I think it is useful to set up as a framework for discussion four somewhat idealized positions with regard to the role of the state in an advanced industrial society. I want to call these positions: (1) classical liberal, (2) libertarian socialist, (3) state socialist, (4) state capitalist, and I want to consider each in turn. Also, I’d like to make clear my own point of view in advance, so that you can evaluate and judge what I am saying. I think that the libertarian socialist concepts, and by that I mean a range of thinking that extends from left-wing Marxism through to anarchism, I think that these are fundamentally correct and that they are the proper and natural extension of classical liberalism into the era of advanced industrial society.

In contrast, it seems to me that the ideology of state socialism, i.e. what has become of Bolshevism, and that of state capitalism, the modern welfare state, these of course are dominant in the industrial societies, but I believe that they are regressive and highly inadequate social theories, and a large number of our really fundamental problems stem from a kind of incompatibility and inappropriateness of these social forms to a modern industrial society.

Let me consider these four points of reference in sequence, beginning with the classical liberal point of view.

Classical Liberalism

Classical liberalism asserts as its major idea an opposition to all but the most restricted and minimal forms of state intervention in personal and social life. Well, this conclusion is quite familiar, however the reasoning that leads to it is less familiar and, I think, a good deal more important than the conclusion itself.

One of the earliest and most brilliant expositions of this position is in Wilhelm von Humboldt’s “Limits of State Action” which was written in 1792, though not published for 60 or 70 years after that. In his view the state tends to, I quote, “make man an instrument to serve its arbitrary ends, overlooking his individual purposes, and since man is in his essence a free, searching, self-perfecting being, it follows that the state is a profoundly anti-human institution.” I.e. its actions, its existence are ultimately incompatible with the full harmonious development of human potential in its richest diversity and, hence, incompatible with what Humboldt and in the following century Marx, Bakunin, Mill, and many others, what they see as the true end of man.

And, for the record, I think that this is an accurate description. The modern conservative tends to regard himself as the lineal descendant of the classical liberal in this sense, but I think that can be maintained only from an extremely superficial point of view, as one can see by studying more carefully the fundamental ideas of classical libertarian thought as expressed, in my opinion, in its most profound form by Humboldt.

I think the issues are of really quite considerable contemporary significance, and if you don’t mind what may appear to be a somewhat antiquarian excursion, I’d like to expand on them.

For Humboldt as for Rousseau, and before him the Cartesians, man’s central attribute is his freedom. Quote: “To inquire and to create, these are the centers around which all human pursuits more or less directly revolve.” “But,” he goes on to say, “all moral cultures spring solely and immediately from the inner life of the soul and can never be produced by external and artificial contrivances. The cultivation of the understanding, as of any of man’s other faculties, is generally achieved by his own activity, his own ingenuity, or his own methods of using the discoveries of others.”

From these assumptions quite obviously an educational theory follows, and he develops it but I won’t pursue it. But also far more follows. Humboldt goes on to develop at least the rudiments of a theory of exploitation and of alienated labor that suggests in significant ways, I think, the early Marx. Humboldt in fact continues these comments that I quoted about the cultivation of the understanding through spontaneous action in the following way.

He says, “Man never regards what he possesses as so much his own, as what he does, and the laborer who tends the garden is perhaps in a truer sense its owner than the listless voluptuary who enjoys its fruits. And since truly human action is that which flows from inner impulse, it seems as if all peasants and craftsmen might be elevated into artists, that is men who love their labor for its own sake, improve it by their own plastic genius and invented skill, and thereby cultivate their intellect, ennoble their character and exult and refine their pleasures, and so humanity would be ennobled by the very things which now, though beautiful in themselves, so often tend to be degraded. Freedom is undoubtedly the indispensable condition without which even the pursuits most congenial to individual human nature can never succeed in producing such salutary influences. Whatever does not spring from a man’s free choice, or is only the result of instruction and guidance, does not enter into his very being but remains alien to his true nature. He does not perform it with truly human energies, but merely with mechanical exactness. And if a man acts in a mechanical way, reacting to external demands or instruction, rather than in ways determined by his own interests and energies and power, we may admire what he does, but we despise what he is.”

