-Caveat Lector-
"Deterring Democracy" by Noam Chomsky
Chapter 11 <cont'd>
The United States was determined to prevent expropriation of
Nazi industrialists and was firmly opposed to allowing
worker-based organizations to exercise managerial authority. Such
developments would pose a serious threat of democracy in one
sense of the term, while violating it in the approved sense. The
U.S. authorities therefore turned to sympathetic right-wing
socialists, as in Japan, while using such means as control of
CARE packages, food and other supplies to overcome the opposition
of rank-and-file workers. It was finally necessary to "wall off"
the Western zone by partition, to veto the major union
constitutions, to forcefully terminate social experiments,
vetoing state ("Laender") legislation, co-determination efforts,
and so on. Major Nazi war criminals were recruited for U.S.
intelligence and anti-resistance activities, Klaus Barbie being
perhaps the best known. A still worse Nazi gangster, Franz Six,
was pressed into service after his sentence as a war criminal was
commuted by U.S. High Commissioner John J. McCloy. He was put to
work for Reinhard Gehlen, with special responsibility for
developing a "secret army" under U.S. auspices, along with former
Waffen-SS and Wehrmacht specialists, to assist military forces
established by Hitler in Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union in
operations that continued into the 1950s. Gehlen himself had
headed Nazi military intelligence on the Eastern front, and was
reinstated as head of the espionage and counter-espionage service
of the new West German state, under close CIA supervision.
Meanwhile, as in Japan, the burden of reconstruction was
placed upon German workers, in part by fiscal measures that wiped
out the savings of the poor and union treasuries. "So
thoroughgoing was the U.S. assault on German labor that even the
AFL complained," Eisenberg comments, though the AFL had helped
lay the basis for these consequences by its anti-union
activities. Union activists were purged and strikes were blocked
by force. By 1949, the State Department expressed its pleasure
that "industrial peace had been attained," with a now docile and
tractable labor force and an end to the vision of a unified
popular movement that might challenge the authority of owners
and managers**.
As Tom Bower describes the outcome in a study of the
rehabilitation of Nazi war criminals, "Four years after the war,
those responsible for the day-to-day management of post-war
Germany were remarkably similar to the management during the days
of Hitler," including bankers and industrialists convicted of war
crimes who were released and restored to their former roles,
renewing their collaboration with U.S. corporations.
In short, the treatment of the two "great workshops" was
basically similar.
In later years, as we have seen, the U.S. was distinctly
wary of apparent Soviet initiatives for a unified demilitarized
Germany and steps towards dismantling the pact system. Western
European elites have been no less concerned, for the decline of
East-West confrontation might "let politics loose among those
people," with all of the dire effects. That has been one of the
undercurrents beneath the debate of the 1980s over arms control,
security issues, and the political prospects for a united Europe.
______________________
**For more on these matters, see "Turning the Tide," 197ff., and
sources cited; Christopher Simpson, "Blowback" (Weidenfeld and
Nicolson, 1988). On the recruitment of Nazi scientists, see Tom
Bower, "The Paperclip Conspiracy" (Michael Joseph, 1987), 310;
John Gimbel, "Science, Technology, and Reparations" (Stanford,
1990). A review of the latter in "Science" notes that Gimbel's
research "demonstrates the dubiousness of subsequent U.S. claims
of commercial disinterestedness in the occupation of Germany;
just like the Russians, and to a lesser degree the British and
the French, the Americans seized enormous quantities of
reparations from the defeated country," giving "some credence to
the Russian claim that Anglo-American seizures amounted to about
$10 billion," the amount demanded (but not received) by the
Russians as reparations for the Nazi devastation of the USSR.
Raymond Stokes, "Science," June 8, 1990.
_______________________
5. The Smaller Workshops
In France and Italy, U.S. authorities pursued similar tasks.
In both countries, Marshall Plan aid was strictly contingent on
exclusion of Communists -- including major elements of the
anti-fascist resistance and labor -- from the government;
"democracy," in the usual sense. U.S. aid was critically
important in early years for suffering people in Europe and was
therefore a powerful lever of control, a matter of much
significance for U.S. business interests and longer term
planning. "If Europe did not receive massive financial assistance
and adopt a coherent recovery program, American officials were
fearful that the Communist left would triumph, perhaps even
through free elections," Melvyn Leffler observes.
