-Caveat Lector-
http://cyberjournal.org/cj/rkm/gri.shtml
Globalization and the Revolutionary Imperative
from Global Tyranny
to Democratic Renaissance
© 2000 by Richard K. Moore
14 January 2000
not yet published in print
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Table Of Contents
Prolog: The crisis of globalization
1. Pax Americana and the postwar corporate regime
2. The neoliberal revolution & The Crisis of Democracy
3. The New World Order & The Clash of Civilizations
4. The revolutionary imperative
Epilogue: Toward a Democratic Renaissance
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Prolog: The crisis of globalization
Only when the last tree has died
And the last river been poisoned
And the last fish caught
Will we realize that we cannot eat money.
- from a member of the Cree tribe
There is an almost gravitational pull toward putting
out of mind unpleasant facts. And our collective
ability to face painful facts is no greater than our
personal one. We tune out, we turn away, we avoid.
Finally we forget, and forget we have forgotten.
- psychologist Daniel Goleman
The decision-making part of humanity is dominated by a
particular ideology - the ideology of economic growth.
Our very definition of a "healthy economy" is
expressed in terms of the rate at which it is growing.
The process of globalization has entrenched the growth
ideology even further - as reflected in the modern
usage of the term "competitive". In earlier times
"competitive" referred to the ability of a nation to
compete on world markets. The term reflected
efficiency of production, competence in marketing, and
a sound national economy. But under globalization,
nations compete to attract investors and corporate
operators. Global investors seek those opportunities
which offer the greatest promise of growth for their
funds. Thus in order to be competitive - in the modern
sense - a nation must orient its policies around
encouraging and supporting unrestrained economic
growth - despite whatever social deterioration and
environmental degradation might be caused.
In 1995 the globalization process was
institutionalized in the form of the World Trade
Organization (WTO). The WTO has the power, by binding
treaties, to overturn national policies whenever those
policies are deemed to be contrary to competitiveness.
In every case where the WTO has been asked to review a
health, safety, or environmental regulation, that
regulation has been overturned.
Even the United States must kowtow to WTO directives.
Venezuelan gas refiners challenged U.S. rules
requiring that gas exported to the United States meet
basic clean air standards. The WTO ruled that the U.S.
Clean Air Act was an "unfair restriction on trade". In
1997, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency
obediently changed the rules to allow foreign refiners
to avoid U.S. performance standards. When American
steelworkers asked President Clinton for aid in
defending their jobs in the face of the dumping of
steel from Japan, Russia and Brazil into the U.S.
market, Clinton responded by telling them he could do
nothing to protect U.S. jobs because World Trade
Organization rules forbade such an action.
For the people of the West, globalization has brought
declining living standards, reduced social programs,
increased crime and other social stresses, and the
loss of sovereignty to centralized global
institutions. In effect, Western political leaders
have abandoned constitutional sovereignty and have
betrayed Western democracy and prosperity to global
corporate interests. But in the third world, the
ravages of globalization have been far greater. The
West has been spared the worst - for the time being.
But once the WTO regime is firmly established in
power, the West will have little protection from the
full consequences of "investor friendliness". The
third world offers chilling examples of where this
process can lead.
The case of Rwanda is particularly poignant. Rwanda
had enjoyed a reasonably healthy economy by
third-world standards. Roughly half of the economy was
devoted to agriculture, providing for the needs of the
local population. The other half was devoted to export
production of coffee and other commodities. An
international quota system maintained reasonably
stable prices for coffee producers, and coffee income
was a major source of Rwandan public finances. A
population growth of 3.2% per annum was negligible,
and up until 1989 inflation remained low and food
imports were minimal. The Rwandan economy was then
totally destroyed - not by population growth, not by
drought, and not by tribal conflict - but by the
actions of international coffee traders and the IMF.
In his book The Globalization Of Poverty, economics
professor Michel Chossudovsky examines this and many
other third-world collapse scenarios. In the chapter
Economic Genocide In Rwanda he explains in detail how
international capital, with assistance from the U.S.
government and the IMF, systematically reduced Rwanda
to a state of poverty, famine, and genocidal civil
war. The first blow was struck in 1989 when large U.S.
coffee traders persuaded Washington to undermine the
international quota system. In a matter of months,
coffee prices to producers plummeted by 50%. Retail
coffee prices remained high - 20 times what Rwandan
producers were receiving. The difference was being
pocketed by powerful international traders who
controlled distribution and retail markets.
Nonetheless, the Rwandan government was coping with
the situation as best it could. Restrictions on food
imports and subsidies to coffee growers kept the
domestic economy and society functioning. Similar
government measures have been used routinely in the
West to stabilize domestic economies. Nonetheless, by
1990 the Rwandan government needed some outside
financing and had no choice but to turn to the IMF.
Western governments too depend on debt financing, but
they have more control over the terms of the loans.
The terms attached to Rwanda's loans were dictated by
the IMF, and those terms led directly to the
destruction of the Rwandan economy.
The IMF, as usual, based its conditions on what is
called "trade liberalization" - one of the many names
used for policies which serve the interests of global
capital at the expense of national economies. The IMF
ordered a devaluation of the currency, prohibited
restrictions on imports, and strictly limited the
price that could be paid to coffee growers. Inflation
followed quickly and cheap food imports undermined
domestic agriculture. Soon coffee producers could not
cover their costs and in 1992, in desperation, growers
uprooted 300,000 coffee trees. The economy collapsed
along with government finances. Society disintegrated
and civil war arose out of the chaos.
When scenes of genocide appeared on Western television
screens, the media said nothing about the IMF dictates
and international financial manipulations which caused
the problem. Viewers were led to believe that
traditional tribal rivalries were to blame - that's
just "how things are" in the backward third world. The
U.S. government, whose actions had contributed
directly to the problems, offered no "humanitarian
intervention". The IMF has little chance of recovering
its loans from Rwanda, but that is of secondary
concern. The goal of the IMF is not to be a successful
lending institution, but rather to serve the interests
of global capital.
Today, small farmers in the U.S. and the European
Union are being put out of business in much the same
way that Rwandan agriculture was destroyed. Free-trade
treaties and government policies are reducing prices
paid to farmers and eliminating import restrictions.
Small farms are going bankrupt on a massive scale -
even while retail food prices remain relatively
constant. As in Rwanda, "trade liberalization"
squeezes the small operators and enables the big
corporate operators and distributors to pocket the
difference and to monopolize markets. Thus the full
ravages of globalization are gradually spreading from
the third world to the West.
The increased profits of the large corporations show
up in official figures as "economic growth", but that
"growth" does not benefit the consumer, farmers, or
workers. Instead it destroys rural economies, lowers
wages, creates widespread unemployment, and undermines
the fabric of societies. Globalization represents a
dire crisis for democracy, for national economies, for
societal harmony, and for human welfare generally. As
market forces collide with a finite Earth, the
destructive stresses are being channeled onto ordinary
people and their societies. Meanwhile, large
corporations and a tiny wealthy elite manipulate the
system to protect themselves from the consequences of
their own insane growth ideology.
