcoming reports; schedule press conferences at hours convenient for those needing to meet news deadlines; write press releases in language that can be used with little editing; and carefully organise press conferences and "photo opportunity" sessions. This means that, in effect, the large bureaucracies of the power elite subsidise the mass media by contributing to a reduction of the media's costs of acquiring the raw materials of, and producing, news. In this way, these bureaucracies gain special access to the media.
Thus "[e]conomics dictates that they [the media] concentrate their resources were significant news often occurs, where important rumours and leaks abound, and where regular press conferences are held. . . [Along with state bodies] business corporations and trade groups are also regular purveyors of stories deemed newsworthy. These bureaucracies turn out a large volume of material that meets the demands of news organisations for reliable, scheduled flows." [Ibid., pp. 18-19]
The dominance of official sources would, of course, be weakened by the existence of highly respectable unofficial sources that gave dissident views with great authority. To alleviate this problem, the power elite uses the strategy of "co-opting the experts" -- that is, putting them on the payroll as consultants, funding their research, and organising think tanks that will hire them directly and help disseminate the messages deemed essential to elite interests. "Experts" on TV panel discussions and news programs are often drawn from such organisations, whose funding comes primarily from the corporate sector and wealthy families -- a fact that is, of course, never mentioned on the programs where they appear.
D.3.4 How is "flak" used by the wealthy and powerful as a means of disciplining the media?
"Flak" refers to negative responses to a media statement or program. Such responses may be expressed as phone calls, letters, telegrams, e-mail messages, petitions, lawsuits, speeches, bills before Congress, or other modes of complaint, threat, or punishment. Flak may be generated by organisations or it may come from the independent actions of individuals. Large-scale flak campaigns, either by organisations or individuals with substantial resources, can be both uncomfortable and costly to the media.
Advertisers are very concerned to avoid offending constituencies who might produce flak, and their demands for inoffensive programming exerts pressure on the media to avoid certain kinds of facts, positions, or programs that are likely to call forth flak. The most deterrent kind of flak comes from business and government, who have the funds to produce it on a large scale.
For example, during the 1970s and 1980s, the corporate community sponsored the creation of such institutions as the American Legal Foundation, the Capital Legal Foundation, the Media Institute, the Center for Media and Public Affairs, and Accuracy in Media (AIM), which may be regarded as organisations designed for the specific purpose of producing flak. Freedom House is an older US organisation which had a broader design but whose flak-producing activities became a model for the more recent organisations.
The Media Institute, for instance, was set up in 1972 and is funded by wealthy corporate patrons, sponsoring media monitoring projects, conferences, and studies of the media. The main focus of its studies and conferences has been the alleged failure of the media to portray business accurately and to give adequate weight to the business point of view, but it also sponsors works such as John Corry's "expose" of alleged left-wing bias in the mass media.
The government itself is a major producer of flak, regularly attacking, threatening, and "correcting" the media, trying to contain any deviations from the established propaganda lines in foreign or domestic policy.
And, we should note, while the flak machines steadily attack the media, the media treats them well. While effectively ignoring radical critiques (such as the "propaganda model"), flak receives respectful attention and their propagandistic role and links to corporations and a wider right-wing program rarely mentioned or analysed.
D.3.5 Why do the power elite use "anticommunism" as a national religion and control mechanism?
"Communism," or indeed any form of socialism, is of course regarded as the ultimate evil by the corporate rich, since the ideas of collective ownership of productive assets, giving workers more bargaining power, or allowing ordinary citizens more voice in public policy decisions threatens the very root of the class position and superior status of the elite.
Hence the ideology of anticommunism has been very useful, because it can be used to discredit anybody advocating policies regarded as harmful to corporate interests. It also helps to divide the Left and labour movements, justifies support for pro-US right-wing regimes abroad as "lesser evils" than communism, and discourages liberals from opposing such regimes for fear of being branded as heretics from the national religion.
Since the end of the Cold War, anti-communism has not been used as extensively as it once was to mobilise support for elite crusades. Instead, the "Drug War" or "anti-terrorism" now often provide the public with "official enemies" to hate and fear. Thus the Drug War was the excuse for the Bush administration's invasion of Panama, and "fighting narco-terrorists" has more recently been the official reason for shipping military hardware and surveillance equipment to Mexico (where it's actually being used against the Zapatista rebels in Chiapas, whose uprising is threatening to destabilise the country and endanger US investments).
Of course there are still a few official communist enemy states, like North Korea, Cuba, and China, and abuses or human rights violations in these countries are systematically played up by the media while similar abuses in client states are downplayed or ignored. Chomsky and Herman refer to the victims of abuses in enemy states as worthy victims, while victims who suffer at the hands of US clients or friends are unworthy victims. Stories about worthy victims are often made the subject of sustained propaganda campaigns, to score political points against enemies.
"If the government of corporate community and the media feel that a story is useful as well as dramatic, they focus on it intensively and use it to enlighten the public. This was true, for example, of the shooting down by the Soviets of the Korean airliner KAL 007 in early September 1983, which permitted an extended campaign of denigration of an official enemy and greatly advanced Reagan administration arms plans."
"In sharp contrast, the shooting down by Israel of a Libyan civilian airliner in February 1973 led to no outcry in the West, no denunciations for 'cold-blooded murder,' and no boycott. This difference in treatment was explained by the New York Times precisely on the grounds of utility: 'No useful purpose is served by an acrimonious debate over the assignment of blame for the downing of a Libyan airliner in the Sinai peninsula last week.' There was a very 'useful purpose' served by focusing on the Soviet act, and a massive propaganda campaign ensued." [Ibid., p. 32]
D.3.6 Isn't it a "conspiracy theory" to suggest that the media are used as propaganda instruments by the elite?
Chomsky and Herman address this charge in the Preface to Manufacturing Consent: "Institutional critiques such as we present in this book are commonly dismissed by establishment commentators as 'conspiracy theories,' but this is merely an evasion. We do not use any kind of 'conspiracy' hypothesis to explain mass-media performance. In fact, our treatment is much closer to a 'free market' analysis, with the results largely an outcome of the workings of market forces."
They go on to suggest what some of these "market forces" are. One of the most important is the weeding-out process that determines who gets the journalistic jobs in the major media. "Most biased choices in the media arise from the preselection of right-thinking people, internalised preconceptions, and the adaptation of personnel to the constraints of ownership, organisation, market, and political power."
In other words, important media employees learn to internalise the values of their bosses. "Censorship is largely self-censorship, by reporters and commentators who adjust to the realities of source and media organisational requirements, and by people at higher levels within media organisations who are chosen to implement, and have usually internalised, the constraints imposed by proprietary and other market and governmental centres of power." [Ibid., p. xii].
But, it may be asked, isn't it still a conspiracy theory to suggest that media leaders all have similar values? Not at all. Such leaders "do similar things because they see the world through the same lenses, are subject to similar constraints and incentives, and thus feature stories or maintain silence together in tacit collective action and leader-follower behaviour." [Ibid.]
The fact that media leaders share the same fundamental values does not mean, however, that the media are a solid monolith on all issues. The powerful often disagree on the tactics needed to attain generally shared aims, and this gets reflected in media debate. But views that challenge the legitimacy of those aims or suggest that state power is being exercised in elite interests rather than the "national" interest" will be excluded from the mass media.
Therefore the "propaganda model" has as little in common with a "conspiracy theory" as saying that the management of General Motors acts to maintain and increase its profits.
D.3.7 Isn't the "propaganda thesis" about the media contradicted by the "adversarial" nature of much media reporting, e.g. its exposes of government and business corruption?
As noted above, the claim that the media are "adversarial" or (more implausibly) that they have a "left-wing bias" is due to right-wing PR organisations. This means that some "inconvenient facts" are occasionally allowed to pass through the filters in order to give the appearance of "objectivity"-- precisely so the media can deny charges of engaging in propaganda. As Chomsky and Herman put it: "the 'naturalness' of these processes, with inconvenient facts allowed sparingly and within the proper framework of assumptions, and fundamental dissent virtually excluded from the mass media (but permitted in a marginalised press), makes for a propaganda system that is far more credible and effective in putting over a patriotic agenda than one with official censorship" [Ibid., Preface].
To support their case against the "adversarial" nature of the media, Herman and Chomsky look into the claims of such right-wing media PR machines as Freedom House. However, it is soon discovered that "the very examples offered in praise of the media for their independence, or criticism of their excessive zeal, illustrate exactly the opposite." [Ibid.] Such flak, while being worthless as serious analysis, does help to reinforce the myth of an "adversarial media" (on the right the "existing level of subordination to state authority is often deemed unsatisfactory" and this is the source of their criticism! [Ibid., p. 301]) and so is taken seriously by the media.
Therefore the "adversarial" nature of the media is a myth, but this is not to imply that the media does not present critical analysis. Herman and Chomsky in fact argue that the "mass media are not a solid monolith on all issues." [Ibid., p. xii] and do not deny that it does present facts (which they do sometimes themselves cite). But, as they argue, "[t]hat the media provide some facts about an issue. . . proves absolutely nothing about the adequacy or accuracy of that coverage. The mass media do, in fact, literally suppress a great deal . . . But even more important in this context is the question given to a fact - its placement, tone, and repetitions, the framework within which it is presented, and the related facts that accompany it and give it meaning (or provide understanding) . . . there is no merit to the pretence that because certain facts may be found by a diligent and sceptical researcher, the absence of radical bias and de facto suppression is thereby demonstrated." [Ibid., pp xiv-xv]
D.4 What is the relationship between capitalism and the ecological crisis?
Environmental damage has reached alarming proportions. Almost daily there are new upwardly revised estimates of the severity of global warming, ozone destruction, topsoil loss, oxygen depletion from the clearing of rain forests, acid rain, toxic wastes and pesticide residues in food and water, the accelerating extinction rate of natural species, etc., etc. Some scientists now believe that there may be as little as 35 years to act before vital ecosystems are irreparably damaged and massive human die-offs begin [Donella M. Meadows, Dennis L. Meadows, and Jorgen Randers, Beyond the Limits: Confronting Global Collapse, Envisioning a Sustainable Future, Chelsea Green Publishing Company, 1992]. Or, as Kirkpatrick Sale puts it, "the planet is on the road to, perhaps on the verge of, global ecocide" ["Bioregionalism -- A Sense of Place," The Nation 12: 336-339].
Many anarchists see the ecological crisis as rooted in the psychology of domination, which emerged with the rise of patriarchy, slavery, and the first primitive states during the Late Neolithic. Murray Bookchin, one of the pioneers of eco-anarchism (see section E), points out that "[t]he hierarchies, classes, propertied forms, and statist institutions that emerged with social domination were carried over conceptually into humanity's relationship with nature. Nature too became increasingly regarded as a mere resource, an object, a raw material to be exploited as ruthlessly as slaves on a latifundium." [Toward an Ecological Society p. 41]. In his view, without uprooting the psychology of domination, all attempts to stave off ecological catastrophe are likely to be mere palliatives and so doomed to failure.
Bookchin argues that "the conflict between humanity and nature is an extension of the conflict between human and human. Unless the ecology movement encompasses the problem of domination in all its aspects, it will contribute nothing toward eliminating the root causes of the ecological crisis of our time. If the ecology movement stops at mere reformism in pollution and conservation control - at mere 'environmentalism' - without dealing radically with the need for an expanded concept of revolution, it will merely serve as a safety value for the existing system of natural and human exploitation." [Ibid., p. 43]
Since capitalism is the vehicle through which the psychology of domination finds its most ecologically destructive outlet, most eco-anarchists give the highest priority to dismantling capitalism. "Literally, the system in its endless devouring of nature will reduce the entire biosphere to the fragile simplicity of our desert and arctic biomes. We will be reversing the process of organic evolution which has differentiated flora and fauna into increasingly complex forms and relationships, thereby creating a simpler and less stable world of life. The consequences of this appalling regression are predictable enough in the long run -- the biosphere will become so fragile that it will eventually collapse from the standpoint human survival needs and remove the organic preconditions for human life. That this will eventuate from a society based on production for the sake of production is . . .merely a matter of time, although when it will occur is impossible to predict." [Ibid., p. 68]
It's important to stress that capitalism must be eliminated because it cannot reform itself so as to become "environment friendly," contrary to the claims of so-called "green" capitalists. This is because "[c]apitalism not only validates precapitalist notions of the domination of nature, . . . it turns the plunder of nature into society's law of life. To quibble with this kind of system about its values, to try to frighten it with visions about the consequences of growth is to quarrel with its very metabolism. One might more easily persuade a green plant to desist from photosynthesis than to ask the bourgeois economy to desist from capital accumulation." [Ibid., p. 66]
Thus capitalism causes ecological destruction because it is based upon domination (of human over human and so humanity over nature) and continual, endless growth (for without growth, capitalism would die).
D.4.1 Why must capitalist firms "grow or die?"
Industrial production has increased fifty fold since 1950. Obviously such expansion in a finite environment cannot go on indefinitely without disastrous consequences. Yet, as the quotation above suggests, it is impossible in principle for capitalism to kick its addiction to growth. It is important to understand why.
Capitalism is based on production for profit. In order to stay profitable, a firm must be able to produce goods and services cheaply enough to compete with other firms in the same industry. If one firm increases its productivity (as all firms must try to do), it will be able to produce more cheaply, thus undercutting its competition and capturing more market share, until eventually it forces less profitable firms into bankruptcy. Moreover, as companies with higher productivity/profitability expand, they often realise economies of scale (e.g. getting bulk rates on larger quantities of raw materials), thus giving them even more of a competitive advantage over less productive/profitable enterprises. Hence, constantly increasing productivity is essential for survival.
There are two ways to increase productivity, either by increasing the exploitation of workers (e.g. longer hours and/or more intense work for the same amount of pay) or by introducing new technologies that reduce the amount of labour necessary to produce the same product or service. Due to the struggle of workers to prevent increases in the level of their exploitation, new technologies are the main way that productivity is increased under capitalism (though of course capitalists are always looking for ways to increase the exploitation of workers on a given technology by other means as well).
But new technologies are expensive, which means that in order to pay for continuous upgrades, a firm must continually sell more of what it produces, and so must keep expanding its capital (machinery, floor space, workers, etc.). Indeed, to stay in the same place under capitalism is to tempt crisis - thus a firm must always strive for more profits and thus must always expand and invest. In other words, in order to survive, a firm must constantly expand and upgrade its capital and production levels so it can sell enough to keep expanding and upgrading its capital -- i.e. "grow or die," or "production for the sake of production."
Thus it is impossible in principle for capitalism to solve the ecological crisis, because "grow or die" is inherent in its nature:
"To speak of 'limits to growth' under a capitalistic market economy is as meaningless as to speak of limits of warfare under a warrior society. The moral pieties, that are voiced today by many well-meaning environmentalists, are as naive as the moral pieties of multinationals are manipulative. Capitalism can no more be 'persuaded' to limit growth than a human being can be 'persuaded' to stop breathing. Attempts to 'green' capitalism, to make it 'ecological', are doomed by the very nature of the system as a system of endless growth." [Murray Bookchin, Remaking Society, pp. 93-94]
As long as capitalism exists, it will necessarily continue its "endless devouring of nature," until it removes the "organic preconditions for human life." For this reason there can be no compromise with capitalism: We must destroy it before it destroys us. And time is running out.