On the eve of the announcement of the Marshall Plan,
Ambassador to France Jefferson Caffery warned Secretary of State
Marshall of grim consequences if the Communists won the elections
in France: "Soviet penetration of Western Europe, Africa, the
Mediterranean, and the Middle East would be greatly facilitated"
(May 12, 1947). The dominoes were ready to fall. During May, the
U.S. pressured political leaders in France and Italy to form
coalition governments excluding the Communists. It was made clear
and explicit that aid was contingent on preventing an open
political competition, in which left and labor might dominate.
Through 1948, Secretary of State Marshall and others publicly
emphasized that if Communists were voted into power, U.S. aid
would be terminated; no small threat, given the state of Europe
at the time.
In France, the postwar destitution was exploited to
undermine the French labor movement, along with direct violence.
Desperately needed food supplies were withheld to coerce
obedience, and gangsters were organized to provide goon squads
and strike breakers, a matter that is described with some pride
in semi-official U.S. labor histories, which praise the AFL for
its achievements in helping to save Europe by splitting and
weakening the labor movement (thus frustrating alleged Soviet
designs) and safeguarding the flow of arms to Indochina for the
French war of reconquest, another prime goal of the U.S. labor
bureaucracy.
The CIA reconstituted the mafia for these purposes, in one
of its early operations. The QUID PRO QUO was restoration of the
heroin trade. The U.S. government connection to the drug boom
continues until today.
U.S. policies towards Italy basically picked up where they
had been broken off by World War II. The United States had
supported Mussolini's Fascism from the 1922 takeover through the
1930s. Mussolini's wartime alliance with Hitler terminated these
friendly relations, but they were reconstituted as U.S. forces
liberated southern Italy in 1943, establishing the rule of
Field-Marshall Badoglio and the royal family that had
collaborated with the Fascist government. As Allied forces drove
towards the north, they dispersed the anti-fascist resistance
along with local governing bodies it had formed in its attempt
"to create the foundations for a new, democratic, and republican
state in the various zones it succeeded in liberating from the
Germans" (Gianfranco Pasquino). A center-right government was
established with neo-fascist participation and the left excluded.
Here too, the plan was for the working classes and the poor
to bear the burden of reconstruction, with lowered wages and
extensive firing. Aid was contingent on removing Communists and
left socialists from office, because they defended workers
interests and thus posed a barrier to the intended style of
recovery, in the view of the State Department. The Communist
Party was collaborationist; its position "fundamentally meant the
subordination of all reforms to the liberation of Italy and
effectively discouraged any attempt in northern areas to
introduce irreversible political changes as well as changes in
the ownership of the industrial companies,...disavowing and
discouraging those workers' groups that wanted to expropriate
some factories" (Pasquino). But the Party did try to defend jobs,
wages, and living standards for the poor and thus "constituted a
political and psychological barrier to a potential European
recovery program," historian John Harper comments, reviewing the
insistence of Kennan and others that Communists be excluded from
government though agreeing that it would be "desirable" to
include representatives of what Harper calls "the democratic
working class." The recovery, it was understood, was to be at the
expense of the working class and the poor.
Because of its responsiveness to the needs of these social
sectors, the Communist Party was labelled "extremist" and
"undemocratic" by U.S. propaganda, which also skillfully
manipulated the alleged Soviet threat. Under U.S. pressure, the
Christian Democrats abandoned wartime promises about workplace
democracy and the police, sometimes under the control of
ex-fascists, were encouraged to suppress labor activities. The
Vatican announced that anyone who voted for the Communists in the
1948 election would be denied sacraments, and backed the
conservative Christian Democrats under the slogan: "O con Cristo
o contro Cristo" ("Either with Christ or against Christ"). A year
later, Pope Pius excommunicated all Italian Communists.
A combination of violence, manipulation of aid and other
threats, and a huge propaganda campaign sufficed to determine the
outcome of the critical 1948 election, essentially bought by U.S.
intervention and pressures.
U.S. policies in preparation for the election were designed
so that "even the dumbest wop would sense the drift," as the
Italian desk officer at the State Department put it with
characteristic ruling class elegance. As 30 years earlier, "the
Italians are like children [who] must be led and assisted" (see
p. 38). The policies included police violence and threats to
withhold food, to bar entry to the U.S. to anyone who voted the
wrong way, to deport Italian-Americans who supported the
Communists, to bar Italy from Marshall Plan aid, and so on. State
Department historian James Miller observes that subsequent
economic development was carried out "at the expense of the
working class" as the left and the labor movement were
"fragmented with U.S. support," and that U.S. efforts undercut a
"democratic alternative" to the preferred center-right rule,
which proved corrupt and inept. The basic policy premise was that
"as a key strategic entity, Italy's fate remained too important
for Italians alone to decide" (Harper) -- particularly, the wrong
Italians, with their misunderstanding of democracy.