As the scale of human activity has grown over recent
centuries, the Earth's life-support systems have been
stressed to the breaking point. The Atlantic Shelf was
at one time the world's most productive fishery.
Today, due to the operations of city-size factory
trawlers, the Shelf's productivity has been reduced to
a comparative trickle. Consequently the trawler fleets
have moved on to other oceans - systematically
repeating the destructive pattern on a global scale.
Meanwhile due to over-grazing and intensive
agricultural practices, irreplaceable topsoils are
being destroyed and green areas are turning into
deserts. Food supplies from land and sea alike are
being threatened and famine is increasing on a global
scale. Carbon-dioxide pollution, ozone depletion, acid
rain, deforestation, poisoning of air and waterways -
all of these stresses and more have global
consequences that cannot be easily predicted.
Over-population and resource scarcity do not account
for these crises. This point was made concisely and
dramatically in the book, World Hunger, Twelve Myths,
published in 1986. Permit me to paraphrase just two of
the many surprising observations... "During the past
25 years food production has outstripped population
growth by 16%. India - which for many of us symbolizes
over-population and poverty - is one of the top
third-world food exporters. If a mere 5.6% of India's
food production were re-allocated, hunger would be
wiped out in India." These figures were computed in
1986, but the basic picture hasn't changed since.
Population growth must be brought under control, but
the more immediate threat to humanity's survival has
to do with economic arrangements and the misuse of
resources.
We don't really know when we will reach a critical
breaking point, yet in our collective ignorance we
plunge recklessly ahead as a global society -
accelerating our usage of fossil fuels, generating
ever-more pollution, and squeezing ever-more resources
out of an over-stressed Earth. We are like a blind man
who charges ahead, even though he knows he is near the
edge of a precipice. As a species, our behavior is not
merely careless or imprudent - it is suicidal and
insane. The ideology of growth at one time seemed to
be more or less functional. The nations which opted
for growth industrialized and became prosperous and
powerful. The Earth seemed to offer endless new
territories and resources, and the growth ideology -
due to its apparent success - became firmly ingrained,
especially in the West. A once functional ideology has
now become dysfunctional and yet it remains globally
dominant. This is humanity's mental disconnect; this
is our collective insanity - our dysfunctional,
out-of-date growth ideology.
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Recommended reading:
Frances Moore Lappé, Joseph Collins, Peter Rosset,
World Hunger, Twelve Myths, Grove Press, New York,
1986.
Michel Chossudovsky, The Globalization Of Poverty, The
Third World Network, Penang, Malaysia, 1997.
Jerry Mander & Edward Goldsmith, ed, The Case Against
The Global Economy And For A Turn Toward The Local,
Sierra Club Books, San Francisco, 1996.
Hans-Peter Martin & Harald Schumann, The Global Trap,
Globalization & The Assault On Democracy & Prosperity,
St. Martin's Press, New York, 1997.
William Greider, One World Ready Or Not, The Manic
Logic Of Global Capitalism, Simon & Schuster, New
York, 1997.
Richard Douthwaite, The Growth Illusion, Lilliput
Press, Dublin, 1992.
James Goldsmith, The Response, Macmillan, London,
1995.
Third World Resurgence, a magazine published monthly
by the Third World Network, Penang, Malaysia.
The New Internationalist, a magazine published monthly
by New Internationalist Publications, Ltd, Oxford, UK.
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1. Pax Americana and the postwar corporate regime
If we see that Germany is winning we should help
Russia and if Russia is winning we ought to help
Germany and that way let them kill as many as
possible.
- Harry S. Truman, 1941
World War II resulted in overwhelming U.S. military
supremacy. A regime of American-backed "peace" - a Pax
Americana - was established early in the postwar
world. European businesses could get the benefit of
foreign trade and investment without the assistance of
their own fleets and armies. Under this new regime, it
no longer made much sense for European powers to fight
with one another or to compete militarily for economic
spheres. After 1945 the old empires were gradually
dismantled and Western Europe entered an unprecedented
era of collaboration.
The fundamental structure of the international economy
had rapidly shifted from partitioned to integrated.
And for the first time in many centuries a lasting
peace in Western Europe had been achieved. Both of
these developments followed naturally from a single
revolutionary shift - the establishment of the Pax
Americana regime. Before that regime, globalization
was impossible and European peace had been
unachievable; with the regime, the peace followed
naturally and the integration of the global economy,
in one form or another, became inevitable.
The outcome of World War II had given America military
supremacy, but the U.S. had other options available to
it besides establishing the Pax Americana regime.
There was considerable domestic pressure for the U.S.
to return to isolationism and minimize foreign
entanglements. Why did America instead pursue a role
of active leadership, guiding the creation of the UN,
the IMF, and the other postwar international
institutions? And why didn't America follow standard
Western tradition, and use its overwhelming power to
carve out its own private sphere of influence, leaving
the European powers to stake out their own?
It turns out there are very clear answers to these
questions. In fact, the strategic considerations that
went into these momentous policy choices are a matter
of public record.
In 1939 important parts of the world were coming under
the control of Japan and Germany, and the U.S.
government was trying to figure out what response
would best serve U.S. interests. The government turned
to the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR) and
empowered it to convene a series of planning sessions
in order to come up with a sensible U.S. strategy. The
CFR was a prominent voice for sentiment which was
widespread among U.S. policy makers and elites. The
planning sessions were highly secret at the time, but
notes and bulletins produced by the sessions have
since become publicly available. The development of
the strategic thinking can be clearly traced.
The CFR sessions immediately focused on economic
considerations. They systematically assessed market
sizes, and resource availability, in different parts
of the world. They were seeking to identify what
sphere of influence the U.S. would require in order to
fulfill the trade requirements of the imperialist
American economy. Out of these deliberations came the
fundamental framework for U.S. war strategy.
In their initial thinking, the Council planning teams
were inclined to write off Hitler's gains as
irreversible. They painstakingly calculated that they
needed the Western Hemisphere, the British
Commonwealth, and Asia - as "friendly" zones - in
order to remain viable as a world power. They decided
that Japan's expansion must be stopped, that Japan
must be ultimately incorporated into the American
fold, and that Great Britain was central to U.S.
strategy. But by 1941 the grand planners expanded
their objectives to include the defeat of Germany and
the establishment of a world-wide "friendly" zone -
what was to later become known as the free world, the
underdeveloped world, or the third world.
The Council also outlined, during 1941-2, the basic
structures of the Bretton Woods arrangements - the
IMF, the World Bank, and the UN. The fundamental
objectives behind this blueprint were stated clearly
and candidly by the participants themselves in
publicly available documents. The excerpts below are
from the book Trilaterialism - The Trilateral
Commission and Elite Planning for World Management.