Capitalists, of course, do not accept this conclusion. Most simply ignore the evidence or view the situation through rose-coloured spectacles, maintaining that ecological problems are not as serious as they seem or that science will find a way to solve them before it's too late. Right libertarians tend to take this approach, but they also argue that a genuinely free market capitalism would provide solutions to the ecological crisis. In section E we will show why these arguments are unsound and why libertarian socialism is our best hope for preventing ecological catastrophe.
D.5 What causes imperialism?
In a word: power. Imperialism is the process by which one country dominates another directly, by political means, or indirectly, by economic means.
As we will discuss in the following sections, imperialism has changed over time, particularly during the last one hundred years (where its forms and methods have evolved with the evolving needs of capitalism). But even in the classic days of empire building imperialism was driven by economic forces. In order to make one's state secure, it had to be based on a strong economy; and by increasing the area controlled by the state, one increased the wealth available. Therefore states, by their nature, are expansionist bodies, with those who run them always wanting to increase the range of their power and influence. This can be best seen from the massive number of wars that have occurred in Europe over the last 500 years, as nation-states were created by Kings declaring lands to be their private property.
Here we will focus mainly on modern capitalist imperialism. As power depends on profits within capitalism, this means that modern imperialism is caused more by profit and other economic factors than purely political considerations (although, obviously, this factor does play a role). As will be seen in section D.5.1, imperialism serves capital by increasing the pool of profits available for the imperialistic country in the world market. This is the economic base for imperialism, allowing the import of cheaper raw materials and goods and the export of capital from capital-rich areas to capital-poor areas (in order to benefit from lower wages and fewer environmental and social controls and laws). Both allow profits to be gathered at the expense of the oppressed nation. In addition, having an empire means that products produced cheaply at home can be easily dumped into foreign markets with less developed industry, undercutting locally produced goods and consequently destroying the local economy along with the society and culture based on it. Empire building is a good way of creating privileged markets for one's goods.
Since capitalism, by its very nature, is growth-based, it must expand in order to survive. Hence capitalism is inevitably imperialistic. In pre-capitalist societies, there is often extensive cultural resistance to the attempts of foreign capitalists to promote the growth of the free market. However, "primitive" people's desire to be "left alone" was rarely respected, and "civilisation" was forced upon them "for their own good." As Kropotkin realised, "force is necessary to continually bring new 'uncivilised nations' under the same conditions [of wage labour]" [Anarchism and Anarchist Communism, p. 53]
Imperialism has always served the interests of Capital. If it did not, if imperialism was bad for business, the business class would have opposed it. This partly explains why the colonialism of the 19th century is no more (the other reason being social resistance to foreign domination, which obviously helped to make imperialism bad for business as well). There are now more cost-effective means than direct colonialism to ensure that "underdeveloped" countries remain open to exploitation by foreign capital. Once the costs exceeded the benefits, colonialist imperialism changed into the neo-colonialism of multinationals, political influence, and the threat of force (see next section).
As Capital grew in size, its need to expand into foreign markets caused it to be closely linked with the nation-state. As there were a number of competing capitalist nations, however, tension and conflict developed between them for control of non-capitalist areas to exploit. It was this international competition between developed nations that led to both World Wars.
After the Second World War, the European countries yielded to pressure from the USA and national liberation movements and grated many former countries "independence" (not, we may add, that the USA was being altruistic in its actions, independence for colonies weakened its rivals as well as allowing US capital access to these markets). This process was accompanied by capital expanding beyond the nation-state into multinational corporations. The nature of imperialism and imperialistic wars has changed accordingly. Today, instead of direct rule over less developed nations (which is too costly), indirect forms of domination are now preferred, with force resorted to only if "business interests" are threatened. Examples of new-style imperialistic wars include Vietnam, the US support for the Contras in Nicaragua and the Gulf War. Political and economic power (e.g. the threat of capital flight or sanctions) is used to keep markets open for corporations based in the advanced nations, with military intervention being used only when required.
Needless to say, the Soviet Union also participated in imperialist adventures, although on a lesser scale and for slightly different reasons. As can be seen by Russia's ruthless policy towards her satellites, Russian imperialism was more inclined to the defence of what she already had and the creation of a buffer zone between herself and the West. Unlike most Empires, the flow of money was usually out of, not into, the Soviet Union. The Soviet elite also aided "anti-imperialist" movements when it served their interests which (along with US pressure which closed off other options) placed them within the Soviet sphere of influence
Obviously anarchists are opposed to imperialism and imperialistic wars. It is impossible to be free while dependent on the power of someone else. If the capital one uses is owned by another country, one is in no position to resist the demands of that country. To be self-governing, a community must be economically independent. The centralisation of capital implied by imperialism means that power rests in the hands of others, not with those directly affected by the decisions made by that power. Thus capitalism soon makes a decentralised economy, and so a free society, impossible.
This does not mean that anarchists blindly support national liberation movements or any form of nationalism. Anarchists oppose nationalism just as much as they oppose imperialism - neither offer a way to a free society (see sections D.6 and D.7 for more details)
D.5.1 How has imperialism changed over time?
Imperialism has important economic advantages for those who run the economy. As the needs of the business class change, the forms taken by imperialism also change. We can identify three main phases: classical imperialism (i.e. conquest), indirect (economic) imperialism, and globalisation. We will consider the first two in this section and globalisation in section D.5.3. However, for all the talk of globalisation in recent years, it is important to remember that capitalism has always been an international system and that the changing forms of imperialism reflect this international nature and that the changes within imperialism are in response to developments within capitalism itself.
Direct conquest had the advantage of opening up more of the planet for the capitalist market, thus leading to more trade and exploitation of raw materials and labour (and often slavery as well). This gave a massive boost to both the state and the industries of the invading country in terms of new profits, so allowing an increase in the number of capitalists and other social parasites that could exist in the developed nation. As Kropotkin noted at the time, "British, French, Belgian and other capitalists, by means of the ease with which they exploit countries which themselves have no developed industry, today control the labour of hundreds of millions of those people in Eastern Europe, Asia, and Africa. The result is that the number of those people in the leading industrialised countries of Europe who live off the work of others doesn't gradually decrease at all. Far from it." ["Anarchism and Syndicalism", in Black Flag number 210, p. 26].
This process of expansion into non-capitalist areas also helps Capital to weather both the subjective and objective economic pressures upon it which cause the business cycle (see sections C.7 - "What causes the capitalist business cycle?" for more on these). As wealth looted from "primitive" countries is exported back to the home country, profit levels can be protected both from working-class demands and from any relative decline in surplus-value production caused by increased capital investment (see section C.2 for more on surplus value). In fact, imperialism often allowed the working class of the invading country to receive improved wages and living conditions as the looted wealth was imported into the country. And as the sons and daughters of the poor emigrated to the colonies to make a living for themselves on stolen land, the wealth extracted from those colonies helped to overcome the reduction in the supply of labour at home which would increase its market price. This loot also helps reduce competitive pressures on the nation's economy. Of course, these advantages of conquest cannot totally stop the business cycle nor eliminate competition, as the imperialistic nations soon discovered.
This first phase of imperialism began as the growing capitalist economy started to reach the boundaries of the nationalised market created by the state within its own borders. Imperialism was then used to expand the area that could be colonised by the capital associated with a given nation-state. This stage ended, however, once the dominant powers had carved up the planet into different spheres of influence and there was nowhere new left to expand. In the competition to increase sales and access to cheap raw materials and foreign markets, nation-states came into conflict with each other. As it was obvious that a conflict was brewing, the major European countries tried to organise a "balance of power." This meant that armies were built and navies created to frighten other countries and so deter war. Unfortunately, these measures were not enough to countermand the economic and power processes at play. War did break out, a war over empires and influence, a war, it was claimed, that would end all wars. As we now know, of course, it did not.
After the First World War, the identification of nation-state with national capital became even more obvious, and can be seen in the rise of extensive state intervention to keep capitalism going -- for example, the rise of Fascism in Italy and Germany and the efforts of "national" governments in Britain and the USA to "solve" the economic crisis of the Great Depression. As protectionist methods increased and capital growth stagnated, another war was only a matter of time.
After the Second World War, imperialism changed under the pressure of various national liberation movements. As Kropotkin realised, such social movements were to be expected for with the growth of capitalism "the number of people with an interest in the capitulation of the capitalist state system also increases." [Peter Kropotkin, Op. Cit., p. 26] Unfortunately these "liberation" movements transformed mass struggle from a potential struggle against capitalism into movements aiming for independent capitalist nation states. However, these struggles ensured that capitalism had to change itself in face of popular resistance and the old form of imperialism was replaced by a new system of "neo-colonialism" in which newly "independent" colonies are forced, via political and economic pressure, to open their borders to foreign capital. If a state takes up a position which the imperial powers consider "bad for business," action will be taken, from sanctions to outright invasion. Keeping the world open and "free" for capitalist exploitation has been America's general policy since 1945. It springs directly from the expansion requirements of private capital and so cannot be changed.
Capital investments in developing nations have increased steadily over the years, with profits from the exploitation of cheap labour flowing back into the pockets of the corporate elite in the imperialist nation, not to its citizens as a whole (though there are sometimes temporary benefits to other classes, as discussed below). In addition, other countries are "encouraged" to buy imperialist countries' goods (often in exchange for "aid", typically military "aid") and open their markets to the dominant power's companies and their products. Imperialism is the only means of defending the foreign investments of a nation's capitalist class, and by allowing the extraction of profits and the creation of markets, it also safeguards the future of private capital.
So, imperialism remains intact, as Western (namely U.S.) governments continue to provide lavish funds to petty right-wing despots under the pseudonym, "foreign aid". The express purpose of this foreign aid, noble-sounding rhetoric about freedom and democracy aside, is to ensure that the existing world order remains intact. "Stability" has become the watchword of modern imperialists, who see any indigenous popular movements as a threat to the existing world order.
This is accomplished by channelling public funds to the wealthy business classes in Third World countries. The U.S. and other Western powers provide much-needed war material and training for these governments, so that they may continue to keep the business climate friendly to foreign investors (that means tacitly and overtly supporting fascism around the globe). "Foreign aid", basically, is when the poor people of rich countries give their money to the rich people of poor countries to ensure that the investments of the rich people of rich countries is safe from the poor people of poor countries!
(Needless to say, the owners of the companies providing this "aid" also do very well out of it.)
Thus, the Third World sags beneath the weight of well-funded oppression, while its countries are sucked dry of their native wealth, in the name of "development" and in the spirit of "democracy and freedom". The United States leads the West in its global responsibility (another favourite buzzword) to ensure that this peculiar kind of "freedom" remains unchallenged by any indigenous movements. Thus, the fascist regimes remain compliant and obedient to the West, capitalism thrives unchallenged, and the plight of people everywhere simply worsens. And if a regime becomes too "independent", military force always remains an option (as can be seen from the 1990 Gulf War).
D.5.2 What is the relationship between imperialism and the social classes within capitalism?
The relationship between the ruling class and imperialism is quite simple: Due to capital's need to grow, find markets and raw materials, it seeks to expand abroad (see section D.5). Consequently, it needs an aggressive and expansionist foreign policy, which it achieves by buying politicians, initiating media propaganda campaigns, funding right-wing think tanks, and so on, as previously described. Thus the ruling class benefits from, and so usually supports, imperialism -- only when the costs out-weight the benefits will we see members of the elite oppose it (as in the latter stages of the Vietnam war, for example, when it was clear that the US was not going to win).
The relationship between the working class and imperialism is more complex. Foreign trade and the export of capital often make it possible to import cheap wage goods from abroad and increase profits for the capitalist class, and in this sense, workers gain because they can improve their standard of living without necessarily coming into conflict with their employers. Moreover, capital export and military spending under imperialistic policies may lead to a higher rate of profit for capitalists and allow them to temporarily avoid recession, thus keeping employment higher than would be the case otherwise. So workers benefit in this sense as well. Therefore, in imperialistic nations during economic boom times, one finds a tendency among the working class (particularly the unorganised sector) to support foreign military adventurism and an aggressive foreign policy. This is part of what is often called the "embourgeoisment" of the proletariat, or the co-optation of labour by capitalist ideology and "patriotic" propaganda.
However, as soon as international rivalry between imperialist powers becomes too intense, capitalists will attempt to maintain their profit rates by depressing wages and laying people off in their own country. Workers' real wages will also suffer if military spending goes beyond a certain point. Moreover, if militarism leads to actual war, the working class has much more to lose than to gain. In addition, while imperialism can improve living conditions (for a time), it cannot remove the hierarchical nature of capitalism and therefore cannot stop the class struggle, the spirit of revolt and the instinct for freedom. So, while workers may sometimes benefit from imperialism, such periods cannot last long and "ultimately the more fundamental and lasting opposition of the working class must come to the surface. On this, as on other issues, the interest and policies of capital and labour are fundamentally antagonistic." [Paul Sweezy, Theory of Capitalist Development, p. 316]
Thus Rudolf Rocker was correct to stress the contradictory (and self-defeating) nature of working class support for imperialism:
"No doubt some small comforts may sometimes fall to the share of the workers when the bourgeoisie of their country attain some advantage over that of another country; but this always happens at the cost of their own freedom and the economic oppression of other peoples. The worker. . . participates to some extent in the profits which, without effort on their part, fall into the laps of the bourgeoisie of his country from the unrestrained exploitation of colonial peoples; but sooner or later there comes the time when these people too, wake up, and he has to pay all the more dearly for the small advantages he has enjoyed. . . [Imperialism means that] the liberation. . . from wage-slavery is pushed further and further into the distance. As long as the worker ties up his interests with those of the bourgeoisie of his country instead of with his class, he must logically also take in his stride all the results of that relationship. He must stand ready to fight the wars of the possessing classes for the retention and extension of their markets, and to defend any injustice they may perpetrate on other people." [Anarcho-Syndicalism, p. 61]
It is difficult to generalise about the effects of imperialism on the "middle class" (i.e. professionals, self-employed, small business people, peasants and so on -- not middle income groups, who are usually working class). Some groups within this strata stand to gain, others to lose. This lack of common interests and a common organisational base makes the middle class unstable and susceptible to patriotic sloganeering, vague theories of national or racial superiority, or fascist scapegoating of minorities for society's problems. For this reason, the ruling class finds it relatively easy to recruit large sectors of the middle class (as well as unorganised sectors of the working class) to an aggressive and expansionist foreign policy, through media propaganda campaigns. Since organised labour tends to perceive imperialism as being against its overall best interests, and thus usually opposes it, the ruling class is able to intensify the hostility of the middle class to the organised working class by portraying the latter as "unpatriotic" and "unwilling to sacrifice" for the "national interest." Hence, in general, imperialism tends to produce a tightening of class lines and increasingly severe social conflict between contending interest groups, which has a tendency to foster the growth of authoritarian government (see section D.9).