Meanwhile, the U.S. planned military intervention in the
event of a legal Communist political victory in 1948, and this
was broadly hinted in public propaganda. Kennan secretly
suggested that the Communist Party be outlawed to forestall its
electoral victory, recognizing that this would probably lead to
civil war, U.S. military intervention, and "a military division
of Italy." But he was overruled, on the assumption that other
means of coercion would suffice. The National Security Council,
however, secretly called for military support for underground
operations in Italy along with national mobilization in the
United States, "in the event the Communists obtain domination of
the Italian government by legal means." The subversion of
effective democracy in Italy was taken very seriously.
...
Washington's intention to resort to violence if free
elections come out the wrong way is not very easy to deal with,
so it has been generally suppressed, even in the scholarly
literature. One of the two major scholarly monographs on this
period discusses the NSC memoranda, but with no mention of the
actual content of the crucial section; the second passes it by in
a phrase. In the general literature, the whole matter is unknown.
The CIA operations to control the Italian elections,
authorized by the National Security Council in December 1947,
were the first major clandestine operation of the newly formed
Agency. As noted earlier, CIA operations to subvert Italian
democracy continued into the 1970s at a substantial scale.
In Italy too, U.S. labor leaders, primarily from the AFL,
played an active role in splitting and weakening the labor
movement, and inducing workers to accept austerity measures while
employers reaped rich profits. In France, the AFL had broken dock
strikes by importing Italian scab labor paid by U.S. businesses.
The State Department called on the Federation's leadership to
exercise their talents in union busting in Italy as well, and
they were happy to oblige. The business sector, formerly
discredited by its association with Italian Fascism, undertook a
vigorous class war with renewed confidence. The end result was
the subordination of the working class and the poor to the
traditional rulers. In the major academic study of U.S. labor in
Italy, Ronald Filippelli observes that American aid "had largely
been used to rebuild Italy on the old basis of a conservative
society" in a "rampant capitalist restoration" on the backs of
the poor, "with low consumption and low wages," "enormous
profits," and no interference with the prerogatives of
management. Meanwhile AFL President George Meany angrily rejected
criticism of his anti-labor programs on the grounds that freedom
in Italy was not the exclusive concern of its own people; the AFL
would therefore pursue its higher goal of "strengthening the
forces of liberty and social progress all over the world" -- by
ensuring that U.S. business interests remain in the ascendant,
class collaboration with a vengeance. The result was "a
restoration to power of the same ruling class that had been
responsible for, and benefited from, fascism," with the working
class removed from politics, subordinated to the needs of
investors, and forced to bear the burden of the "Miracolo
italiano," Filippelli concludes.
The policies of the late 1940s "hit the poorer regions and
politically impotent social strata hardest," Harper observes, but
they did succeed in breaking "rigid labor markets" and
facilitating the export-led growth of the 1950s, which relied on
"the continuing weakness and remarkable mobility of the Italian
working class." These "happy circumstances," he goes on, brought
economic development of a certain kind, while the CIA mounted new
multimillion dollar covert funding and propaganda campaigns to
ensure that the "felicitous arrangements" would persist.
Later commentators tend to see the U.S. subversion of
democracy in France and Italy as a defense of democracy. In a
highly-regarded study of the CIA and American democracy, Rhodri
Jeffreys-Jones describes "the CIA's Italian venture," along with
its similar efforts in France, as "a democracy-propping
operation," though he concedes that "the selection of Italy for
special attention...was by no means a matter of democratic
principle alone"; our passion for democracy was reinforced by the
strategic importance of the country. But it was a commitment to
"democratic principle" that inspired the U.S. government to
impose the social and political regimes of its choice, using the
enormous power at its command and exploiting the privation and
distress of the victims of the war, who must be taught not to
raise their heads if we are to have true democracy.
A more nuanced position is taken by James Miller in his
monograph on U.S. policies towards Italy. Summarizing the record,
he concludes that "In retrospect, American involvement in the
stabilization of Italy was a significant, if troubling,
achievement. American power assured Italians the right to choose
their future form of government and also was employed to ensure
that they chose democracy. In defense of that democracy against
real but probably overestimated foreign and domestic threats, the
United States used undemocratic tactics that tended to undermine
the legitimacy of the Italian state."
The "foreign threats," as he had already discussed, were
hardly real; the Soviet Union watched from a distance as the U.S.
subverted the 1948 election and restored the traditional
conservative order, keeping to its wartime agreement with
Churchill that left Italy in the Western zone.