Recommendation P-B23 (July 1941) stated that worldwide
financial institutions were necessary for the purpose
of "stabilizing currencies and facilitating programs
of capital investment for constructive undertakings in
backward and underdeveloped regions." During the last
half of 1941 and in the first months of 1942, the
Council developed this idea for the integration of the
world.
- Trilateralism, p. 148
Isaiah Bowman first suggested a way to solve the
problem of maintaining effective control over weaker
territories while avoiding overt imperial conquest. At
a Council meeting in May 1942, he stated that the
United States had to exercise the strength needed to
assure "security", and at the same time "avoid
conventional forms of imperialism". The way to do
this, he argued, was to make the exercise of that
power international in character through a United
Nations body.
- Trilateralism, p. 149.
>From this it becomes clear that the primary objective
behind this planning was to facilitate the growth of
the global capitalist economy ("facilitate programs of
capital investment"). No other primary concerns seemed
to play any role in the planning process - least of
all any related to human rights, or world peace, or
democratic sovereignty. Economic growth, and economic
growth alone was the prize upon which these planners
always kept their eyes. The rest of the agenda, as
expressed above, was about how to accomplish this
single objective.
The third world ("backward and underdeveloped
regions") was targeted as the place where growth can
be generated - through corporate-funded development
projects ("capital investment for constructive
undertakings "). The planners anticipated that
third-world nations would need to be coerced into this
agenda ("the problem of maintaining effective control
over weaker territories"). They also anticipated that
overt imperialism would be politically unacceptable in
the postwar world ("avoid conventional forms of
imperialism."). A solution was identified to solve
these anticipated problems. That was to deploy
American power ("United States had to exercise the
strength"), but to disguise it as an international
mission ("make the exercise of that power
international in character through a United Nations
body."). Ironically, the covert objective for the UN -
coercion through intervention - was nearly the
opposite of the public objective - peace through
cooperation.
These policy recommendations were adopted and the
postwar "free world" developed accordingly. In public
reality the U.S. would be providing benign leadership
and policing on behalf of the international community
in pursuit of democracy and peace. In hidden reality
the U.S. would be intervening on behalf of
international capital while explaining its actions in
public-reality terms. That's what was explicitly
anticipated in the CFR planning documents, and that's
precisely how things have developed ever since.
William Blum's Killing Hope chronicles in detail the
postwar history of this dual-agenda system,
contrasting rhetoric with reality in 55 separate
intervention incidents. Some of these interventions
were overt and some covert - but the motivating
agendas were in all cases covert.
In order to carry out the hidden agenda - maximizing
capital growth through exploitive third-world
development - it was necessary that the socialist
ideology be contained. "Mother Russia", which had been
heralded as the West's staunch ally against fascism,
suddenly became the "Red Menace". In 1946 Churchill
articulated the doctrine of the "Iron Curtain" and the
Cold War was on. There followed a decades-long
propaganda campaign in Western media which demonized
the Soviet Union. The Nazi intelligence network which
had operated throughout Eastern Europe was kept intact
and was incorporated into the new U.S. Central
Intelligence Agency (CIA). Covert destabilization
operations against the Soviets were an ongoing part of
the Cold War.
It was the ideology of socialism that needed to be
contained much more than the USSR itself. Any ideology
which sought to organize a third-world economy around
its own local self interests, rather than external
investor interests, was labeled "Marxist", and the
Soviet expansionist Bogeyman was offered as an excuse
for whatever "order restoring" military intervention
might be required. In fact Soviet forces, and later
Chinese, preferred for the most part to stay home and
keep order within what was called the Communist Bloc.
It was American bases that were strung around the
globe, not Soviet or Chinese ones.
The leadership of this global regime remains to this
day centered in the top echelons of the U.S.
government. And the tradition of ongoing elite
strategic planning has been institutionalized in the
form of the National Security Council, the Central
Intelligence Agency, the National Security Agency, and
miscellaneous other agencies - all working closely
with a network of corporate-linked think tanks and
consulting firms. As the U.S. continues to impose its
leadership, using unilateral force when considered
necessary, it follows the policy guidelines defined by
this highly secret, ongoing, corporate-dominated,
elite planning process.
Thus it is a corporate elite which is guiding the
direction of global events - for its own benefit.
Western populations benefitted economically from this
system in the immediate postwar years - but the price
they paid was the loss of democratic control over
their destinies. In the final analysis the people of
the West are just as much victims of this elite global
regime as is the rest of the world. This fact became
apparent with the unfolding of the neoliberal
revolution.
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Recommended reading:
Holly Sklar ed., Trilaterialism - The Trilateral
Commission And Elite Planning For World Management,
South End Press, Boston, 1980.
William Blum, Killing Hope, U.S. Military And CIA
Interventions Since World War II, Common Courage
Press, Monroe Maine, 1995.
Michael Parenti, The Sword And The Dollar,
Imperialism, Revolution, And The Arms Race, St.
Martin's Press, New York, 1989.
Noam Chomsky, World Orders Old And New, Columbia
University Press, New York, 1994.
David Horowitz, editor, Containment And Revolution,
Beacon Press, Boston, 1967
James Bradford, The Puzzle Palace, Inside The National
Security Agency, America's Most Secret Intelligence
Organization, Penguin Books, New York, 1983.
Covert Action Quarterly magazine, published quarterly
by Covert Action Publications, Inc., Washington D.C.
1994.
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2. The neoliberal revolution & The Crisis of Democracy
In the postwar years the West continued to exploit the
third world as it had been doing for centuries. The
primary difference was that the imperial partitions
had been removed and a single nation was providing
overall "security". Imperialism went from being
competitive to being collective. Western nations,
apart from America, shed their roles as first-rate
military powers - but strong industrialized economies
continued to be the fulcrum of global economic
affairs. The vision of the postwar era was one of
prosperous and contented populations in the
industrialized world, living in economically sound
nations.
When Volkswagens sold on world markets, the economic
benefits went largely to German workers, to a German
corporation, and to the German national budget. The
story was similar for Renault & France, Fiat & Italy,
General Motors & America - or Toyota & Japan. As the
global economy grew, the general prosperity of the
populations in industrialized nations reached
unprecedented levels. The postwar system worked to the
benefit of industrialized nations, their corporations,
and their populations.
Today - as was discussed above in The Crisis Of
Globalization - industrialized nations are in decline.
Economic power has shifted from nations to
transnational corporations and financial institutions.
The WTO - which acts as the agent of international
capital - is able to dictate economic policy even to
the USA, the world's only super power. General Motors,
for example, no longer "belongs to" the U.S. - its
factories are spread around the world, Detroit is
cluttered with abandoned factories, auto workers have
sought new jobs or have become unemployed, and the
U.S. treasury receives little direct benefit from GM's
immense profits.
The postwar economy was governed by two things: the
industrialized nations themselves, and the Bretton
Woods institutions. These institutions - primarily the
IMF and the World Bank - acted as system gyroscopes.
They were designed to stabilize the system and to
buffer it against financial and market fluctuations.