D.5.3 Does globalisation mean the end of imperialism?
No. While it is true that the size of multinational companies has increased along with the mobility of capital, the need for nation-states to serve corporate interests still exists. With the increased mobility of capital, i.e. its ability to move from one country and invest in another easily, and with the growth in international money markets, we have seen what can be called a "free market" in states developing. Corporations can ensure that governments do as they are told simply by threatening to move elsewhere (which they will do anyway, if it results in more profits).
While transnational companies are, perhaps, the most well-known representatives of this process of globalisation, the power and mobility of modern capitalism can be seen from the following figures. From 1986 to 1990, foreign exchange transactions rose from under $300 billion to $700 billion daily and were expected to exceed $1.3 trillion in 1994. The World Bank estimates that the total resources of international financial institutions at about $14 trillion. To put some kind of perspective on these figures, the Balse-based Bank for International Settlement estimated that the aggregate daily turnover in the foreign exchange markets at nearly $900 billion in April 1992, equal to 13 times the Gross Domestic Product of the OECD group of countries on an annualised basis [Financial Times, 23/9/93]. In Britain, some $200-300 billion a day flows through London's foreign exchange markets. This the equivalent of the UK's annual Gross National Product in two or three days.
Little wonder that a Financial Times special supplement on the IMF stated that "Wise governments realise that the only intelligent response to the challenge of globalisation is to make their economies more acceptable" [Op. Cit.] More acceptable to business, that is, not their populations. This means that under globalisation, states will compete with each other to offer the best deals to investors and transnational companies, such as tax breaks, union busting, no pollution controls, and so forth. The effects on the countries' ordinary people will be ignored in the name of future benefits. For example, such an "acceptable" business climate was created in Britain, where "market forces have deprived workers of rights in the name of competition" [Scotland on Sunday, 9/1/95] and the number of people with less than half the average income rose from 9% of the population in 1979 to 25% in 1993. The share of national wealth held by the poorer half of the population has fallen from one third to one quarter. However, as would be expected, the number of millionaires has increased, as has the welfare state for the rich, with the public's tax money being used to enrich the few via military Keynesianism, privatisation and funding for Research and Development. Like any religion, the free-market ideology is marked by the hypocrisy of those at the top and the sacrifices required from the majority at the bottom.
In addition, the globalisation of capital allows it to play one work force against another. For example, General Motors plans to close two dozen plants in the United States and Canada, but it has become the largest employer in Mexico. Why? Because an "economic miracle" has driven wages down. Labour's share of personal income in Mexico has "declined from 36 percent in the mid-1970's to 23 percent by 1992." Elsewhere, General Motors opened a $690 million assembly plant in the former East Germany. Why? Because there workers are willing to "work longer hours than their pampered colleagues in western Germany" (as the Financial Times put it) at 40% of the wage and with few benefits [Noam Chomsky, World Orders, Old and New, p.160]
However, force is always required to protect private capital. Even a globalised capitalist company still requires a defender. Therefore it makes sense for corporations to pick and choose between states for the best protection, blackmailing their citizens to pay for the armed forces via taxes. For the foreseeable future, America seems to be the rent-a-cop of choice. Therefore, far from ending imperialism, globalisation will see it continue, but with one major difference: the citizens in the imperialist countries will see even fewer benefits from imperialism than before, while still having to carry the costs.
This is an inherently revolutionary situation, which will "justify" further intervention in the Third World by the US and other imperialist nations, either through indirect military aid to client regimes or through outright invasion, depending on the nature of the "crisis of democracy" (a term used by the Trilateral Commission to characterise popular uprisings).
In addition, with the advent of a "global market" under GATT, corporations still need politicians to act for them in creating a "free" market which best suits their interests. Therefore, by backing powerful states, corporate elites can increase their bargaining powers and help shape the "New World Order" in their own image.
To sum up, globalisation will see imperialism change as capitalism itself changes. The need for imperialism remains, as the interests of private capital still need to be defended against the dispossessed. All that changes is that the governments of the imperialistic nations become even more accountable to capital and even less to their populations.
D.6 Are anarchists against Nationalism?
To begin to answer this question, we must first define what we mean by nationalism. For many people, it is just the natural attachment to home, the place one grew up. These feelings, however, obviously do not exist in a social vacuum. Nationality, as Bakunin noted, is a "natural and social fact," as "every people and the smallest folk-unit has its own character, its own specific mode of existence, its own way of speaking, feeling, thinking, and acting; and it is this idiosyncrasy that constitutes the essence of nationality." [The Political Philosophy of Bakunin, p. 325]
Perhaps it is in the interest of anarchists to distinguish between nationality or ethnicity (that is, cultural affinity) and nationalism (confined to the state and government itself) as a better way of defining what we support and oppose -- nationalism, at root, is destructive and reactionary, whereas ethnic and cultural affinity is a source of community, social diversity and vitality.
Such diversity is to be celebrated and allowed to express it itself on its own terms. Or, as Murray Bookchin puts it, "[t]hat specific peoples should be free to fully develop their own cultural capacities is not merely a right but a desideratum. The world would be a drab place indeed if a magnificent mosaic of different cultures does not replace the largely decultured and homogenised world created by modern capitalism." ["Nationalism and the 'National Question'", Society and Nature, pp. 8-36, No. 5, pp. 28-29] But, as he also warns, such cultural freedom and variety should not be confused with nationalism. The latter is far more (and ethically, a lot less) than simple recognition of cultural uniqueness and love of home. Nationalism is the love of, or the desire to create, a nation-state. And for this reason anarchists are opposed to it, in all its forms.
This means that nationalism cannot and must not be confused with nationality. The later is a product of social processes while the former to a product of state action and elite rule. Social evolution cannot be squeezed into the narrow, restricting borders of the nation state without harming the individuals whose lives make that social development happen in the first place.
The state, as we have seen, is a centralised body invested with power and a social monopoly of force. As such it pre-empts the autonomy of localities and peoples, and in the name of the "nation" crushes the living, breathing reality of "nations" (i.e. peoples and their cultures) with one law, one culture and one "official" history. Unlike most nationalists, anarchists recognise that almost all "nations" are in fact not homogeneous, and so consider nationality to be far wider in application than just lines on maps, created by conquest. Hence we think that recreating the centralised state in a slightly smaller area, as nationalist movements generally advocate, cannot solve what is called the "national question."
Ultimately, as Rudolf Rocker argues, the "nation is not the cause, but the result of the state. It is the state that creates the nation, not the nation the state." [Nationalism and Culture, p. 200] Every state is an artificial mechanism imposed upon society by some ruler in order to defend and make secure the interests of privileged minorities within society. Nationalism was created to reinforce the state by providing it with the loyalty of a people of shared linguistic, ethnic, and cultural affinities. And if these shared affinities do not exist, the state will create them by centralising education in its own hands, imposing an "official" language and attempting to crush cultural differences from the people's within its borders.
Hence we see the all too familiar sight of successful "national liberation" movements replacing foreign oppression with a home-based one. This is unsurprising as nationalism delivers power to local ruling classes as it relies on taking state power. As a result, Nationalism can never deliver freedom to the working class (the vast majority of a given "nation"). Moreover, nationalism hides class differences within the "nation" by arguing that all people must unite around their supposedly common interests (as members of the same "nation"), when in fact they have nothing in common due to the existence of hierarchies and classes. Its function is to build a mass support base for local elites angry with imperialism for blocking their ambitions to rule and exploit "their" nation and fellow country people:
"[W]e must not forget that we are always dealing with the organised selfishness of privileged minorities which hide behind the skirts of the nation, hide behind the credulity of the masses [when discussing Nationalism]. We speak of national interests, national capital, national spheres of interest, national honour, and national spirit; but we forget that behind all this there are hidden merely the selfish interests of power-loving politicians and money-loving business men for whom the nation is a convenient cover to hide their personal greed and their schemes for political power from the eyes of the world." [Rudolf Rocker, Op. Cit., pp. 252-3]
Moreover, the Nation has effectively replaced God in terms of justifying injustice and oppression and allowing individuals to wash their hands of their own actions. For "under cover of the nation everything can be hid" argues Rocker (echoing Bakunin, we must note). "The national flag covers every injustice, every unhumanity, every lie, every outrage, every crime. The collective responsibility of the nation kills the sense of justice of the individual and brings man to the point where he overlooks injustice done; where, indeed, it may appear to him a meritorious act if committed in the interests of the nation." [Op. Cit., p. 252] (perhaps, in the future, the economy will increasingly replace the nation just as the nation replaced god as the means of escaping personal responsibility of our acts? Only time will tell, but "economic efficiency" has been as commonly used to justify oppression and exploitation as "reasons of state" and "the national interest" have been).
Thus anarchists oppose nationalism in all its forms as harmful to the interests of those who make up a given nation and their cultural identities. However, anarchists are opposed to all forms of exploitation and oppression, including imperialism (i.e. a situation of external domination where the ruling class of one country dominates the people and territory of another country - see section D.5). While rejecting Nationalism, anarchists do not necessarily oppose national liberation struggles against such domination (see section D.7 for details). However, it goes without saying that national "liberation" movements that take on notions of racial, cultural or ethnic "superiority" or "purity" or believe that cultural differences are somehow "rooted" in biology get no support from anarchists.
D.7 Are anarchists opposed to National Liberation struggles?
While anarchists are opposed to nationalism (see last section), this does not mean that they are indifferent to national liberation struggles. Quite the opposite. In the words of Bakunin, "I feel myself always the patriot of all oppressed fatherlands. . . Nationality. . . is a historic, local fact which, like all real and harmless facts, has the right to claim general acceptance. . . Every people, like every person, is involuntarily that which it is and therefore has a right to be itself. . . Nationality is not a principle; it is a legitimate fact, just as individuality is. Every nationality, great or small, has the incontestable right to be itself, to live according to its own nature. This right is simply the corollary of the general principal of freedom." [quoted by Alfredo M. Bonanno in Anarchism and the National Liberation Struggle, pp. 19-20]
More recently Murray Bookchin has expressed similar sentiments: "No left libertarian. . . can oppose the right of a subjugated people to establish itself as an autonomous entity -- be it in a [libertarian] confederation. . . or as a nation-state based in hierarchical and class inequities." ["Nationalism and the 'National Question'", Society and Nature, pp. 8-36, No. 5, , p. 31] Even so, anarchists do not elevate the idea of national liberation into a mindless article of faith, as much of the Leninist-influenced left has done this century, calling for support for the oppressed nation without first inquiring into "what kind of society a given 'national liberation' movement would likely produce." To do so, as Bookchin points out, would be to "support national liberation struggles for instrumental purposes, merely as a means of 'weakening' imperialism," which leads to "a condition of moral bankruptcy" as socialist ideas become associated with the authoritarian and statist goals of the "anti-imperialist" dictatorships in "liberated" nations. [Ibid., pp. 25-31] "But to oppose an oppressor is not equivalent to calling for support for everything formerly colonised nation-states do." [Ibid., p. 31]
Thus anarchists oppose foreign oppression and are usually sympathetic to attempts by those who suffer it to end it. This does not mean that we necessarily support national liberation movements as such (after all, they usually desire to create a new state) but we cannot sit back and watch one nation oppress another and so act to stop that oppression (by, for example, protesting against the oppressing nation and trying to get them to change their policies and withdraw from the oppressed nations affairs).
A major problem with national liberation struggles is that they usually counterpoise the common interests of "the nation" to those of an oppressor, but assume that class is irrelevant. Although nationalist movements often cut across classes, they still seek to increase autonomy for certain parts of society while ignoring that of other parts. For anarchists, a new national state would not bring any fundamental change in the lives of most people, who would still be powerless both economically and socially. Looking around the world at all the many nation-states in existence, we see the same gross disparities in power, influence and wealth restricting self-determination for working-class people, even if they are free "nationally." It seems hypocritical for nationalist leaders to talk of liberating their own nation from imperialism while advocating the creation of a capitalist nation-state, which will be oppressive to its own population and, perhaps, eventually become imperialistic itself as it develops to a certain point and has to seek foreign outlets for its products and capital in order to continue economic growth and realise suitable profit levels (as is happening, for example, with South Korea).
In response to national liberation struggles, anarchists stress the self-liberation of the working class, which can be only achieved by its members' own efforts, creating and using their own organisations. In this process there can be no separation of political, social and economic goals. The struggle against imperialism cannot be separated from the struggle against capitalism. This has been the approach of most, if not all, anarchist movements in the face of foreign domination -- the combination of the struggle against foreign domination with the class struggle against native oppressors. In many different countries (including Bulgaria, Mexico, Cuba and Korea) anarchists have tried, by their "propaganda, and above all action, [to] encourage the masses to turn the struggle for political independence into the struggle for the Social Revolution." [Sam Dolgoff, The Cuban Revolution - A critical perspective, p. 41 - Dolgoff is referring to the Cuban movement here, but his comments are applicable to most historical -- and current -- situations]
Moreover, we should point out that Anarchists in imperialist countries have also opposed national oppression by both words and deeds. For example, the prominent Japanese Anarchist Kotoku Shusi was framed and executed in 1910 after campaigning against Japanese expansionism. In Italy, the anarchist movement opposed Italian expansionism into Eritrea and Ethiopia in the 1880s and 1890s, and organised a massive anti-war movement against the 1911 invasion of Libya. In 1909, the Spanish Anarchists organised a mass strike against intervention in Morocco. More recently, anarchists in France struggled against two colonial wars (in Indochina and Algeria) in the late 50's and early 60's, anarchists world-wide opposed US aggression in Latin America and Vietnam (without, we must note, supporting the Cuban and Vietnamese Stalinist regimes), opposed the Gulf War (during which most anarchists raised the call of "No war but the class war") as well as opposing Soviet imperialism.
In practise national liberation movements are full of contradictions between the way the rank and file sees progress being made (and their hopes and dreams) and the wishes of their ruling class members/leaders. The leadership will always resolve this conflict in favour of the future ruling class. Most of the time that makes it possible for individuals members of these struggles to realise this and break from these politics towards anarchism. But at times of major conflict this contradiction will become very apparent and at this stage it's possible that large numbers may break from nationalism if an alternative that addresses their concerns exists. Providing that anarchist do not compromise our ideals such movements against foreign domination can be wonderful opportunities to spread our politics, ideals and ideas -- and to show up the limitations and dangers of nationalism itself and present a viable alternative.
For anarchists, the key question is whether freedom is for abstract concepts like "the nation" or for the individuals who make up the nationality and give it life. Oppression must be fought on all fronts, within nations and internationally, in order for working-class people to gain the fruits of freedom. Any national liberation struggle which bases itself on nationalism is doomed to failure as a movement for extending human freedom. Thus anarchists "refuse to participate in national liberation fronts; they participate in class fronts which may or may not be involved in national liberation struggles. The struggle must spread to establish economic, political and social structures in the liberated territories, based on federalist and libertarian organisations." [Alfredo M. Bonanno, Anarchism and the National Liberation Struggle, p. 12]
So while anarchists unmask nationalism for what it is, we do not disdain the basic struggle for identity and self-management which nationalism diverts. We encourage direct action and the spirit of revolt against all forms of oppression -- social, economic, political, racial, sexual, religious and national. By this method, we aim to turn national liberation struggles into human liberation struggles. And while fighting against oppression, we struggle for anarchy, a free confederation of communes based on workplace and community assemblies. A confederation which will place the nation-state, all nation-states, into the dust-bin of history where it belongs.