The "domestic threat" was the threat of democracy.
The idea that U.S. intervention provided Italians with
freedom of choice while ensuring that they chose "democracy" (in
our special sense of the term) is reminiscent of the attitude of
the extreme doves towards Latin America: that its people should
choose freely and independently, "EXCEPT when doing so would
affect U.S. interests adversely," and that the U.S. had no
interest in controlling them, unless developments "get out of
control"
The democratic ideal, at home and abroad, is simple and
straightforward: You are free to do what you want, as long as it
is what we want you to do.
6. Some Broader Effects
Apart from the rearmament of Germany within a Western
military alliance, which no Russian government could easily
accept for obvious reasons, Stalin observed all of this with
relative calm, apparently regarding it as a counterpart to his
own harsh repression in Eastern Europe. Nevertheless, these
parallel developments were bound to lead to conflict.
In his review of the reverse course in Japan, John Roberts
argues that "the American rehabilitation of the monopolistic
economies of Western Germany and Japan (largely under prewar
leadership) was a CAUSE, not a result, of the cold war. Their
rehabilitation was, undoubtedly, a vital part of American
capitalism's strategy in its all-out vendetta against communism"
-- meaning, primarily, an attack against the participation of the
"popular classes" in some significant range of decision-making.
Focusing on Europe, Melvyn Leffler comments that the approach to
European recovery led American officials to act
"to safeguard markets, raw materials, and investment
earnings in the Third World. Revolutionary nationalism had to be
thwarted outside Europe, just as the fight against indigenous
communism had to be sustained inside Europe. In this inter-
connected attempt to grapple with the forces of the left and the
potential power of the Kremlin resides much of the international
history, strategy, and geopolitics of the Cold War era."
These are critical undercurrents through the modern era, and
remain so. Throughout the reconstruction of the industrial
societies, the prime concern was to establish a state capitalist
order under the traditional conservative elites, within the
global framework of U.S. power, which would guarantee the ability
to exploit the various regions that were to fulfill their
functions as markets and sources of raw materials. If these goals
could be achieved, then the system would be stable and resistant
to feared social change, which would naturally be disruptive once
the system is operating in a relatively orderly fashion. In the
wealthy industrial centers, large segments of the population
would be accommodated, and would be led to abandon any more
radical vision under a rational cost-benefit analysis.
Once its institutional structure is in place, capitalist
democracy will function only if all subordinate their interests
to the needs of those who control investment decisions, from the
country club to the soup kitchen. It is only a matter of time
before an independent working class culture erodes, along with
the institutions and organizations that sustain it, given the
distribution of resources and power. And with popular
organizations weakened or eliminated, isolated individuals are
unable to participate in the political system in a meaningful
way. It will, over time, become largely a symbolic pageant or, at
most, a device whereby the public can select among competing
elite groups, and ratify their decisions, playing the role
assigned them by progressive democratic theorists of the Walter
Lippmann variety. That was a plausible assumption in the early
postwar period and has proven largely accurate so far, despite
many rifts, tensions and conflicts.
European elites have a stake in the preservation of this
system, and fear their domestic populations no less than the U.S.
authorities did. Hence their commitment to Cold War
confrontation, which came to serve as an effective technique of
domestic social management, and their willingness, with
occasional mutterings of discontent, to line up in U.S. global
crusades. The system is oppressive, and often brutal, but that is
no problem as long as others are the victims. It also raises
constant threats of large-scale catastrophe, but these too do not
enter into planning decisions shaped by the goal of maximization
of short-term advantage, which remains the operative principle.
DECLARATION & DISCLAIMER
==========
CTRL is a discussion and informational exchange list. Proselyzting propagandic
screeds are not allowed. Substance—not soapboxing! These are sordid matters
and 'conspiracy theory', with its many half-truths, misdirections and outright
frauds is used politically by different groups with major and minor effects
spread throughout the spectrum of time and thought. That being said, CTRL
gives no endorsement to the validity of posts, and always suggests to readers;
be wary of what you read. CTRL gives no credeence to Holocaust denial and
nazi's need not apply.
Let us please be civil and as always, Caveat Lector.
========================================================================
Archives Available at:
http://home.ease.lsoft.com/archives/CTRL.html
http:[EMAIL PROTECTED]/
========================================================================
To subscribe to Conspiracy Theory Research List[CTRL] send email:
SUBSCRIBE CTRL [to:] [EMAIL PROTECTED]
To UNsubscribe to Conspiracy Theory Research List[CTRL] send email:
SIGNOFF CTRL [to:] [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Om