The U.S. dollar was pegged to gold at thirty-five
dollars per ounce, and other major currencies were
linked to the dollar by a schedule of stable
exchange-rates. Industrialized nations controlled the
flow of currencies and capital across their borders.
They could establish trade restrictions and could
regulate industry so as to maintain the overall health
of their national economies.
For two decades the elite-designed system operated
according to plan. On the surface it seemed ideal for
all parties in the West - the general population,
nations, and investors. But stresses were building up
beneath the surface and by the late 1960s those
stresses were leading to serious problems for Western
capital interests. One of these stresses was caused by
the very success of the system. Economic growth had
been so strong up through the 1960s that maintaining
that rate became problematic. Western corporations
were finding it difficult to keep up their record
levels of growth.
Another source of stress came from the emergence of
non-Western economic powers such as Japan. Lower
Japanese wages allowed their products to be priced
attractively on world markets. The Western commitment
to general prosperity - and decent wages - made it
difficult for Western firms to compete against such
non-Western upstarts. The principle of general
prosperity in the West was coming into conflict with
the goal of capital growth for Western investors. The
postwar system was under stress, and as Japanese
products flooded world markets this source of stress
mounted.
Western prosperity was important to the postwar regime
for two reasons. One reason was that well-paid
Westerners were good consumers - their buying power
created demand for the products the capitalist system
was producing. Prosperity was also important because
it provided public support for the regime. The elite
planners had assumed that a prosperous population
would be a content population, and that a content
population would be a politically docile population.
Why would people be concerned about how the inner
circle was running the world, if those people were
well off and had lots of goodies to enjoy? A
democratic political system was no problem for the
inner circle who ran the regime - as long as voters
were docile. A prosperous electorate, it was assumed,
would be happy to simply vote and leave the elite
regime to run things.
Then quite unexpectedly in the mid 1960s a significant
wave of popular discontent began to arise throughout
the West. Prosperity was experiencing all-time highs
but people were beginning to demonstrate that they
lived by more than bread alone. A civil-rights
movement sprang up in America, along with an
anti-Vietnam War movement. An environmental movement
arose throughout the West, challenging the exploitive
practices of capitalist development. A general
sentiment against militarism and interventionism
prevailed, challenging the methods by which the regime
managed world affairs. In America there arose a
broad-based and fairly well-organized New Left
political movement. In Europe, 1968 took its place
with 1848 as an historic milestone of popular unrest.
Environmental protection laws were passed which raised
corporate costs and cut into profits. Anti-militarist
sentiment remained high, making it difficult for
interventions to be justified - a phenomenon that came
to be known as the Vietnam Syndrome. Even the system
of government secrecy - enabling the inner circle to
exercise covert control - came under attack in the
U.S. with the passage of the Freedom of Information
Act. The elite regime was under attack from below, and
continued prosperity was failing to quell the tide.
As a consequence, the democratic process itself was
becoming a net liability to the regime. Popular
idealism was taking the political initiative and was
pushing politicians in directions that were contrary
to elite interests. As environmental and other popular
reform measures were implemented, the strong nation
state - with its ability to regulate capital flows and
corporations - was also becoming a hindrance to
corporate growth. The primary interests of the elite
were being seriously challenged, and the architecture
they had designed was spinning out of control. A
crisis had arisen for the elite, and by the early
1970s the time had come to make fundamental
adjustments in the postwar architecture.
The first revolutionary shift in the postwar regime
came in 1972 when President Nixon took the U.S. off
the gold standard. That act immediately removed the
solid anchor to which major currencies had been
pegged. Soon after that the system of fixed exchange
rates had to be abandoned since the real value of the
American dollar was now subject to fluctuations. A
process of creeping destabilization occurred, leading
to the gradual development of international financial
markets of astronomical size and extreme volatility.
Ultimately, in the modern era of globalization, the
Bretton Woods institutions themselves have become a
vehicle of intentional destabilization.
In 1980, under the charismatic leadership of Ronald
Reagan and Margaret Thatcher, a host of other
revolutionary changes were introduced. The
Reagan-Thatcher revolution goes under several names,
and the term that is used most in international
circles is neoliberal revolution. Economic liberalism
is the doctrine that Adam Smith advocated: free
markets unhampered by government interference. In the
late 1800s economic liberalism was dominant in the USA
and Britain, and it was referred to as laissez-faire
capitalism. This era was disastrous for society, and
the doctrine fell into general disrepute. Reagan &
Thatcher re-introduced the doctrine with a vengeance.
Economic liberalism was being revived, and hence the
name "neoliberalism". The American political term
"liberal" is quite a different thing altogether -
American liberals tend to favor government regulation
of industry if they think it will be good for society.
Neoliberals always put capital growth first, American
liberals would put societal benefit first.
The central themes introduced by the neoliberal
revolution were deregulation, tax cuts, privatization,
and the use of mass propaganda to create support for
neoliberal policies and to undermine confidence in
government itself. This turned out to be a very
radical program of change and sophisticated propaganda
was central to its success. Anyone with the slightest
knowledge of economic history knew that neoliberalism
would devastate society as it had in the late 1800s.
The elite planners faced a major challenge: how to
somehow hoodwink the electorate into tolerating the
inevitable consequences.
As in the war-years, a dual-agenda propaganda strategy
was adopted. The hidden agenda, as one would expect,
was about the expansion of capital growth for wealthy
investors. The public agenda was one of liberation:
liberating individuals and businesses from "bungling
government interference".
The propaganda line went something like this... Tax
cuts would take money away from "the politicians" and
put it into the hands of businesses and ordinary
people - where it could be used "more efficiently".
Deregulation would put an end to "government meddling"
and allow the "efficient private sector" to "get on
with business". All of our societal woes had been
caused by "government bungling" and "special interest
politicians". If those evil forces could be reined in,
then corporations can get on with the job of
"rebuilding our economies" and everyone would benefit.
Privatization of government-run industries and
services was "obviously a good thing" - it would give
some "efficient private operator" a chance to clean up
the mess that had been created by government
ownership.
A notable feature of this propaganda line is its
radical fundamentalism. That is, there aren't any
qualifiers: government is always bad, it is always
inefficient, and it never does anything right. Private
business on the other hand is always efficient and
never does anything wrong - and it certainly never
needs to be regulated by government. There are no
balancing considerations, no data to be looked at, no
debate to be entered into. The question, once this
line has been swallowed, is simply how quickly the
project can be undertaken. How quickly can government
be made "smaller"? How quickly can business be
"freed"? How rapidly can taxes be cut and by how much?
There were in fact two limits to the rate at which the
neoliberal agenda could be pursued. The first limit
came from the elite planners themselves. Their own
agenda was about the orderly expansion of capital
growth, which does require the balancing of various
considerations, and looking at data, and debating
tradeoffs. But in terms of public resistance, the only
limit was that society shouldn't be allowed to
deteriorate so quickly that unrest outstripped the
ability of propaganda to placate that unrest. As long
as the ongoing propaganda campaign remained effective,
its fundamentalist nature allowed the elite to push
things along at their own chosen speed. There was no
obvious point where a new propaganda line would be
needed - as long as a single regulation remained on
the books, the neoliberal revolution could continue to
march forward.