And as far as "national" identity within an anarchist society is concerned, our position is clear and simple. As Bakunin noted with respect to the Polish struggle for national liberation during the last century, anarchists, as "adversaries of every State, . . . reject the rights and frontiers called historic. For us Poland only begins, only truly exists there where the labouring masses are and want to be Polish, it ends where, renouncing all particular links with Poland, the masses wish to establish other national links." [quoted in "Bakunin", Jean Caroline Cahm, in Socialism and Nationalism, volume 1, pp. 22-49, p. 43]
D.8 What causes militarism and what are its effects?
There are two main causes of capitalist militarism. Firstly, there is the need to contain the domestic enemy - the oppressed and exploited sections of the population. The other, as noted in the section on imperialism, is that a strong military is necessary in order for a ruling class to pursue an aggressive and expansionist foreign policy. For most developed capitalist nations, this kind of foreign policy becomes more and more important because of economic forces, i.e. in order to provide outlets for its goods and to prevent the system from collapsing by expanding the market continually outward. This outward expansion of, and so competition between, capital needs military force to protect its interests (particularly those invested in other countries) and give it added clout in the economic jungle of the world market.
Capitalist militarism also serves several other purposes and has a number of effects. First, it promotes the development of a specially favoured group of companies involved in the production of armaments or armament related products ("defence" contractors), who have a direct interest in the maximum expansion of military production. Since this group is particularly wealthy, it exerts great pressure on government to pursue the type of state intervention and, often, the aggressive foreign policies it wants.
This "special relationship" between state and Big Business also has the advantage that it allows the ordinary citizen to pay for industrial Research and Development. Government subsidies provide an important way for companies to fund their research and development at taxpayer expense, which often yields "spin-offs" with great commercial potential as consumer products (e.g. computers). Needless to say, all the profits go to the defence contractors and to the commercial companies who buy licences to patented technologies from them, rather than being shared with the public which funded the R&D that made the profits possible.
It is necessary to provide some details to indicate the size and impact of military spending on the US economy:
"Since 1945. . . there have been new industries sparking investment and employment . . In most of them, basic research and technological progress were closely linked to the expanding military sector. The major innovation in the 1950s was electronics . . . [which] increased its output 15 percent per year. It was of critical importance in workplace automation, with the federal government providing the bulk of the research and development (R&D) dollars for military-orientated purposes. Infrared instrumentation, pressure and temperature measuring equipment, medical electronics, and thermoelectric energy conversion all benefited from military R&D. By the 1960s indirect and direct military demand accounted for as much as 70 percent of the total output of the electronics industry. Feedbacks also developed between electronics and aircraft, the second growth industry of the 1950s. By 1960 . . . [i]ts annual investment outlays were 5.3 times larger than their 1947-49 level, and over 90 percent of its output went to the military. Synthetics (plastics and fibers) was another growth industry owning much of its development to military-related projects. Throughout the 1950s and 1960s, military-related R&D, including space, accounted for 40 to 50 percent of total public and private R&D spending and at least 85% of federal government share." [Richard B. Du Boff, Accumulation and Power, pp. 103-4]
Not only this, government spending on road building (initially justified using defence concerns) also gave a massive boost to private capital (and, in the process, totally transformed America into a land fit for car and oil corporations). The cumulative impact of the 1944, 1956 and 1968 Federal Highway Acts "allowed $70 billion to be spent on the interstates without [the money] passing through the congressional appropriations board." The 1956 Act "[i]n effect wrote into law the 1932 National Highway Users Conference strategy of G[eneral] M[otors] chairman Alfred P. Sloan to channel gasoline and other motor vehicle-related excise taxes into highway construction." GM also illegally bought-up and effectively destroyed public transit companies across America, so reducing competition against private car ownership. The net effect of this state intervention was that by 1963-66 "one in every six business enterprise was directly dependent on the manufacture, distribution, servicing, and the use of motor vehicles." The impact of this process is still evident today -- both in terms of ecological destruction and in the fact that automobile and oil companies are still dominate the top twenty of the Fortune 500. [Op. Cit., p. 102]
This system, which can be called military Keynesianism, has three advantages over socially-based state intervention. Firstly, unlike social programmes, military intervention does not improve the situation (and thus, hopes) of the majority, who can continue to be marginalised by the system, suffer the discipline of the labour market and feel the threat of unemployment. Secondly, it acts likes welfare for the rich, ensuring that while the many are subject to market forces, the few can escape that fate - while singing the praises of the "free market". And, thirdly, it does not compete with private capital.
Because of the connection between militarism and imperialism, it was natural after World War II that America should become the world's leading military state at the same time that it was becoming the world's leading economic power, and that strong ties developed between government, business, and the armed forces. American "military capitalism" is described in detail below, but the remarks also apply to a number of other "advanced" capitalist states.
In his farewell address, President Eisenhower warned of the danger posed to individual liberties and democratic processes by the "military-industrial complex," which might, he cautioned, seek to keep the economy in a state of continual war-readiness simply because it is good business. This echoed the warning which had been made earlier by sociologist C. Wright Mills (in The Power Elite, 1956), who pointed out that since the end of World War II the military had become enlarged and decisive to the shape of the entire American economy, and that US capitalism had in fact become a military capitalism. This situation has not substantially changed since Mills wrote, for it is still the case that all US military officers have grown up in the atmosphere of the post-war military-industrial alliance and have been explicitly educated and trained to carry it on. So, despite recent cuts in the US defence budget, American capitalism remains military capitalism, with a huge armaments industry and defence contractors still among the most powerful of political entities.
D.8.1 Will militarism change with the apparent end of the Cold War?
Many politicians seemed to think so in the early nineties, asserting that a "peace dividend" was at hand. Since the Gulf War, however, Americans have heard little more about it. Although it's true that some fat was trimmed from the defence budget, both economic and political pressures have tended to keep the basic military-industrial complex intact, insuring a state of global war-readiness and continuing production of ever more advanced weapons systems into the foreseeable future.
Since it's having more and more trouble dominating the world economically, America now claims superpower status largely on the basis of its military superiority. Therefore the US won't be likely to renounce this superiority willingly-- especially since the prospect of recapturing world economic superiority appears to depend in part on her ability to bully other nations into granting economic concessions and privileges, as in the past. Hence the US public is being bombarded with propaganda designed to show that an ongoing US military presence is necessary in every corner of the planet.
For example, after the Gulf War the draft of a government White Paper was released in which it was argued that the US must maintain its status as the world's strongest military power and not hesitate to act unilaterally if UN approval for future military actions is not forthcoming. Although then President Bush, under election-year political pressures, denied that he personally held such views, the document reflected the thinking of powerful authoritarian forces in government -- thinking that has a way of becoming public policy through secret National Security Directives (see section D.9.2 -- What is "Invisible government"?).
For these reasons it would not be wise to bet on a deep and sustained American demilitarisation. It is true that troop strength is being cut back in response to Soviet withdrawals from Eastern Europe; but these cutbacks are also prompted by the development of automated weapons systems which reduce the number of soldiers needed to win battles, as demonstrated in the Persian Gulf.
Although there may appear to be no urgent need for huge military budgets now that the Soviet threat is gone, the US has found it impossible to kick its forty-year addiction to militarism. As Noam Chomsky points out in many of his works, the "Pentagon System," in which the public is forced to subsidise research and development of high tech industry through subsidies to defence contractors, is a covert substitute in the US for the overt industrial planning policies of other "advanced" capitalist nations, like Germany and Japan. US defence businesses, which are among the biggest lobbyists, cannot afford to lose this "corporate welfare." Moreover, continued corporate downsizing and high levels of unemployment will produce strong pressure to maintain defence industries simply in order to keep people working.
Despite some recent modest trimming of defence budgets, the demands of US military capitalism still take priority over the needs of the people. For example, Holly Sklar points out that Washington, Detroit, and Philadelphia have higher infant death rates than Jamaica or Costa Rica and that Black America as a whole has a higher infant mortality rate than Nigeria; yet the US still spends less public funds on education than on the military, and more on military bands than on the National Endowment for the Arts ["Brave New World Order," in Cynthia Peters, ed., Collateral Damage, 1992, pp. 3-46]. But of course, politicians continue to maintain that education and social services must be cut back even further because there is "no money" to fund them.
A serious problem at this point, however, is that the collapse of the Soviet Union leaves the Pentagon in desperate need of a sufficiently dangerous and demonic enemy to justify continued military spending in the style to which it's accustomed. Saddam Hussein was temporarily helpful, but he's not enough of a menace to warrant the robust defence budgets of yore now that his military machine has been smashed. There are some indications, however, that the US government has its sights on Iran.
The main point in favour of targeting Iran is that the American public still craves revenge for the 1979 hostage humiliation, the Lebanon bombing, the Iran-Contra scandal, and other outrages, and can thus be relied on to support a war of retribution. Hence it would not be surprising to hear much more in the future about a possible Iranian nuclear threat and about the dangers of Iranian influence in the Moslem republics of the ex-Soviet empire.
In the wake of the Persian Gulf War, the United States has quietly been building a network of defence alliances reminiscent of the Eisenhower years after World War II, so that America may now be called upon to police disturbances all over the Arab World. Sending troops to Somalia appears to have been designed to help accustom Americans to such a role.
Besides Iran, unfriendly regimes in North Korea, Cuba, and Libya, as well as communist guerrilla groups in various South American nations, also hold great promise as future testing grounds for new weapons systems. And of course there is the recent troop deployments to Haiti and Bosnia, which provide the Pentagon with more arguments for continued high levels of defence spending. In a nutshell, then, the trend toward increasing militarism is not likely to be checked by the present military "downsizing," which will merely produce a leaner and more efficient fighting machine.
D.9 What is the relationship between wealth polarisation and authoritarian government?
We have previously noted the recent increase in the rate of wealth polarisation, with its erosion of working-class living standards. This process has been referred to by Noam Chomsky as "Third-Worldisation." It is appearing in a particularly acute form in the US -- the "richest" industrialised nation which also has the highest level of poverty, since it is the most polarised -- but the process can be seen in other "advanced" industrial nations as well, particularly in the UK.
Third World governments are typically authoritarian, since harsh measures are required to suppress rebellions among their impoverished and discontented masses. Hence "Third-Worldisation" implies not only economic polarisation but also increasingly authoritarian governments. As Philip Slater puts it, a large, educated, and alert "middle class" (i.e. average income earners) has always been the backbone of democracy, and anything that concentrates wealth tends to weaken democratic institutions [A Dream Deferred, p. 68].
If this is true, then along with increasing wealth polarisation in the US we should expect to see signs of growing authoritarianism. This hypothesis is confirmed by numerous facts, including the following: continuing growth of an "imperial presidency" (concentration of political power); extralegal operations by the executive branch (e.g. the Iran-Contra scandal, the Grenada and Panama invasions); skyrocketing incarceration rates; more official secrecy and censorship; the rise of the Far Right; more police and prisons; FBI requests for massive wiretapping capability; and so on. Public support for draconian measures to deal with crime reflect the increasingly authoritarian mood of citizens beginning to panic in the face of an ongoing social breakdown, which has been brought about, quite simply, by ruling-class greed that has gotten out of hand -- a fact that is carefully obscured by the media.
One might think that representative democracy and constitutionally guaranteed freedoms would make an authoritarian government impossible in the United States and other liberal democratic nations with similar constitutional "protections" for civil rights. In reality, however, the declaration of a "national emergency" would allow the central government to ignore constitutional guarantees with impunity and set up what Hannah Arendt calls "invisible government" -- mechanisms allowing an administration to circumvent constitutional structures while leaving them nominally in place (see section D.9.2).
In this regard it is important to remember that the Nazis created a "shadow government" in Germany even as the "democratic" Weimar constitution continued to operate in theory. Hitler at first implemented his programmes through the constitution, using existing government agencies and departments. Later he set up Nazi Party bureaus that duplicated the functions of the Weimar government, allowing the latter to remain in place but without power, while the Nazi bureaus (especially the SS, and of course Hitler himself) held the actual power. The Communist Party in Russia created a similar invisible government after the Bolshevik revolution, leaving the revolutionary constitution as well as the government bureaucracy in place while Communist Party agencies and the General Secretary wielded the real power [See Marilyn French, Beyond Power, p. 349].
If the drift toward social breakdown continues in the "advanced" industrial nations, it's not difficult to conceive of voters electing overtly authoritarian, right-wing administrations campaigning on "law-and-order" platforms. In the face of widespread rioting, looting, and mayhem (especially if it spilled over from the ghettos and threatened the suburbs), reactionary hysteria could propel authoritarian types into both the executive and legislative branches of government. The "middle classes" (i.e. professionals, small business people and so on) would then support charismatic martial-style leaders who promised to restore law and order, particularly if they were men with impressive military or police credentials.
Once elected, and with the support of willing legislatures and courts, authoritarian administrations could easily create much more extensive mechanisms of invisible government than already exist, giving the executive branch virtually dictatorial powers. Such administrations could also vastly increase government control of the media, implement martial law, escalate foreign militarism, further expand the funding and scope of the police, national guard units, secret police and foreign intelligence agencies, and authorise more widespread surveillance of citizens as well as the infiltration of dissident political groups. Random searches and seizures, curfews, government control of all organised meetings, harassment or outright banning of groups that disagreed with or attempted to block government policies, and the imprisonment of political dissidents and others judged to be dangerous to "national security" would then become routine.
These developments would not occur all at once, but so gradually, imperceptibly, and logically -- given the need to maintain "law and order" -- that most people would not even be aware that an authoritarian take-over was underway. Indeed, it is already underway in the US (see Bertram Gross, Friendly Fascism, South End Press, 1989).
In the following subsections we will examine some of the symptoms of growing authoritarianism listed above, again referring primarily to the example of the United States. We are including these sections in the FAQ because the disturbing trends canvassed here give the anarchist programme of social reconstruction more urgency than would otherwise be the case. For if radical and dissident groups are muzzled -- as always happens under authoritarian rule -- that programme will be much more difficult to achieve.
D.9.1 Why does political power become concentrated under capitalism?