In the initial postwar regime, Western governments
were expected to regulate industry so as to achieve
healthy and balanced national economies. Critical
industries or infrastructures might be subsidized, so
as to support better operation of the economy as a
whole. Financial institutions were prevented from
investing in over-risky ventures so that stable
financing would be available to businesses and
individuals generally. Regulations of wages and
working conditions protected worker's interests and
encouraged general prosperity. Other regulations
protected public health and safety, and helped ensure
the quality of products and foodstuffs. Regulations on
mergers and acquisitions helped maintain competition
and prevent the formation of monopolies. Regulations
on capital transfers across borders encouraged capital
to stay at home where it could be re-invested in the
domestic economy. Naturally, elite economic planners
used their influence to minimize the impact of
regulations on corporate profits, but this was
balanced against other considerations.
Over time, the effect of neoliberal deregulation
destabilized this postwar system, drove down wages,
reduced worker safety, increased industrial pollution
and environmental degradation, encouraged more
corporations to relocate their production facilities
"offshore" to lower-waged countries, increased
unemployment and poverty, and permitted the increasing
concentration of ownership and the domination of
markets by big operators. Quite predictably, the same
kind of social devastation arose which had
characterized the Robber Baron era of the late 1800s.
Corporate profits were skyrocketing, the stock market
grew wildly, and many fortunes were made. Television
told people the system was working and that only more
deregulation could make things better.
The postwar regulatory regime had served society's
best interests and it had been intentionally
encouraged by the elite planners themselves.
Neoliberal propaganda, on the other hand, claimed that
all regulations had arisen out of the perversity of
"interfering bureaucrats". Neoliberal propaganda was
and still is shallow and simplistic, it ignores all
history, and it flies in the face of direct
experience. But as propaganda pioneer Paul Goebbels
discovered, if you tell a big enough lie, and you tell
it often enough, people will eventually believe it.
When that big-lie philosophy is augmented by the
talents of Madison Avenue and Hollywood, and the mass
channels of film and television - it is very difficult
for the average viewer to know what is real and what
is not.
Although the nation state was losing its power over
corporations, it remained as powerful as ever over
ordinary people. Social deterioration led to unrest
and increased crime, as was easily predictable.
Policing was increased, tough-on-crime policies were
adopted, and prison populations increased. Police
forces started getting better equipment and elite
police groups were formed which used military-style
automatic weapons. Films like "Dirty Harry" depicted
police as being hampered by bureaucratic and
constitutional restrictions - generating public
support for more aggressive policing. Social order in
the postwar regime had been largely based on voluntary
compliance with laws. Under neoliberalism, the
beginnings of police-state tactics and a police-state
mentality began to emerge. With general prosperity
abandoned, and society rapidly deteriorating, a strong
nation state - in terms of police power - was
important to the success of neoliberalism.
Part of the police-state mentality was the belief that
constitutional civil liberties were a "bureaucratic
nuisance" that hampered police investigations and
contributed to crime. Popular opinion began to revile
the very protections that had been so greatly valued
by the earlier citizens who had fought and died to
achieve them. The denigration of politicians and
government - a central theme of neoliberal propaganda
- further eroded public support for democratic
institutions. Citizens were applauding the weakening
of the only institutions which could possibly
represent their interests effectively.
Let us now take a look at some of the elite thinking
that went into the formulation of this bold neoliberal
architecture. Recall that the Council on Foreign
Relations was the elite think tank which had been
responsible for designing the postwar architecture.
CFR has continued to be highly influential in planning
circles. One of the most prominent spokesmen for the
CFR is Harvard history Professor Samuel P. Huntington.
Huntington has published several pivotal articles and
books which serve to promote elite regime changes in
terms which appeal to wider leadership circles in
government and industry.
In May 1975, a remarkable report was made public - the
Report of the Trilateral Task Force on Governability
of Democracies. In the book Trilateralism, Alan Wolfe
discusses this report. He focuses especially on the
analysis presented by Huntington in a section of the
report entitled the Crisis of Democracy. Permit me to
paraphrase from Wolfe's discussion, which begins on p.
295...
Huntington tells us that democratic societies "cannot
work" unless the citizenry is "passive". The
"democratic surge of the 1960s" represented an "excess
of democracy", which must be reduced if governments
are to carry out their "traditional policies", both
domestic and foreign.
Huntington's notion of "traditional policies" is
expressed in the following passage from the report:
To the extent that the United States was governed by
anyone during the decades after World War II, it was
governed by the President acting with the support and
cooperation of key individuals and groups in the
executive office, the federal bureaucracy, Congress,
and the more important businesses, banks, law firms,
foundations, and media, which constitute the private
sector's "Establishment."
As you can see, Huntington's analysis was in complete
agreement with the one which has been developed in
this article. He concurs that citizen docility
("passivity") is central to the success of the elite
regime - if "traditional policies" are to be carried
out. In other words, docility is necessary if the
interests of elite capital ("important businesses,
banks" and the rest of the "Establishment") are to be
served. His words also re-confirm that policy making
is indeed an elite process, centered at the top
echelons of U.S. government. Even the title "Crisis of
Democracy" was unusually candid - as the "crisis" was
one being faced by the elite, not by the public or by
government - democracy itself was the crisis.
Huntington was accurately describing the fact that the
democratic process was becoming a hindrance to elite
objectives, and he was recommending that the "excess
of democracy" be "reduced". Huntington's remarks were
surprisingly candid - he was giving us a rare glance
into inner-circle thinking. Huntington takes it for
granted that the purpose of government is to support
capitalist growth - democracy is only useful if it
serves that purpose. As Wolfe expressed it:
The warning that comes across clearly from a reading
of The Crisis of Democracy is that some people with
access to the center of power now understand that the
change in popular attitudes toward government will
necessitate a rapid dismantling of the whole structure
of liberal democracy.
As we have seen, neoliberalism indeed did lead to "a
rapid dismantling of the whole structure of liberal
democracy". Five years before Reagan & Thatcher
unleashed the neoliberal assault the clear signals
about the agenda were already visible - if you knew
where to look. As it turns out, Huntington has
published subsequent material which forecasts in some
detail later dramatic regime changes. His book The
Clash of Civilizations will prove to very useful in
section 3 when we investigate the meaning of President
George Bush's "New World Order".
The changes caused by neoliberalism were extensive and
all-pervasive. They were revolutionary changes and
they transformed not only British and American society
but they also exerted pressure on other nations to
adopt similar policies in order to remain competitive.
But as dramatic as it was, the neoliberal revolution
did not result in modern globalization. Under
neoliberalism, trade barriers remained as an
acceptable tool for governments to use to protect
local industry. The core of the globalization agenda
is about radical free trade - the elimination of all
restrictions on international trade and investment.
Under globalization transnational corporations are the
center of power and national boundaries are irrelevant
to corporations and investors.
-------------------------------------------------------
Recommended reading:
William Greider, Who Will Tell The People, The
Betrayal Of American Democracy, Touchstone - Simon &
Schuster, New York, 1993.
Haynes Johnson, Sleepwalking Through History, America
In The Reagan Years, W. W. Norton, New York, 1991.
-------------------------------------------------------
3. The New World Order & The Clash of Civilizations
The period 1989-1990 brought more revolutionary shifts
in the postwar global architecture. Two very
significant historical events occurred during that
period - the collapse of the Soviet Union and the
Desert Storm. Even before the dust had settled from
these events, President George Bush announced on
global television that a new world order had been
established. What he meant by that was not immediately
obvious, but the meaning became clear as subsequent
events unfolded - under U.S. leadership and with the
support of massive propaganda.
Desert Storm represented a revolutionary shift in
international relations. It set a precedent which was
to pave the way for later interventions in Albania,
Bosnia, and eventually Yugoslavia and East Timor. The
kind of "order restoring" interventions which the U.S.
had formerly carried out unilaterally - and which were
often opposed by global public opinion - were now
being carried out on behalf of global public opinion.
In addition, other Western powers and NATO started
playing a bigger role. Pax Americana continued to
provide the framework of world order, but within that
framework other Western powers were assuming a
partnership role in maintaining by force the system of
collective imperialism.
Meanwhile, the collapse of the Soviet Union offered
major new opportunities to the West. The Soviet realms
were abandoning socialism, and looking to the West for
a vision of their new future. Big Western investors
and transnational corporations stood to realize
immense profits out of development projects in that
vast region. A world-class investment vehicle was in
the process of being launched. And the Soviet
deterrent to U.S. aggression was to be no more - the
New World Order was to have a free hand on the world
scene.
The build-up to Desert Storm witnessed an
unprecedented global propaganda campaign aimed at
building widespread support for intervention. Lies
were spread about babies in Kuwait being taken from
their incubators and left to die. Saddam Hussein - who
had been favored by the West during the decade-long
war with Iran - was rapidly transformed by a
demonization campaign into a reincarnation of Hitler
himself.
The U.S. government blocked all attempts at effective
negotiation before the war, and the invasion was
launched at the earliest moment permitted by the UN
authorization - despite (or because of) the fact that
a Soviet-brokered deal seemed about to bear fruit. The
evidence was clear that the U.S. government wanted
this intervention very badly, although the motivation
was not apparent at the time. The only thing that was
clear was that some hidden agenda was being pursued.
The public agenda was all about freeing Kuwait, but
the actual execution of Desert Storm went far, far
beyond that limited objective. As the Storm progressed
- utterly destroying Iraq as a modern nation - the
public objective of the campaign gradually shifted
from freeing Kuwait to ousting Saddam from power. The
way was being prepared for Bush to make historic
new-world-order announcement. Once again, by means of
dual-agenda propaganda, top U.S. leadership had
accomplished their own hidden agenda - in this case
the establishment of a new global regime of
international "order".
The sanctity of national sovereignty - which had been
taken very seriously by the UN's general membership
ever since the UN was formed - was to be rapidly
abandoned by this new world order. Sovereignty was
becoming conditional. If a nation met with the
disapproval of the "international community" then it
was now to be subject to forceful disciplining by
means of Western military power. And what the
"international community" approved or disapproved of -
it turned out - was whatever the corporate-owned
international media said it approved or disapproved
of. Since the 1970s the West had funded and supported
genocide in East Timor. But only when the mass media
started covering events there did "international
opinion" take note.
The basic outline of Bush's new world order became
eventually obvious from events. However a much more
comprehensive perspective was provided for us, once
again, by Samuel P. Huntington. In the summer of 1993
he published an article in Foreign Affairs entitled
The Clash Of Civilizations. In 1997, he elaborated his
vision further in the book, The Clash Of Civilizations
And The Remaking Of World Order. In this book he
divides the world into eight "civilizations," and
provides a detailed description of the dynamics
planned for the new global regime. Ongoing
kultur-kampf (culture clash) is to be expected.
When Huntington's Crisis Of Democracy was published,
little public note was taken. Its prophetic
significance only became apparent five years later
with the launch of the neoliberal revolution. In the
case of Clash Of Civilizations there was again a delay
of four years from the time the initial article was
published before its full importance was noted. Soon
after the publication of the book version, the
significance of Huntington's vision was duly noted in
the mainstream press:
The Clash of Civilizations, the book by Harvard
professor Sam Huntington, may not have hit the
bestseller lists, but its dire warning of a 21st
century rivalry between the liberal white folk and the
Yellow Peril - sorry, the Confucian cultures - is
underpinning the formation of a new political
environment.
To adapt one of Mao's subtler metaphors, Huntington's
Kultur-kampf is becoming, with stunning speed, the
conceptual sea in which Washington's policy-making
fish now swim.
- Guardian Weekly, April 6, 1997
Within regions, according to the kultur-kampf
paradigm, there are to be "core states," which are to
have a special role in maintaining order within
"their" regions. As the US "authorizes" Turkish
incursions into Iraq - and as Turkish attempts to join
the EU are regularly rebuffed - we can see Turkey
being excluded from the Western "civilization" and
being guided into a core-state role in the Islamic
"civilization."
Between regions, says Huntington, we are to expect
perpetual "fault-line conflicts," which are to be
resolved through the auspices of "non primary level
participants." This is what has been happening in
Yugoslavia, where allegedly neutral NATO is
"resolving" the fault-line conflict between the Muslim
and Christian "civilizations." The media reported on
Serbian "ethnic cleansing," but in the larger picture
it was the West that has engaged in ethnic cleansing.
By destabilizing and fragmenting Yugoslavia, the West
could then assign the various pieces to their
appropriate "civilizations."
Huntington's core states are nothing really new, but
are simply a renaming of what have been traditionally
called Western "client states." Managing "fault line
conflicts", for supposedly humanitarian reasons,
becomes the excuse for intervention, in place of
"defending strategic interests" or "resisting
communism," - but maintaining collective Western
domination continues to be the underlying agenda.
Under this regional regime there is little danger of
Armageddon, nor is there any hope of a final peace.
Ongoing managed conflict is to be the order of things,
providing dynamic stability, with the price in
suffering to be paid by the people of the non-Western
"civilizations." George Orwell's 1984 becomes
especially prophetic at this point in history, not
only because of its kultur-kampf-like warfare
scenarios, but also because of the rapid "Orwellian"
shifts in public rhetoric that have accompanied
globalization and the onset of its new world order.