Under capitalism, political power tends to become concentrated in the executive branch of government, along with a corresponding decline in the effectiveness of parliamentary institutions. As Paul Sweezy points out, parliaments grew out of the struggle of capitalists against the power of centralised monarchies during the early modern period, and hence the function of parliaments has always been to check and control the exercise of executive power. For this reason, "parliaments flourished and reached the peak of their prestige in the period of competitive capitalism when the functions of the state, particularly in the economic sphere, were reduced to a minimum." [Theory of Capitalist Development, p. 310]
As capitalism develops, however, the ruling class must seek to expand its capital through foreign investments, which leads to imperialism, which in turn leads to a tightening of class lines and increasingly severe social conflict, as we have seen earlier (see D.5.2). As this happens, legislatures become battlegrounds of contending parties, divided by divergent class and group interests, which reduces their capacity for positive action. And at the same time, the ruling class increasingly needs a strong centralised state that can protect its interests in foreign countries as well as solve difficult and complex economic problems. "Under the circumstances, parliament is forced to give up one after another of its cherished prerogatives and to see built up under its very eyes the kind of centralised and uncontrolled authority against which, in its youth, it had fought so hard and so well." [Ibid., p. 319]
This process can be seen clearly in the history of the United States. Since World War II, power has become centralised in the hands of the president to such an extent that scholars now refer to an "imperial presidency," following Arthur Schlesinger's 1973 book of that title.
Contemporary US presidents' appropriation of congressional authority, especially in matters relating to national security, has paralleled the rise of the United States as the world's strongest and most imperialistic military power. In the increasingly dangerous and interdependent world of the 20th century, the perceived need for a leader who can act quickly and decisively, without possibly disastrous obstruction by Congress, has provided an impetus for ever greater concentration of power in the White House.
This concentration has taken place in both foreign and domestic policy, but it has been catalysed above all by a series of foreign policy decisions in which modern US presidents have seized the most vital of all government powers, the power to make war. And as they have continued to commit troops to war without congressional authorisation or public debate, their unilateral policy-making has spilled over into domestic affairs as well.
In the atmosphere of omnipresent crisis that developed in the fifties, the United States appointed itself guardian of the "free world" against the Red Menace. This placed unprecedented military resources under the control of the President. At the same time, the Eisenhower Administration established a system of pacts and treaties with nations all over the globe, making it difficult for Congress to limit the President's deployment of troops according to the requirements of treaty obligations and national security, both of which were left to presidential judgement. The CIA, a secretive agency accountable to Congress only after the fact, was made the primary instrument of US intervention in the internal affairs of other nations for national security reasons.
With President Johnson's massive deployment of troops to Vietnam, the scope of presidential war-making power took a giant leap forward. Unlike Truman's earlier decision to commit troops in Korea without prior congressional approval, the UN had not issued any resolutions to legitimate US involvement in Vietnam. In justifying the President's decision, the State Department implied that in the interdependent world of the twentieth century, warfare anywhere on the globe could constitute an attack on the United States which might require immediate response, and hence that the Commander-in-Chief was authorised to take "defensive" war measures without congressional approval or UN authorisation.
Following Vietnam, the presidency was further strengthened by the creation of an all-volunteer military, which is less subject to rebellions in the face of popular opposition to a foreign war than a conscripted force. With their control over the armed forces more secure, presidents since Nixon have been liberated for a much wider range of foreign adventures. The collapse of the Soviet military threat now makes it easier than ever for the President to pursue military options in striving to achieve foreign policy objectives, as the Persian Gulf conflict clearly showed. United States involvement there would have been much more difficult during the Cold War, with the Soviet Union supporting Iraq.
It is sometimes argued that Watergate fatally weakened the power of the US presidency, but this is not actually the case. Michael Lind lists several reasons why [in "The Case for Congressional Power: the Out-of-Control Presidency," The New Republic, Aug. 14, 1995]. First, the President can still wage war at will, without consulting Congress. Second, thanks to precedents set by Bush and Clinton, important economic treaties (like GATT and NAFTA) can be rammed through Congress as "fast-track" legislation, which limits the time allowed for debate and forbids amendments. Third, thanks to Jimmy Carter, who reformed the Senior Executive Service to give the White House more control over career bureaucrats, and Ronald Reagan, who politicised the upper levels of the executive branch to an unprecedented degree, presidents can now pack government with their spoilsmen and reward partisan bureaucrats. Fourth, thanks to George Bush, presidents now have a powerful new technique to enhance presidential prerogatives and erode the intent of Congress even further -- namely, signing laws while announcing that they will not obey them. Fifth, thanks also to Bush, yet another new instrument of arbitrary presidential power has been created: the "tsar," a presidential appointee with vague, sweeping charges that overlap with or supersede the powers of department heads.
As Lind also points out, the White House staff that has ballooned since World War II seems close to becoming an extra-constitutional "fourth branch" of government The creation of presidential "tsars" whose powers overlap or supersede those of department heads is reminiscent of the creation of shadow governments by Hitler and Stalin (see also section D.9.2 -- What is "Invisible government"?).
Besides the reasons noted above, another cause of increasing political centralisation under capitalism is that industrialisation forces masses of people into alienated wage slavery, breaking their bonds to other people, to the land, and to tradition, which in turn encourages strong central governments to assume the role of surrogate parent and to provide direction for their citizens in political, intellectual, moral, and even spiritual matters [see Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism, 1968]. And as Marilyn French emphasises [in Beyond Power], the growing concentration of political power in the capitalist state can also be attributed to the form of the corporation, which is a microcosm of the authoritarian state, since it is based on centralised authority, bureaucratic hierarchy, antidemocratic controls, and lack of individual initiative and autonomy. Thus the millions of people who work for large corporations tend automatically to develop the psychological traits needed to survive and "succeed" under authoritarian rule: notably, obedience, conformity, efficiency, subservience, and fear of responsibility. The political system naturally tends to reflect the psychological conditions created at the workplace, where most people spend about half their time.
Reviewing such trends, Ralph Miliband concludes that "[h]owever strident the rhetoric of democracy and popular sovereignty may be, and despite the 'populist' overtones which politics must now incorporate, the trend is toward the ever-greater appropriation of power at the top." [Divided Societies, Oxford, 1989]
D.9.2. What is "invisible government"?
We've already briefly noted the phenomenon of "invisible government" or "shadow government" (see section D.9), which occurs when an administration is able to bypass or weaken official government agencies or institutions to implement policies that are not officially permitted. In the US, the Reagan Administration's Iran-Contra affair is an example. During that episode the National Security Council, an arm of the executive branch, secretly funded the Contras, a mercenary counterinsurgency force in Central America, in direct violation of the Boland Amendment which Congress had passed for the specific purpose of prohibiting such funding. The fact that investigators could not prove the President's authorisation or even knowledge of the operation is a tribute to the presidential "deniability" its planners took care to build into it.
Other recent cases of invisible government in the United States involve the weakening of official government agencies to the point where they can no longer effectively carry out their mandate. Reagan's tenure in the White House again provides a number of examples. The Environmental Protection Agency, for instance, was for all practical purposes neutralised when employees dedicated to genuine environmental protection were removed and replaced with people loyal to corporate polluters. Evidence suggests that the Department of the Interior under Reagan-appointee James Watt was similarly co-opted. Such detours around the law are deliberate policy tools that allow presidents to exercise much more actual power than they appear to have on paper.
One of the most potent methods of invisible government in the US is the President's authority to determine foreign and domestic policy through National Security Directives that are kept secret from Congress and the American people. Such NSDs cover a virtually unlimited field of actions, shaping policy that may be radically different from what is stated publicly by the White House and involving such matters as interference with First Amendment rights, initiation of activities that could lead to war, escalation of military conflicts, and even the commitment of billions of dollars in loan guarantees -- all without congressional approval or even knowledge.
According to congressional researchers, past administrations have used national security orders to intensify the war in Vietnam, send US commandos to Africa, and bribe foreign governments. The Reagan Administration wrote more than 320 secret directives on everything from the future of Micronesia to ways to keep the government running after a nuclear holocaust. Jeffrey Richelson, a leading scholar on US intelligence, says that the Bush Administration had written more than 100 NSDs as of early 1992 on subjects ranging from the drug wars to nuclear weaponry to support for guerrillas in Afghanistan to politicians in Panama. Although the subjects of such orders have been discovered by diligent reporters and researchers, none of the texts has been declassified or released to Congress. Indeed, the Bush Administration consistently refused to release even unclassified NSDs!
On October 31, 1989, nine months before the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait, President Bush signed NSD-26, ordering US agencies to expand political and economic ties with Iraq, giving Iraq access to US financial aid involving a billion-dollar loan guarantee as well as military technology and foodstuffs later sold for cash. Members of Congress, concerned that policy decisions involving billion-dollar commitments of funds should be made jointly with the legislature, dispatched investigators in 1991 to obtain a list of the secret directives. The White House refused to co-operate, ordering the directives kept secret "because they deal with national security." Iraq's default on the loans it obtained through NSD-26 means that American taxpayers are footing the billion-dollar bill.
The underlying authoritarianism of politicians is often belied by their words. For instance, even as Reagan claimed to favour diminished centralisation he was calling for a radical increase in his control of the budget and for extended CIA activities inside the country -- with less congressional surveillance -- both of which served to increase centralised power [Tom Farrer, "The Making of Reaganism," New York Review of Books, Jan 21, 1982, cited in Marilyn French, Beyond Power, p. 346]. President Clinton's recent use of an Executive Order to bail out Mexico from its debt crisis after Congress failed to appropriate the money falls right into the authoritarian tradition of running the country by fiat.
Perhaps the most disturbing revelation to emerge from the Iran-Contra affair was the Reagan administration's contingency plan for imposing martial law. Alfonso Chardy, a reporter for the Miami Herald, revealed in July 1987 that Lt. Col. Oliver North, while serving on the National Security Council's staff, had worked with the Federal Emergency Management Agency on a plan to suspend the Bill of Rights by imposing martial law in the event of "national opposition to a US military invasion abroad." This martial law directive was still in effect in 1988 [ Richard O. Curry, ed., Freedom at Risk: Secrecy, Censorship, and Repression in the 1980s, Temple University Press, 1988].
Former US Attorney General Edwin Meese declared that the single most important factor in implementing martial law would be "advance intelligence gathering to facilitate internment of the leaders of civil disturbances" [Ibid., p. 28}. As discussed in B.16.5, during the 1980s the FBI greatly increased its surveillance of individuals and groups judged to be potentially "subversive," thus providing the Administration with a convenient list of people who would be subject to immediate internment during civil disturbances. The Omnibus Counter-terrorism Bill now being debated in the US Congress would give the President virtually dictatorial powers, by allowing him to imprison and bankrupt dissidents by declaring their organisations "terrorist."
D.9.3 Why are incarceration rates rising?
A large prison population is another characteristic of authoritarian regimes. Hence the burgeoning US incarceration rate during the past decade, coupled with the recent rapid growth of the prison "industry" must be regarded as further evidence of a drift toward authoritarian government, as one would expect given the phenomenon of "Third-Worldisation."
Prison inmates in the US are predominantly poor, and the sentences handed out to people without social prestige or the resources to defend themselves are much harsher than those received by people with higher incomes who are charged with the same crimes. Federal Bureau of Justice Statistics show that the median incomes of male prisoners before sentencing is about one-third that of the general population. Median incomes of inmates are even lower if the relatively few (and more-affluent) white-collar criminals are not included in the calculations.
Since the poor are disproportionately from minorities, the prison population is also disproportionately minority. By 1992, the American authorities were imprisoning black men at a rate five times higher than the old apartheid regime had done at its worst in South Africa, and there were more prisoners of Mexican descent in the US than in all of Mexico [Phil Wilayto, "Prisons and Capitalist Restructuring," Workers' World, January 15, 1995].
Michael Specter reports that more than 90 percent of all the offences committed by prison inmates are crimes against property ["Community Corrections," The Nation, March 13, 1982]. In an era where the richest one percent of the population owns more property than the bottom 90 percent combined, it's hardly a surprise that those at the very bottom should try to recoup illegally some of the maldistributed wealth they are unable to obtain legally.
In the 1980s the United States created mandatory sentences for dozens of drug offences, expanded capital punishment, and greatly increased the powers of police and prosecutors. The result was a doubling of the prison population from 1985 to 1994, according to a report recently issued by the US Department of Justice. Yet the overall crime rate in the U.S. has remained almost constant during the past twenty years, according to the same report. Indeed, the rate dropped 15 percent from 1980 to 1984, yet the number of prisoners increased 43 percent during that same period. The crime rate then increased by 14 percent from 1985 to 1989, while the number of prisoners grew by 52 percent.
Although the growth of the US prison population has been swollen out of proportion to the crime rate by new drug sentencing laws, drug use has not decreased. Repressive measures are clearly not working, as anyone can see, yet they're still favoured over social programmes, which continue to be scaled back. For example, a recently passed crime law in the US commits billions of dollars for more police and prisons, while at the same time the new Republican Congress eliminates family planning clinics, school lunch programmes, summer youth jobs programmes, etc. Prison construction has become a high-growth industry, one of the few "bright" spots in the American economy, attracting much investment by Wall Street vultures.
D.9.4 Why is government secrecy and surveillance of citizens on the increase?
Authoritarian governments are characterised by fully developed secret police forces, extensive government surveillance of civilians, a high level of official secrecy and censorship, and an elaborate system of state coercion to intimidate and silence dissenters. All of these phenomena have existed in the US for at least eighty years, but since World War II they have taken more extreme forms, especially during the 1980s. In this section we will examine the operations of the secret police.
The creation of an elaborate US "national security" apparatus has come about gradually since 1945 through congressional enactments, numerous executive orders and national security directives, and a series of Supreme Court decisions that have eroded First Amendment rights. The policies of the Reagan administration, however, reflected radical departures from the past, as revealed not only by their comprehensive scope but by their institutionalisation of secrecy, censorship, and repression in ways that will be difficult, if not impossible, to eradicate. As Richard Curry points out, the Reagan administration's success stems "from major structural and technological changes that have occurred in American society during the twentieth century -- especially the emergence of the modern bureaucratic State and the invention of sophisticated electronic devices that make surveillance possible in new and insidious ways." [Curry, Op. Cit., p. 4]
The FBI has used "countersubversive" surveillance techniques and kept lists of people and groups judged to be potential national security threats since the days of the Red Scare in the 1920s. Such activities were expanded in the late 1930s when Franklin Roosevelt instructed the FBI to gather information about Fascist and Communist activities in the US and to conduct investigations into possible espionage and sabotage. FBI chief J. Edgar Hoover interpreted these directives as authorising open-ended inquiries into a very broad category of potential "subversives"; and by repeatedly misinforming a succession of careless or indifferent presidents and attorneys general about the precise scope of Roosevelt's directives, Hoover managed for more than 30 years to elicit tacit executive approval for continuous FBI investigations into an ever-expanding class of political dissidents [Geoffrey R. Stone, "The Reagan Administration, the First Amendment, and FBI Domestic Security Investigations," in Curry, Ibid.].
The advent of the Cold War, ongoing conflicts with the Soviet Union, and fears of the "international Communist conspiracy" provided justification not only for covert CIA operations and American military intervention in countries all over the globe, but also contributed to the FBI's rationale for expanding its domestic surveillance activities.
Thus in 1957, without authorisation from Congress or any president, Hoover launched a highly secret operation called COINTELPRO:
"From 1957 to 1974, the bureau opened investigative files on more than half a million 'subversive' Americans. In the course of these investigations, the bureau, in the name of 'national security,' engaged in widespread wire-tapping, bugging, mail-openings, and break-ins. Even more insidious was the bureau's extensive use of informers and undercover operative to infiltrate and report on the activities and membership of 'subversive' political associations ranging from the Socialist Workers Party to the NAACP to the Medical Committee for Human Rights to a Milwaukee Boy Scout troop." [Stone, Ibid., p. 274].
But COINTELPRO involved much more than just investigation and surveillance. It was used to discredit, weaken, and ultimately destroy the New Left and Black radical movements of the sixties and early seventies, i.e. to silence the major sources of political dissent and opposition.
The FBI fomented violence through the use of agents provocateurs and destroyed the credibility of movement leaders by framing them, bringing false charges against them, distributing offensive materials published in their name, spreading false rumours, sabotaging equipment, stealing money, and other dirty tricks. By such means the Bureau exacerbated internal frictions within movements, turning members against each other as well as other groups.
Government documents show the FBI and police involved in creating acrimonious disputes which ultimately led to the break-up of such groups as Students for a Democratic Society, the Black Panther Party, and the Liberation News Service. The Bureau also played a part in the failure of such groups to form alliances across racial, class, and regional lines. The FBI is implicated in the assassination of Malcolm X, who was killed in a "factional dispute" that the Bureau bragged of having "developed" in the Nation of Islam, and of Martin Luther King, Jr., who was the target of an elaborate FBI plot to drive him to suicide before he was conveniently killed by a sniper. Other radicals were portrayed as criminals, adulterers, or government agents, while still others were murdered in phoney "shoot-outs" where the only shooting was done by the police.
These activities finally came to public attention because of the Watergate investigations, congressional hearings, and information obtained under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA). In response to the revelations of FBI abuse, Attorney General Edward Levi in 1976 set forth a set of public guidelines governing the initiation and scope of the bureau's domestic security investigations, severely restricting its ability to investigate political dissidents.
The Levi guidelines, however, proved to be only a temporary reversal of the trend. Although throughout his presidency Ronald Reagan professed to be against the increase of state power in regard to domestic policy, he in fact expanded the power of the national bureaucracy for "national security" purposes in systematic and unprecedented ways. One of the most significant of these was his immediate elimination of the safeguards against FBI abuse that the Levi guidelines had been designed to prevent. This was accomplished through two interrelated executive branch initiatives: Executive Order 12333, issued in 1981, and Attorney General William French Smith's guidelines, which replaced Levi's in 1983.
The Smith guidelines permitted the FBI to launch domestic security investigations if the facts "reasonably indicated" that groups or individuals were involved in criminal activity. More importantly, however, the new guidelines also authorised the FBI to "anticipate or prevent crime." As a result, the FBI could now investigate groups or individuals whose statements "advocated" criminal activity or indicated an apparent intent to engage in crime, particularly crimes of violence.
As Curry notes, the language of the Smith guidelines provided FBI officials with sufficient interpretative latitude to investigate virtually any group or individual it chose to target, including political activists who opposed the administration's foreign policy. Not surprisingly, under the new guidelines the Bureau immediately began investigating a wide variety of political dissidents, quickly making up for the time it had lost since 1976. Congressional sources show that in 1985 alone the FBI conducted 96 investigations of groups and individuals opposed to the Reagan Administration's Central American policies, including religious organisations who expressed solidarity with Central American refugees.
The Smith guidelines only allowed the Bureau to investigate dissidents. Now, however, there is a far greater threat to the US Bill of Rights waiting in the wings: the so-called Omnibus Counter-Terrorism Bill. If passed, this bill would allow the President, on his own initiative and by his own definition, to declare any person or organisation "terrorist."
Section 301(c)6 states that these presidential rulings will be considered as conclusive and cannot be appealed in court. The Attorney General would also be handed new enforcement powers, e.g. suspects would be considered guilty unless proven innocent, and the source or nature of the evidence brought against suspects would not have to be revealed if the Justice Department claimed a "national security" interest in suppressing such facts, as of course it would. Suspects could also be held without bail and deported for any reason if they were visiting aliens. Resident aliens would be entitled to a hearing, but could nevertheless be deported even if no crime were proven! US citizens could be put in jail for up to ten years and pay a $250,000 fine if declared guilty.
An equally scary provision of the Counter-Terrorism Bill is Section 603, which subsumes all "terrorist" crimes under the RICO (Racketeer-Influenced Criminal Organisation) civil asset forfeiture statutes. Thus anyone merely accused of "interfering" or "impeding" or "threatening" a current or former federal employee could have all their property seized under "conspiracy to commit terrorism" charges. Some in Congress now want to designate all local gun-related charges as federal terrorist crimes. Obviously the Counter-Terrorism Bill would simply add to the abuses that are already widespread in drug cases under the seizure and forfeiture laws. This is hardly surprising, since Federal and state agencies and local police are encouraged to make seizures and get to keep the property for their own use, and since anonymous informants who make charges leading to seizures are entitled to part of the property seized.
If this bill passes, it is certain to be used against the Left, as COINTELPRO was in the past. For it will greatly increase the size and funding of the FBI and give it the power to engage in "anti-terrorist" activities all over the country, without judicial oversight. The mind reels at the ability this bill would give the government to suppress dissidents or critics of capitalism, who have historically been the favourite targets of FBI abuses. For example, if an agent provocateur were to bring an illegal stick of dynamite to a peaceful meeting of philosophical anarchists, he could later report everyone at the meeting to the government on charges of conspiracy to commit a terrorist act. The agent could even blow something up with the dynamite and claim that other members knew of the plan. Everyone in the group could then have all their property seized and be jailed for up to ten years!
Even if the Counter-Terrorism Bill doesn't pass in its present form, the fact that a draconian measure like this is even being considered says volumes about the direction in which the US -- and by implication the other "advanced" capitalist states -- are headed.
D.9.5 But doesn't authoritarian government always involve censorship?
Yes. And central governments have been quietly increasing their power over the media for the past several decades. Monopolistic control of mass communications may not be readily evident in nominally democratic societies, where there seem to be many different sources of information. Yet on closer inspection it turns out that virtually all the major media -- those that reach the vast majority of people -- promulgate essentially the same neocapitalist world view. This is because the so-called "free" press is owned by a handful of capitalistic media conglomerates. Such uniformity insures that any facts, concepts, or opinions that clash with or tend to discredit the fundamental principles of that world view are unlikely to reach a wide audience (see section D.3).
There are numerous ties between government, news magazines, and newspapers. Corporate interests dominate television and radio; and for reasons described earlier, the interests of major corporations largely coincide with those of the government. The tendency in recent years has been toward the absorption of small independent print media, especially newspapers, by conglomerates that derive their major profits from such industries as steel, oil, and telephone equipment. As Marilyn French notes, the effect of these conglomerates' control "is to warn communications media away from anything that might be disturbing, and toward a bland, best-of-all-possible-worlds point of view. Although people have a wide range of reading and viewing material to choose from, the majority of it offers the same kinds of distraction -- fads and fashions, surface glitter -- or tranquillisation: all problems are solvable, no serious injustice or evil is permitted to continue" [French, Op. Cit., p. 350]. In other words, people are granted ever-increasing access to an ever-decreasing range of "acceptable" ideas.
These trends represent an unofficial and unsystematic form of censorship. In the United States, however, the federal government has been extending official and systematic forms of censorship as well. Again, the Reagan Administration proceeded furthest in this regard. In 1983 alone, more than 28,000 speeches, articles, and books written by government employees were submitted to government censors for clearance. The Reagan government even set a precedent for restricting information that is not classified. This it accomplished by passing laws requiring all government employees with security clearances to sign Standard Form 189, which allows them to be prosecuted for divulging not only classified information but that which is "nonclassified but classifiable." The latter is a deliberately vague, Catch-22 category that has sufficient interpretative latitude to allow for the harassment of most would-be whistle-blowers [Curry, Op. Cit.].
The United States Information Agency (USIA), which sends scholars overseas as part of its AMPARTS programme of educational and cultural exchanges, has attempted to screen the political opinions of scholars it selects for foreign speaking engagements. In 1983 the House Foreign Affairs Subcommittee on International Operations criticised USIA officials for "violating the letter and spirit of its charter" in choosing its AMPARTS speakers on the basis of "partisan political ideology."
In early 1984 the USIA's policies became a national scandal when the Washington Post revealed that since late 1981 the USIA had been compiling a blacklist containing not only the names of prominent academics but of national figures, including Coretta Scott King, Congressman Jack Brooks, and former Senator Gary Hart. Under the Immigration, Naturalisation, and Nationality Act (known as "the McCarran Act") foreign nationals have been denied entry into the United States because of their political and ideological beliefs. Among the most notable among the thousands who have been so denied are Nobel Prize-winning authors Gabriel Garcia Marquez and Czeslaw Milosz, as well as author Carlos Fuentes, playwright Dario Fo, actress Franca Rame, novelist Doris Lessing, NATO Deputy Supreme Commander Nino Pasti, renowned Canadian writer Farley Mowat, American-born feminist writer Margaret Randall, and Hortensia Allende, widow of the former Socialist president of Chile, Salvador Allende.
In perhaps the most disturbing censorship development in recent years, the Reagan Administration used the powers of the Trading with the Enemy Act to place an embargo on magazines and newspapers from Cuba, North Vietnam, and Albania (but not China or the ex-Soviet Union), and confiscated certain Iranian books purchased by television journalists abroad. These materials were not embargoed because they contained American secrets, but simply because it was thought they might contain information the Administration did not want Americans to know [French, Op. Cit., p. 433].
Official censorship was also highly evident during the recent Persian Gulf massacre. In this one-sided conflict, the government not only severely curtailed the press's access to information about the war, restricting reporters to escorted "press pools," but to a large extent turned the major news media into compliant instruments of Administration propaganda. This was accomplished by creating competition between the TV networks and news services for the limited number of slots in the pools, thus making news departments dependent on the government's good will and turning news anchors into cheerleaders for the US-led slaughter.
Reporting on the Gulf War was also directly censored by the military, by news and photo agencies, or by both. For instance, when award-winning journalist Jon Alpert, a longtime NBC stringer, "came back from Iraq with spectacular videotape of Basra [Iraq's second largest city, population 800,000] and other areas of Iraq devastated by US bombing, NBC president Michael Gartner not only ordered that the footage not be aired but forbade Alpert from working for the network in the future" [Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting, Extra, Special Issue on the Gulf War, 1991, p. 15].
As John R. Macarthur has documented, congressional approval for the war might not have been forthcoming without a huge preliminary propaganda and disinformation campaign designed to demonise Saddam Hussein and his troops. The centrepiece of this campaign -- the now infamous story of Iraqi soldiers allegedly ripping premature Kuwaiti babies from their incubators and leaving them to die on the cold hospital floor -- was a total fabrication masterminded by an American public relations firm funded by the Kuwaiti government-in-exile and eagerly disseminated by the Administration with the help of a credulous and uncritical news establishment [John R. Macarthur, Second Front: Censorship and Propaganda in the Gulf War, Hill & Wang, 1992; also, John Stauber and Sheldon Rampton, Toxic Sludge is Good For You! Lies, Damn Lies and the Public Relations Industry, Common Courage Press, 1995].
These trends toward a system of official and unofficial censorship do not bode well for future freedom of speech and of the press. For they establish precedents for muzzling, intimidating, and co-opting the primary sources of public information -- precedents that can be invoked whenever an administration finds it convenient. This is just one more piece of evidence that late capitalism is leading inexorably toward authoritarian government.
D.9.6 What does the Right want?
In his book Post-Conservative America Kevin Phillips, one of the most knowledgeable and serious conservative ideologues, discusses the possibility of fundamental alterations that he regards as desirable in the US government. His proposals leave no doubt about the direction in which the Right wishes to proceed. "Governmental power is too diffused to make difficult and necessary economic and technical decisions," Phillips maintains. "[A]ccordingly, the nature of that power must be re-thought. Power at the federal level must be augmented, and lodged for the most part in the executive branch" [p. 218].
In the model state Phillips describes, Congress would be reduced to a mere tool of a presidency grown even more "imperial" than it already is, with congressional leaders serving in the Cabinet and the two-party system merged into a single-party coalition. Before we dismiss this idea as impossible to implement, let's remember that the distinction between the two major parties has already been virtually obliterated, as each is controlled by the corporate elite, albeit by different factions within it.
Despite many tactical disagreements, virtually all members of this elite share a basic set of principles, attitudes, ideals, and values. Whether Democrat or Republican, most of them have graduated from the same Ivy League schools, belong to the same exclusive social clubs, serve on the same interlocking boards of directors of the same major corporations, and send their children to the same private boarding schools [See G. William Domhoff, Who Rules America Now? 1983; C. Wright Mills, The Power Elite, 1956]. Perhaps most importantly, they share the same psychology, which means that they have the same priorities and interests: namely, those of corporate America.
Hence there's actually only one party already -- the Business Party -- which wears two different masks to hide its real face from the public. Similar remarks apply to the liberal democratic regimes in the rest of the advanced capitalist states. The absence of a true opposition party, which itself is a main characteristic of authoritarian regimes, is thus an accomplished fact already, and has been so for many years.
Besides the merging of the major political parties, other forces are leading inexorably toward the scenario described by Phillips. For instance, the power of the executive branch continues to grow because the authority of Congress has been progressively weakened by scandals, partisan bickering, gridlock, and ongoing revelations of legislative corruption. Indeed, bribe-taking, influence-peddling, check-bouncing, conflicts of interest, shady deals, sex scandals, and general incompetence now seem almost routine on Capitol Hill. Unless something is done to restore congressional respectability, the climate will remain conducive to a further consolidation of power in the presidency.
Phillips assures us that all the changes he envisions can be accomplished without altering the Constitution. Such marvels are indeed possible. The Emperor Augustus centralised all real power in his own hands without disbanding the Roman Senate or the Roman Republic; Hitler implemented his Nazi programmes while leaving the Weimar constitution intact; Stalin ruled under the revolutionary constitution which was theoretically democratic.
The facts cited here as evidence for the gradual authoritarianisation of the United States have been canvassed before by others, sometimes accompanied by warnings of impending dictatorship. So far such warnings have proven to be premature. What is especially alarming today, however, is that the many signs of growing authoritarianism examined above are now coinciding with the symptoms of a social breakdown -- a "coincidence" which in the past has heralded the approach of tyranny.
Fully authoritarian regimes in the US and other First World nations would represent far more than a mere threat to citizens' civil liberties and their hopes for a better society. For authoritarian regimes tend to be associated with reckless military adventurism led by autocratic heads of state. Thus, in a nuclear world in which Europe and Japan followed the US lead toward authoritarian government, the likelihood of nuclear aggression by irresponsible politicians would continue to grow. In that case, the former anxieties of the Cold War would seem mild by comparison. Hence the urgency of the anarchist programme of anti-authoritarianism, political decentralisation, and grassroots democracy -- the only real antidotes to the disturbing trends described above.