The latest propaganda cloak - masking the regime of
kultur-kampf imperialism - is called humanitarian
intervention. Clinton made it all quite clear, when he
spoke to NATO troops in Macedonia in July 1999. In
this momentous announcement, amounting to a global
Monroe Doctrine, the US - along with its faithful
assistant, NATO - declares its right and its intention
to forcefully intervene in the affairs of any nation,
whenever and wherever it chooses:
"We must win the peace. If we can do this here...we
can then say to the people of the world, 'Whether you
live in Africa or Central Europe or any other place,
if somebody comes after innocent civilians and tries
to kill them en masse because of their race, their
ethnic background or their religion and it is within
our power stop it, we will stop it.'"
- "The Clinton Doctrine", from the Washington Post,
reprinted in The Guardian Weekly, July 1-7 1999, p. 31
You've got hand it to him... it's a very effective
formula. Who can resist the idea of taking action to
prevent genocide?
The problem with the tidy little formula is that the
same folks who decide where to intervene are the ones
who run the global system that intentionally creates
the conditions which are destabilizing societies
globally and making pretexts for intervention
plentiful.
It is the USA which installed or supported Noriega,
Marcos, Pinochet, the Shah, the Ayatollah, and Saddam
Hussein. It is the West that sold Saddam weapons of
mass destruction. It is the West that supported
Suharto and profited from his crony-capitalist regime
and East Timor repression. It is the US and Germany
who intentionally promoted the destabilization of
Yugoslavia over the past decade and repeatedly
encouraged Milosevic, giving him enough rope so they
could later hang him with it.
A band of arsonists has successfully usurped the role
of global fire crew. They start fires all over the
world on a routine basis, and whenever they want to
intervene militarily, all they have to do is turn the
media spotlight on the results of their own diabolical
handiwork. Not only that, but when they do intervene,
as we've seen in Iraq and Yugoslavia, they don't put
out the fire: they simply burn down the rest of the
house. Ethnic repression is going on all over the
world, including within staunch American allies such
as Turkey and Israel, and Most Favored Nations such as
China. But only when the corporate mass media gets
around to 'revealing' such a circumstance does it
become a 'humanitarian crisis'.
Huntington's civilizational paradigm gives Western
nations a plausible justification for pursuing their
self interest on the world stage, as they play their
"natural role" as one of the contending
"civilizations." It gives Western forces a "right" to
intervene, as "disinterested parties" adjudicating
"fault-line" conflicts or protecting "humanitarian"
interests. The kultur-kampf mythology reeks of Western
hypocrisy, and its implicit imperialism is disastrous
for most of the world in terms of human rights abuses,
disease and starvation, and lack of
self-determination. Nonetheless, the doctrine appears
to offer an effective propaganda strategy for
maintaining Western hegemony under globalization into
the new millennium.
-------------------------------------------------------
Recommended reading:
Samuel P. Huntington, The Clash Of Civilizations And
The Remaking Of World Order, Simon and Schuster, 1997.
-------------------------------------------------------
4. The revolutionary imperative
The course of world events, for the first time in
history, is now largely controlled by a centralized
global regime. This regime has been consolidating its
power ever since World War II and is now formalizing
that power into a collection of centralized
institutions and a new system of international
"order". Top Western political leaders are
participants in this global regime, and the strong
Western nation state is rapidly being dismantled and
destabilized. The global regime serves elite corporate
interests exclusively. It has no particular regard for
human rights, democracy, human welfare, or the health
of the environment. The only god of this regime is the
god of wealth accumulation.
>From the beginning, this evolving regime has employed
dual-agenda propaganda. For each elite initiative
there has been a public cover story which made that
initiative seem palatable to public opinion. There has
been a public reality and a hidden reality. In public
reality the UN was to begin an era of peaceful
international collaboration. In fact the postwar era
has been dominated by US interventionism in support of
international capital. In public reality the
Reagan-Thatcher revolution was about freedom and
individualism. In fact neoliberalism was about
transferring power to corporations and dismantling
democracy. In public reality humanitarianism has been
the motivation for the recent acceleration in Western
interventions in places like Iraq, Albania,
Yugoslavia, and East Timor. In fact the global regime
has been establishing - in the public mind - the
"legitimacy" of its new world order.
In Section 1, The Crisis Of Globalization, the
following observation was offered:
A once functional ideology has now become
dysfunctional and yet it remains globally dominant.
This is humanity's mental disconnect; this is our
collective insanity - our dysfunctional, out-of-date
growth ideology.
But in fact it is not humanity - in any democratic
sense - which has a "mental disconnect". It is not
humanity that directs the course of world events. It
is not humanity that decides to give top priority to
unrestrained growth. And yet humanity, in a general
sense, is acquiescing to this state of affairs. It is
acquiescing not out of informed choice, but out of a
diet of disinformation and a lack of perceived
alternatives.
In two centuries the Western world has come full
circle from tyranny to tyranny. The tyranny of
monarchs was overthrown in the Enlightenment and
semi-democratic republics were established. Two
centuries later those republics are being destabilized
and a new tyranny is assuming power - a global tyranny
of anonymous corporate elites. This anonymous regime
has no qualms about creating poverty, destroying
nations, and engaging in genocide.
Our elite rulers did not lead us into tyranny and
environmental collapse because they are evil people,
but because they were forced to by the nature of
capitalism. Capitalism must continually grow in order
to survive. If investors have nowhere to increase
their funds then they stop investing and the whole
system collapses like a house of cards.
Propaganda myth tells us that capitalism and free
enterprise are one and the same thing. They are not.
Under free enterprise a business can provide a service
or product, make a profit in the process, and continue
on stably for many years. Under capitalism such a
business would be considered a failure - it does not
provide a growth opportunity for an investor. Under
capitalism society is forced to continually destroy
old ways of doing things and adopt new ways - not
because it is good for society but because that is how
wealthy investors can increase their wealth still
further. That's why General Motors and Firestone
banded together to destroy excellent urban transit
systems throughout the U.S. in the 1940s and 1950s -
so that people would be forced to convert to
automobiles and create growth for the automobile,
tire, and petroleum industries. For exactly the same
reasons, and during the same period, rail systems were
destroyed in Great Britain and Ireland.
The history of the past two centuries can be
understood as a process of creating new growth
vehicles as required by the capitalist system.
Imperialism provided immense room for capital growth
and enough wealth was generated to be shared with
Western populations. This process continued up until
the late 1960s. At that point growth through external
imperialism began to slow down. Neoliberalism
permitted growth to continue by consuming the nest of
capitalism - by dismantling Western societies and
subjecting them to intensive capitalist exploitation.
Globalization takes this process even further -
creating capital growth through intensive exploitation
on a global scale. The new-world-order system of
global tyranny is a necessity for capitalism - in
order to force the world's people to submit to the
exploitation which globalization represents.
Humanity can do better than this - much better - and
there is reason to hope that the time is ripe for
humanity to bring about fundamental changes. For the
past two hundred years capitalism has employed an
unbeatable formula to maintain its stranglehold over
the world. That formula has been based on the relative
prosperity of Western populations. Popular support
maintained Western regimes and those regimes had the
military might to dominate the rest of the world. That
formula reached its culmination in the postwar years
when Western prosperity reached unprecedented heights.