As an aside we should note that many naysayers and ruling class apologists often deny the growing authoritarianism as "paranoia" or "conspiracy theorising." The common retort is "but if things are as bad as you say, how come the government lets you write this seditious FAQ?"
The reason we can write this work unmolested is testimony to the lack of power possessed by the public at large, in the existing political culture--that is, countercultural movements needn't be a concern to the government until they become broader-based and capable of challenging the existing economic order--only then is it "necessary" for the repressive, authoritarian forces to work on undermining the movement.
So long as there is no effective organising and no threat to the interests of the ruling elite, people are permitted to say whatever they want. This creates the illusion that the society is open to all ideas, when, in fact, it isn't. But, as the decimation of the Wobblies and anarchist movement after the First World War first illustrated, the government will seek to eradicate any movement that poses a significant threat.
The proper application of spin to dissident ideology can make it seem that any alternatives to the present system "just wouldn't work" or "are utopian", even when such alternatives are in the self-interest of the population at large. This ideological pruning creates the misperception in people's minds that radical theories haven't been successfully implemented because they are inherently flawed--and naturally, the current authoritarian ideology is portrayed as the only "sane" course of action for people to follow.
For example, most Americans reject socialism outright, without any understanding or even willingness to understand what socialism is really about. This isn't because (libertarian) socialism is wrong; it's a direct result of capitalist propagandising of the past 70 years (and its assertion that "socialism" equals Stalinism).
Extending this attitude to the people themselves, authoritarians (with generous help from the corporate press) paint dissidents as "crackpots" and "extremists," while representing themselves as reasonable "moderates", regardless of the relative positions they are advocating. In this way, a community opposing a toxic waste incinerator in their area can be lambasted in the press as the bad guys, when what is really happening is a local community is practising democracy, daring to challenge the corporate/government authoritarians!
In the Third World, dissenters are typically violently murdered and tossed into unmarked mass graves; here, in the First World, more subtle subversion must take place. The "invisible hand" of advanced capitalist authoritarian societies is no less effective; the end result is the same, if the methodology differs--the elimination of alternatives to the present socio-economic order.
D.10 How does capitalism affect technology?
Technology has an obvious effect on individual freedom, in some ways increasing it, in others restricting it. However, since capitalism is a social system based on inequalities of power, it is a truism that technology will reflect those inequalities, as it does not develop in a social vacuum.
No technology evolves and spreads unless there are people who benefit from it and have sufficient means to disseminate it. In a capitalist society, technologies useful to the rich and powerful are generally the ones that spread. This can be seen from capitalist industry, where technology has been implemented specifically to deskill the worker, so replacing the skilled, valued craftperson with the easily trained (and eliminated!) "mass worker." By making trying to make any individual worker dispensable, the capitalist hopes to deprive workers of a means of controlling the relation between their effort on the job and the pay they receive. In Proudhon's words, the "machine, or the workshop, after having degraded the labourer by giving him a master, completes his degeneracy by reducing him from the rank of artisan to that of common workman." [System of Economical Contradictions, p. 202]
So, unsurprisingly, technology within a hierarchical society will tend to re-enforce hierarchy and domination. Managers/capitalists will select technology that will protect and extend their power (and profits), not weaken it. Thus, while it is often claimed that technology is "neutral" this is not (and can never be) the case. Simply put, "progress" within a hierarchical system will reflect the power structures of that system.
As George Reitzer notes, technological innovation under a hierarchical system soon results in "increased control and the replacement of human with non-human technology. In fact, the replacement of human with non-human technology is very often motivated by a desire for greater control, which of course is motivated by the need for profit-maximisation. The great sources of uncertainty and unpredictability in any rationalising system are people. . . .McDonaldisation involves the search for the means to exert increasing control over both employees and customers" [George Reitzer, The McDonaldisation of Society, p. 100]. For Reitzer, capitalism is marked by the "irrationality of rationality," in which this process of control results in a system based on crushing the individuality and humanity of those who live within it.
In this process of controlling employees for the purpose of maximising profit, deskilling comes about because skilled labour is more expensive than unskilled or semi-skilled and skilled workers have more power over their working conditions and work due to the difficulty in replacing them. In addition it is easier to "rationalise" the production process with methods like Taylorism, a system of strict production schedules and activities based on the amount of time (as determined by management) that workers "need" to perform various operations in the workplace, thus requiring simple, easily analysed and timed movements. And as companies are in competition, each has to copy the most "efficient" (i.e. profit maximising) production techniques introduced by the others in order to remain profitable, no matter how dehumanising this may be for workers. Thus the evil effects of the division of labour and deskilling becoming widespread. Instead of managing their own work, workers are turned into human machines in a labour process they do not control, instead being controlled by those who own the machines they use (see also Harry Braverman, Labour and Monopoly Capital: The Degradation of Work in the Twentieth Century, Monthly Review Press, 1974).
As Max Stirner noted (echoing Adam Smith), this process of deskilling and controlling work means that "When everyone is to cultivate himself into man, condemning a man to machine-like labour amounts to the same thing as slavery. . . . Every labour is to have the intent that the man be satisfied. Therefore he must become a master in it too, be able to perform it as a totality. He who in a pin-factory only puts on heads, only draws the wire, works, as it were mechanically, like a machine; he remains half-trained, does not become a master: his labour cannot satisfy him, it can only fatigue him. His labour is nothing by itself, has no object in itself, is nothing complete in itself; he labours only into another's hands, and is used. (exploited) by this other" [The Ego and Its Own, p. 121] Kropotkin makes a similar argument against the division of labour ("machine-like labour") in The Conquest of Bread (see chapter XV -- "The Division of Labour") as did Proudhon (see chapters III and IV of System of Economical Contradictions).
Modern industry is set up to ensure that workers do not become "masters" of their work but instead follow the orders of management. The evolution of technology lies in the relations of power within a society. This is because "the viability of a design is not simply a technical or even economic evaluation but rather a political one. A technology is deemed viable if it conforms to the existing relations of power." [David Noble, Progress without People, p. 63]
This process of controlling, restricting, and de-individualising labour is a key feature of capitalism. Work that is skilled and controlled by workers in empowering to them in two ways. Firstly it gives them pride in their work and themselves. Secondly, it makes it harder to replace them or suck profits out of them. Therefore, in order to remove the "subjective" factor (i.e. individuality and worker control) from the work process, capital needs methods of controlling the workforce to prevent workers from asserting their individuality, thus preventing them from arranging their own lives and work and resisting the authority of the bosses.
This need to control workers can be seen from the type of machinery introduced during the Industrial Revolution. According to Andrew Ure, a consultant for the factory owners, "[i]n the factories for spinning coarse yarn. . .the mule-spinners [skilled workers] have abused their powers beyond endurance, domineering in the most arrogant manner. . . over their masters. High wages. . . have, in too many cases, cherished pride and supplied funds for supporting refractory spirits in strikes. . . . During a disastrous turmoil of [this] kind. . . several capitalists. . . had recourse to the celebrated machinists. . . of Manchester. . . [to construct] a self-acting mule. . . . This invention confirms the great doctrine already propounded, that when capital enlists science in her service, the refractory hand of labour will always be taught docility" [Andrew Ure, Philosophy of Manufactures, pp. 336-368 -- quoted by Noble, Op. Cit., p. 125]
Why is it necessary for workers to be "taught docility"? Because "[b]y the infirmity of human nature, it happens that the more skilful the workman, the more self-willed and intractable he is apt to become, and of course the less fit a component of mechanical system in which... he may do great damage to the whole." [Ibid.] Proudhon quotes an English Manufacturer who argues the same point:
"The insubordination of our workmen has given us the idea of dispensing with them. We have made and stimulated every imaginable effort to replace the service of men by tools more docile, and we have achieved our object. Machinery has delivered capital from the oppression of labour." [System of Economical Contradictions, p. 189]
As David Noble summarises, during the Industrial Revolution "Capital invested in machines that would reinforce the system of domination [in the workplace], and this decision to invest, which might in the long run render the chosen technique economical, was not itself an economical decision but a political one, with cultural sanction." [Op. Cit., p. 6]
A similar process was at work in the US, where the rise in trade unionism resulted in "industrial managers bec[oming] even more insistent that skill and initiative not be left on the shop floor, and that, by the same token, shop floor workers not have control over the reproduction of relevant skills through craft-regulated apprenticeship training. Fearful that skilled shop-floor workers would use their scare resources to reduce their effort and increase their pay, management deemed that knowledge of the shop-floor process must reside with the managerial structure." [William Lazonick, Organisation and Technology in Capitalist Development, p. 273]
American managers happily embraced Taylorism (aka "scientific management"), according to which the task of the manager was to gather into his possession all available knowledge about the work he oversaw and reorganise it. Taylor himself considered the task for workers was "to do what they are told to do promptly and without asking questions or making suggestions." [quoted by David Noble, American By Design, p. 268] Taylor also relied exclusively upon incentive-pay schemes which mechanically linked pay to productivity and had no appreciation of the subtleties of psychology or sociology (which would have told him that enjoyment of work and creativity is more important for people than just higher pay). Unsurprisingly, workers responded to his schemes by insubordination, sabotage and strikes and it was "discovered . . . that the 'time and motion' experts frequently knew very little about the proper work activities under their supervision, that often they simply guessed at the optimum rates for given operations . . . it meant that the arbitrary authority of management has simply been reintroduced in a less apparent form." [David Noble, Op. Cit., p. 272] Although, now, the power of management could hide begin the "objectivity" of "science."
Katherine Stone also argues (in her account of "The Origins of Job Structure in the Steel Industry" in America) that the "transfer of skill [from the worker to management] was not a response to the necessities of production, but was, rather, a strategy to rob workers of their power" by "tak[ing] knowledge and authority from the skilled workers and creating a management cadre able to direct production." Stone highlights that this deskilling process was combined by a "divide and rule" policy by management by wage incentives and new promotion policies. This created a reward system in which workers who played by the rules would receive concrete gains in terms of income and status. Over time, such a structure would become to be seen as "the natural way to organise work and one which offered them personal advancement" even though, "when the system was set up, it was neither obvious nor rational. The job ladders were created just when the skill requirements for jobs in the industry were diminishing as a result of the new technology, and jobs were becoming more and more equal as to the learning time and responsibility involved." The modern structure of the capitalist workplace was created to break workers resistance to capitalist authority and was deliberately "aimed at altering workers' ways of thinking and feeling -- which they did by making workers' individual 'objective' self-interests congruent with that of the employers and in conflict with workers' collective self-interest." It was a means of "labour discipline" and of "motivating workers to work for the employers' gain and preventing workers from uniting to take back control of production." Stone notes that the "development of the new labour system in the steel industry was repeated throughout the economy in different industries. As in the steel industry, the core of these new labour systems were the creation of artificial job hierarchies and the transfer pf skills from workers to the managers." [Root & Branch (ed.), Root and Branch: The Rise of the Workers' Movements, pp. 152-5]
This process was recognised by libertarians at the time, with the I.W.W., for example, arguing that "[l]abourers are no longer classified by difference in trade skill, but the employer assigns them according to the machine which they are attached. These divisions, far from representing differences in skill or interests among the labourers, are imposed by the employers that workers may be pitted against one another and spurred to greater exertion in the shop, and that all resistance to capitalist tyranny may be weakened by artificial distinctions." [quoted by Katherine Stone, Op. Cit., p. 157] For this reason, anarchists and syndicalists argued for, and built, industrial unions -- one union per workplace and industry -- in order to combat these divisions and effectively resist capitalist tyranny.
Needless to say, such management schemes never last in the long run nor totally work in the short run either -- which explains why hierarchical management continues, as does technological deskilling (workers always find ways of using new technology to increase their power within the workplace and so undermine management decisions to their own advantage).
This of process deskilling workers was complemented by many factors -- state protected markets (in the form of tariffs and government orders -- the "lead in technological innovation came in armaments where assured government orders justified high fixed-cost investments"); the use of "both political and economic power [by American Capitalists] to eradicate and diffuse workers' attempts to assert shop-floor control"; and "repression, instigated and financed both privately and publicly, to eliminate radical elements [and often not-so-radical elements as well, we must note] in the American labour movement." [William Lazonick, Competitive Advantage on the Shop Floor, p. 218, p. 303]) Thus state action played a key role in destroying craft control within industry, along with the large financial resources of capitalists compared to workers.
Bringing this sorry story up to date, we find "many, if not most, American managers are reluctant to develop skills [and initiative] on the shop floor for the fear of losing control of the flow of work." [William Lazonick, Organisation and Technology in Capitalist Development, pp. 279-280] Given that there is a division of knowledge in society (and, obviously, in the workplace as well) this means that capitalism has selected to introduce a management and technology mix which leads to inefficiency and waste of valuable knowledge, experience and skills.
Thus the capitalist workplace is both produced by and is a weapon in the class struggle and reflects the shifting power relations between workers and employers. The creation of artificial job hierarchies, the transfer of skills away from workers to managers and technological development are all products of class struggle. Thus technological progress and workplace organisation within capitalism have little to do with "efficiency" and far more to do with profits and power.
This means that while self-management has consistently proven to be more efficient (and empowering) than hierarchical management structures (see section J.5.12), capitalism actively selects against it. This is because capitalism is motivated purely by increasing profits, and the maximisation of profits is best done by disempowering workers and empowering bosses (i.e. the maximisation of power) -- even though this concentration of power harms efficiency by distorting and restricting information flow and the gathering and use of widely distributed knowledge within the firm (as in any command economy).
Thus the last refuge of the capitalist/technophile (namely that the productivity gains of technology outweigh the human costs or the means used to achieve them) is doubly flawed. Firstly, disempowering technology may maximise profits, but it need not increase efficient utilisation of resources or workers time, skills or potential (and as we argue in greater detail later, in section J.5.12, efficiency and profit maximisation are two different things, with such deskilling and management control actually reducing efficiency -- compared to workers' control -- but as it allows managers to maximise profits the capitalist market selects it). Secondly, "when investment does in fact generate innovation, does such innovation yield greater productivity?. . . After conducting a poll of industry executives on trends in automation, Business Week concluded in 1982 that 'there is a heavy backing for capital investment in a variety of labour-saving technologies that are designed to fatten profits without necessary adding to productive output.'" David Noble concludes that "whenever managers are able to use automation to 'fatten profits' and enhance their authority (by eliminating jobs and extorting concessions and obedience from the workers who remain) without at the same time increasing social product, they appear more than ready to do." [David Noble, Progress Without People, pp. 86-87 and p. 89]
Of course the claim is that higher wages follow increased investment and technological innovation ("in the long run" -- although usually "the long run" has to be helped to arrive by workers' struggle and protest!). Passing aside the question of whether slightly increased consumption really makes up for dehumanising and uncreative work, we must note that it is usually the capitalist who really benefits from technological change in money terms. For example, between 1920 and 1927 (a period when unemployment caused by technology became commonplace) the automobile industry (which was at the forefront of technological change) saw wages rise by 23.7%. Thus, claim supporters of capitalism, technology is in all our interests. However, capital surpluses rose by 192.9% during the same period -- 8 times faster! Little wonder wages rose! Similarly, over the last 20 years the USA and many other countries have seen companies "down-sizing" and "right-sizing" their workforce and introducing new technologies. The result? Simply put, the 1970s saw the start of "no-wage growth expansions." Before the early 1970s, "real wage growth tracked the growth of productivity and production in the economy overall. After . . ., they ceased to do so. . . Real wage growth fell sharply below measured productivity growth." [James K. Galbraith, Created Unequal, p. 79] So while real wages have stagnated, profits have been increasing as productivity rises and the rich have been getting richer -- technology yet again showing whose side it is on.
Overall, as David Noble notes (with regards to manufacturing):
"U.S. Manufacturing industry over the last thirty years . . . [has seen] the value of capital stock (machinery) relative to labour double, reflecting the trend towards mechanisation and automation. As a consequence . . . the absolute output person hour increased 115%, more than double. But during this same period, real earnings for hourly workers . . . rose only 84%, less than double. Thus, after three decades of automation-based progress, workers are now earning less relative to their output than before. That is, they are producing more for less; working more for their boss and less for themselves." [Op. Cit., pp. 92-3]
Noble continues:
"For if the impact of automation on workers has not been ambiguous, neither has the impact on management and those it serves -- labour's loss has been their gain. During the same first thirty years of our age of automation, corporate after tax profits have increased 450%, more than five times the increase in real earnings for workers." [Op. Cit., p. 95]
But why? Because labour has the ability to produce a flexible amount of output (use value) for a given wage. Unlike coal or steel, a worker can be made to work more intensely during a given working period and so technology can be utilised to maximise that effort as well as increasing the pool of potential replacements for an employee by deskilling their work (so reducing workers' power to get higher wages for their work). Thus technology is a key way of increasing the power of the boss, which in turn can increase output per worker while ensuring that the workers' receive relatively less of that output back in terms of wages -- "Machines," argued Proudhon, "promised us an increase of wealth they have kept their word, but at the same time endowing us with an increase of poverty. They promised us liberty. . . [but] have brought us slavery." [Op. Cit., p. 199]
But do not get us wrong, technological progress does not imply that we are victims. Far from it, much innovation is the direct result of our resistance to hierarchy and its tools. For example, capitalists turned to Taylorism and "scientific management" in response to the power of skilled craft workers to control their work and working environment (the famous 1892 Homestead strike, for example, was a direct product of the desire of the company to end the skilled workers' control and power on the shop-floor). In response to this, factory and other workers created a whole new structure of working class power -- a new kind of unionism based on the industrial level. This can be seen in many different countries. For example, in Spain, the C.N.T. (an anarcho-syndicalist union) adopted the sindicato unico (one union) in 1918 which united all workers of the same workplace in the same union (by uniting skilled and unskilled in a single organisation, the union increased their fighting power In the UK, the shop stewards movement arose during the first world war based on workplace organisation (a movement inspired by the pre-war syndicalist revolt and which included many syndicalist activists). This movement was partly in response to the reformist TUC unions working with the state during the war to suppress class struggle. In Germany, the 1919 near revolution saw the creation of revolutionary workplace unions and councils (and a large increase in the size of the anarcho-syndicalist union FAU which was organised by industry). In the USA, the 1930s saw a massive and militant union organising drive by the C.I.O. based on industrial unionism and collective bargaining (inspired, in part, by the example of the I.W.W. and its broad organisation of unskilled workers).
More recently, workers in the 1960s and 70s responded to the increasing reformism and bureaucratic nature of such unions as the CIO and TUC by organising themselves directly on the shop floor to control their work and working conditions. This informal movement expressed itself in wildcat strikes against both unions and management, sabotage and unofficial workers' control of production (see John Zerzan's essay "Organised Labour and the Revolt Against Work" in Elements of Refusal). In the UK, the shop stewards' movement revived itself, organising much of the unofficial strikes and protests which occurred in the 1960s and 70s. A similar tendency was seen in many countries during this period.
So in response to a new developments in technology and workplace organisation, workers' developed new forms of resistance which in turn provokes a response by management. Thus technology and its (ab)uses is very much a product of the class struggle, of the struggle for freedom in the workplace.
With a given technology, workers and radicals soon learn to use it in ways never dreamed off to resist their bosses and the state (which necessitates a transformation of within technology again to try and give the bosses an upper hand!). The use of the Internet, for example, to organise, spread and co-ordinate information, resistance and struggles is a classic example of this process (see Jason Wehling, "'Netwars' and Activists Power on the Internet", Scottish Anarchist no. 2 for details). There is always a "guerrilla war" associated with technology, with workers and radicals developing their own tactics to gain counter control for themselves. Thus much technological change reflects our power and activity to change our own lives and working conditions. We must never forget that.
While some may dismiss our analysis as "Luddite," to do so is make "technology" an idol to be worshipped rather than something to be critically analysed. Moreover, to do so is to misrepresent the ideas of the Luddites themselves -- they never actually opposed all technology or machinery. Rather, they opposed "all Machinery hurtful to Commonality" (as a March 1812 letter to a hated Manufacturer put it). Rather than worship technological progress (or view it uncritically), the Luddites subjected technology to critical analysis and evaluation. They opposed those forms of machinery that harmed themselves or society. Unlike those who smear others as "Luddites," the labourers who broke machines were not intimidated by the modern notion of progress. Their sense of right and wrong was not clouded by the notion that technology was somehow inevitable or neutral. They did not think that human values (or their own interests) were irrelevant in evaluating the benefits and drawbacks of a given technology and its effects on workers and society as a whole. Nor did they consider their skills and livelihood as less important than the profits and power of the capitalists. In other words, they would have agreed with Proudhon's comment that machinery "plays the leading role in industry, man is secondary" and they acted to change this relationship. [Op. Cit., p. 204] Indeed, it would be temping to argue that worshippers of technological progress are, in effect, urging us not to think and to sacrifice ourselves to a new abstraction like the state or capital. The Luddites were an example of working people deciding what their interests were and acting to defend them by their own direct action -- in this case opposing technology which benefited the ruling class by giving them an edge in the class struggle. Anarchists follow this critical approach to technology, recognising that it is not neutral nor above criticism.
For capital, the source of problems in industry is people. Unlike machines, people can think, feel, dream, hope and act. The "evolution" of technology will, therefore, reflect the class struggle within society and the struggle for liberty against the forces of authority. Technology, far from being neutral, reflects the interests of those with power. Technology will only be truly our friend once we control it ourselves and modify to reflect human values (this may mean that some forms of technology will have to be written off and replaces by new forms in a free society). Until that happens, most technological processes -- regardless of the other advantages they may have -- will be used to exploit and control people.
Thus Proudhon's comments that "in the present condition of society, the workshop with its hierarchical organisation, and machinery" could only serve "exclusively the interests of the least numerous, the least industrious, and the wealthiest class" rather than "be employed for the benefit of all." [Op. Cit., p. 205]
While resisting technological "progress" (by means up to and including machine breaking) is essential in the here and now, the issue of technology can only be truly solved when those who use a given technology control its development, introduction and use. Little wonder, therefore, that anarchists consider workers' self-management as a key means of solving the problems created by technology. Proudhon, for example, argued that the solution to the problems created by the division of labour and technology could only be solved by "association" and "by a broad education, by the obligation of apprenticeship, and by the co-operation of all who take part in the collective work." This would ensure that "the division of labour can no longer be a cause of degradation for the workman [or workwoman]." [The General Idea of the Revolution, p. 223]
While as far as technology goes, it may not be enough to get rid of the boss, this is a necessary first step in creating a technology which enhances freedom rather than controlling and shaping the worker (or user in general) and enhancing the power and profits of the capitalist (see also section I.4.9 -- Should technological advance be seen as anti-anarchistic?).
D.11 What causes justifications for racism to appear?
The tendency toward social breakdown which is inherent in the growth of wealth polarisation, as discussed in section D.9, is also producing a growth in racism in the countries affected. As we have seen, social breakdown leads to the increasingly authoritarian government prompted by the need of the ruling class to contain protest and civil unrest among those at the bottom of the wealth pyramid. In the US those in the lowest economic strata belong mostly to racial minorities, while in several European countries there are growing populations of impoverished minorities from the Third World, often from former colonies. The desire of the more affluent strata to justify their superior economic positions is, as one would expect, causing racially based theories of privilege to become more popular.
That racist feelings are gaining strength in America is evidenced by the increasing political influence of the Far Right, whose thinly disguised racism reflects the darkening vision of a growing segment of the conservative community. Further evidence can be seen in the growth of ultraconservative extremist groups preaching avowedly racist philosophies, such as the Ku Klux Klan, the Aryan Nations, the White Aryan Resistance, and others [see James Ridgeway, Blood in the Face: The Ku Klux Klan, Aryan Nations, Nazi Skinheads, and the Rise of a New White Culture, Thunder's Mouth Press, 1990]. Thus, American Politicians and organisers such as Pat Buchanan, David Duke, and Ralph Metzger have been able to exploit the budding racism of lower- and middle-class white youths, who must compete for increasingly scarce jobs with desperate minorities who are willing to work at very low wages. The expanding popularity of such racist groups in the US is matched by a similar phenomenon in Europe, where xenophobia and a weak economy have propelled extreme right-wing politicians into the limelight on promises to deport foreigners.
Most conservative US politicians have taken pains to distance themselves officially from the Far Right. Yet during the 1992 presidential campaign, mainstream conservative politicians used code words and innuendo ("welfare queens," "quotas," etc.) to convey a thinly veiled racist message. David Duke's candidacy for the governorship of Louisiana in 1991 and for the presidency in 1992, as well as the Republican Convention speeches of Pat Buchanan and Pat Robertson, reflected the increasing influence of the Far Right in American politics. More recently there has been Proposition 187 in California, targeting illegal immigrants.
What easier way is there to divert people's anger than onto scapegoats? Anger about bad housing, no housing, boring work, no work, bad wages and conditions, job insecurity, no future, and so on. Instead of attacking the real causes of these (and other) problems, people are encouraged to direct their anger against people who face the same problems just because they have a different skin colour or come from a different part of the world! Little wonder politicians and their rich backers like to play the racist card -- it diverts attention away from them and the system they run (i.e. the real causes of our problems).
Racism, in other words, tries to turn class hatred into race hatred. Little wonder that sections of the ruling elite will turn to it, as and when required. Their class interests (and, often, their personal bigotry) requires them to do so -- a divided working class will never challenge their position in society.
Therefore, justifications for racism appear for two reasons. Firstly, to try and justify the existing inequalities within society (for example, the infamous -- and highly inaccurate -- "Bell Curve" and related works). Secondly, to divide the working class and divert anger about living conditions and social problems away from the ruling elite and their system onto scapegoats in our own class.
D.11.1 Does free market ideology play a part in racist tendencies to increase?
The most important factor in the right-wing resurgence in the US has been the institutionalisation of the Reagan-Bush brand of conservatism, whose hallmark was the reinstatement, to some degree, of laissez-faire economic policies (and, to an even larger degree, of laissez-faire rhetoric). A "free market," Reagan's economic "experts" argued, necessarily produced inequality; but by allowing unhindered market forces to select the economically fittest and to weed out the unfit, the economy would become healthy again. The wealth of those who survived and prospered in the harsh new climate would ultimately benefit the less fortunate, through a "trickle-down" effect which was supposed to create millions of new high-paying jobs.
All this would be accomplished by deregulating business, reducing taxes on the wealthy, and dismantling or drastically cutting back federal programmes designed to promote social equality, fairness, and compassion. The aptly named Laffer Curve illustrated how cutting taxes actually raises government revenue. In actuality, and unsurprisingly, the opposite happened, with wealth flooding upwards and the creation of low-paying, dead-end jobs. (the biggest "Laffers" in this scenario were the ruling class, who saw unprecedented gains in wealth at the expense of the rest of us).
The Reaganites' doctrine of inequality gave the official seal of approval to ideas of racial superiority that right-wing extremists had used for years to rationalise the exploitation of minorities. If, on average, blacks and Hispanics earn only about half as much as whites; if more than a third of all blacks and a quarter of all Hispanics lived below the poverty line; if the economic gap between whites and non-whites was growing -- well, that just proved that there was a racial component in the Social-Darwinian selection process, showing that minorities "deserved" their poverty and lower social status because they were "less fit."
In the words of left-liberal economist James K. Galbraith:
"What the economists did, in effect, was to reason backward, from the troublesome effect to a cause that would rationalise and justify it . . . [I]t is the work of the efficient market [they argued], and the fundamental legitimacy of the outcome is not supposed to be questioned.
"The apologia is a dreadful thing. It has distorted our understanding, twisted our perspective, and crabbed our politics. On the right, as one might expect, the winners on the expanded scale of wealth and incomes are given a reason for self-satisfaction and an excuse for gloating. Their gains are due to personal merit, the application of high intelligence, and the smiles of fortune. Those on the loosing side are guilty of sloth, self-indulgence, and whining. Perhaps they have bad culture. Or perhaps they have bad genes. While no serious economist would make that last leap into racist fantasy, the underlying structure of the economists' argument has undoubtedly helped to legitimise, before a larger public, those who promote such ideas." [Created Unequal: The Crisis in American Pay, p. 264]
The logical corollary of this social Darwinism is that whites who are "less fit" (i.e., poor) also deserve their poverty. But philosophies of racial hatred are not necessarily consistent. Thus the ranks of white supremacist organisations have been swollen in recent years by undereducated and underemployed white youths frustrated by a declining industrial labour market and a noticeably eroding social status [Ridgeway, Ibid., p.186]. Rather than drawing the logical Social-Darwinian conclusion -- that they too are "inferior" -- they have instead blamed blacks, Hispanics, Asians, and Jews for "unfairly" taking their jobs. Thus the neo-Nazi skinheads, for example, have been mostly recruited from disgruntled working-class whites below the age of 30. This has provided leaders of right-wing extremist groups with a growing base of potential storm troopers.
Therefore, laissez-faire ideology helps create a social environment in which racist tendencies can increase. Firstly, it does so by increasing poverty, job insecurity, inequality and so on which right-wing groups can use to gather support by creating scapegoats in our own class to blame (for example, by blaming poverty on blacks "taking our jobs" rather than capitalists moving their capital to other, more profitable, countries or them cutting wages and conditions for all workers -- and as we point out in section B.1.4, racism, by dividing the working class, makes poverty and inequality worse and so is self-defeating). Secondly, it abets racists by legitimising the notions that inequalities in pay and wealth are due to racial differences rather than a hierarchical system which harms all working class people (and uses racism to divide, and so weaken, the oppressed). By pointing to individuals rather than to institutions, organisations, customs, history and above all power -- the relative power between workers and capitalists, citizens and the state, the market power of big business, etc. -- laissez-faire ideology points analysis into a dead-end as well as apologetics for the wealthy, apologetics which can be, and are, utilised by racists to justify their evil politics.