With neoliberalism and globalization, this formula has
been replaced by another. Western populations and
democracy have been abandoned and capitalist elites
have bet their future on the success of their WTO
new-world-order tyrannical system. In a few years this
regime may be so thoroughly established that it will
be invincible. But in the meantime - if Western
populations wake up to the fact that they are being
betrayed - they have the opportunity to rise up and
assert the democratic sovereignty which they in theory
yet possess.
Maintaining the status quo is no longer an option. The
nature of capitalism is forcing revolutionary changes.
Those of us in the West have a choice. On the one hand
we can acquiesce to global tyranny so that capitalism
can continue its insane growth. On the other hand, we
can assert our rights as free peoples - we can oust
the elites from power and reorganize our economies so
that they serve the needs of people instead of the
needs of endless wealth accumulation.
This is our Revolutionary Imperative. Not an
imperative to violent revolution, but an imperative to
do something even more revolutionary - to set humanity
on a sane course using peaceful, democratic means.
-------------------------------------------------------
Epilogue: Toward a Democratic Renaissance
How is it that elites are running the world when the
most powerful nations claim to be democracies? Not
only are these nations officially called democracies,
but most of their citizens believe it to be true.
Clearly democracy and elite rule cannot exist at the
same time. Something in this scenario doesn't make
sense.
The answer to this dilemma is that what we call
democracy is not really democracy. We have been taught
to believe that choosing between competing candidates
is what democracy is all about. It isn't. Who decides
who the candidates are? Who finances their campaigns?
Whose interests do candidates really serve once they
are elected? These are the kinds of questions that
need to be answered if we want to begin to understand
what democracy is about.
If a candidate wants to get elected, funds are needed
to run a campaign. A candidate who is wealthy - or who
has access to the wealth of others - is able to run a
more impressive campaign. Therefore wealthy people are
able to influence elections to their own advantage -
and therefore a political system based on competing
candidates is ideally suited to corruption by wealthy
interests. That is the reality.
Two thousand years ago, in the ancient Roman Republic,
most modern forms of political corruption were already
well known. Voting-district boundaries were
manipulated to favor one constituency over another.
Candidates lied to get votes, bribed voters, and
sought the favor of wealthy interests. Astronomical
sums were spent on campaigns. Then as now, democracy
was the rhetoric - and rule by elites was the reality.
And then as now, the ultimate outcome was a society
ruled by tyranny while the people were distracted by
bread and circuses. Today, candidates for major
offices are selected and funded by elites, groomed by
public-relations consultants, and then sold to the
voters like a new brand of blue jeans. This is not
democracy.
Even if candidates sincerely want to represent the
wishes of their constituencies - how can they know
what those wishes are? If most people participate in
politics only by occasional voting, then how are their
wishes to be known? And if those people are lied to by
the media, then how can their wishes be relevant to
their own self-interest or the interest of their
families and communities? How can such a system
possibly lead to a democratic result? It cannot and it
does not. Again we are faced with dual-agenda
propaganda. The public reality is democracy; the
hidden reality is elite rule.
In order to understand how a genuine version of
democracy might work, let us consider the "excess
democracy" that frightened elites in the late 1960s
and caused them to respond with their neoliberal
assault on democratic institutions. If elites were
worried, then perhaps we the people were on to
something useful. That "excess democracy" took the
form of massive grass-roots movements. These movements
did not overthrow governments, nor did they exercise
power directly - but they were powerful instruments of
democracy nonetheless.
Such movements spread information without depending on
mass-media channels. They acted as vehicles of public
education by means of teach-ins, and speeches at mass
rallies. They reflected public opinion and they helped
form public opinion. They served as forums where
people could discuss and develop their common
interests - and where they could pursue those
interests collaboratively. By means of such movements
people became politically active instead of
politically passive. In the face of such movements,
our official democratic institutions were forced to
live up to their best purposes - reflecting popular
will. For a few dramatic years, these movements made
democracy somewhat of a reality. For elites this was a
threat; for we the people it was a glimmer of hope -
genuine democracy is perhaps possible.
Historically there have been many previous mass
movements: for better working conditions, union
recognition, votes for women, the abolition of
slavery, and others. Some of these movements were much
larger than those of the sixties and achieved even
more dramatic results. Although government leaders
typically claim credit for democratic reforms
implemented while they are in office, it has always
been mass movements which have actually been
responsible for achieving those reforms.
But these movements have all been ephemeral. When the
enthusiasm fades, politics returns to
business-as-usual - and elites are once again in
charge. Whatever reforms were achieved are then
gradually undermined. With all the gains of the
environmental movement, for example, environmental
degradation is now proceeding at a faster pace than
ever before. And the gains of the sixties movements
were undone by the elite-sponsored neoliberal
revolution. How can we - the people of the world -
achieve lasting democracy?
First of all we need another powerful mass movement -
for that is the only thing that has ever successfully
challenged the power of elites. Second, the goal of
the movement must be the achievement of a democratic
society - if the goal is anything less, then the
movement will dissipate when that lesser goal is
achieved. Third, the movement itself must operate
democratically - for the means always become the ends.
In building such a movement, different groups will
need to listen to one another, identify common
interests, and learn how to collaborate together in
pursuit of common objectives. As the movement grows,
more and more people and groups will need to be
brought in, and their interests incorporated. Even
members of current elites must be included - but with
a voice no louder than anyone else's. In the end, such
a movement becomes a democratic civil society. The
collaborative movement process evolves into a
democratic societal process. If this can be achieved
on a global scale, then a livable and peaceful world
becomes a possibility. If this is achieved then we
will enter a new era - the era of a democratic
renaissance.
In early December 1999 a ministerial meeting of the
World Trade Organization was held in Seattle
Washington. Activists from around the world, from many
different "causes", and across social divisions, all
gathered in opposition to the WTO - the central symbol
of the global regime. Television viewers worldwide
were aware of the street demonstrations, the violent
response of the authorities, and the fact that the WTO
process was temporarily stalled. But these were not
the strategically significant events. Of strategic
significance was the fact that an embryonic movement
became aware of itself and accelerated a collaborative
movement-building process. It was in the street
demonstrations that a visceral feeling of movement
self awareness arose; it was in the less dramatic
classes and discussion groups that the collaborative
process gathered momentum.
If new-world-order global tyranny is to be overcome,
this beginning spark of a democratic mass movement may
represent our last and best hope. In order to succeed,
this movement must learn from the successes and
failures of past movements and it must aim to become a
permanent, inclusive, and democratic political force.
If we fail in these objectives - and the elite global
regime is allowed to consolidate its power - then we
are unlikely to get another chance. Like the Germans
after 1933, we will find that our democratic options
have been taken away from us. And in our case, there
will be no one left to come to our rescue.
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