For Humboldt then man “is born to inquire and create, and when a man or a child chooses to inquire or create out of his own free choice then he becomes in his own terms an artist rather than a tool of production or a well trained parrot.” This is the essence of his concept of human nature. And I think that it is very revealing and interesting to compare it with Marx, with the early Marx manuscripts, and in particular his account of, quote “the alienation of labor when work is external to the worker, not part of his nature, so that he does not fulfill himself in his work but denies himself and is physically exhausted and mentally debased. This alienated labor that casts some of the workers back into a barbarous kind of work and turns others into machines, thus depriving man of his species character, of free conscious activity and productive life.”

Recall also Marx’s well known and often quoted reference to a higher form of society in which labor has become not only a means of life but also the highest want in life. And recall also his repeated criticism of the specialized labor which, I quote again, “mutilates the worker into a fragment of a human being, degrades him to become a mere appurtenance of the machine, makes his work such a torment that its essential meaning is destroyed, estranges him from the intellectual potentialities of the labor process in very proportion to the extent to which science is incorporated into it as an independent power.”

Robert Tucker, for one, has rightly emphasized that Marx sees the revolutionary more as a frustrated producer than as a dissatisfied consumer. And this far more radical critique of capitalist relations of production flows directly, often in the same words, from the libertarian thought of the enlightenment. For this reason, I think, one must say that classical liberal ideas in their essence, though not in the way they developed, are profoundly anti-capitalist. The essence of these ideas must be destroyed for them to serve as an ideology of modern industrial capitalism.

Writing in the 1780’s and early 1790’s, Humboldt had no conception of the forms that industrial capitalism would take. Consequently, in this classic of classical liberalism he stresses the problem of limiting state power, and he is not overly concerned with the dangers of private power. The reason is that he believes in and speaks of the essential equality of condition of private citizens. Of course, he has no idea, writing in 1790, of the ways in which the notion of a private person would come to be reinterpreted in the era of corporate capitalism.

He did not foresee, I now quote the anarchist historian Rudolf Rocker, “that democracy with its model of equality of all citizens before the law and liberalism with its right of man over his own person both would be wrecked on the realities of capitalist economy. Humboldt did not foresee that in a predatory capitalist economy state intervention would be an absolute necessity to preserve human existence, to prevent the destruction of the physical environment. I speak optimistically of course.”

As Karl Polanyi, for one, has pointed out: “The self-adjusting market 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.” I think that is correct. Humboldt also did not foresee the consequences of the commodity character of labor. The doctrine is, again in Polanyi’s words, “that it is not for the commodity to decide where it should be offered for sale, to what purpose it should be used, at what price it should be allowed to change hands, in what manner it should be consumed or destroyed.” But the commodity in this case is of course human life. And social protection was therefore a minimal necessity to constrain the irrational and destructive workings of the classical free market.
Nor did Humboldt understand in 1790 that capitalist economic relations perpetuated a form of bondage which long before that, in fact as early as 1767, Simon Linguet had declared to be even worse than slavery, writing “it is the impossibility of earning a living by any other means that compels our farm laborers to till the soil whose fruits they will not eat and our masons to construct buildings in which they will not live. It is want that drags them to those markets where they await masters who will do them the kindness of buying them. It is want that compels them to go down on their knees to the rich man in order to get from him permission to enrich him. What effective gain has the suppression of slavery brought him? He is free, you say, that is his misfortune. These men, it is said, have no master. They have one, and the most terrible, the most imperious of masters: that is need. It is this that reduces them to the most cruel dependence.”

And if there is something degrading to human nature in the idea of bondage – as every spokesman for the enlightenment would insist -, then it would follow that a new emancipation must be awaited, what Fourier referred to as the third and last emancipatory phase of history, the first having made serfs out of slaves, the second wage earners out of serfs, and the third, which will transform the proletariats to free men, by eliminating the commodity character of labor, ending wage slavery and bringing the commercial, industrial and financial institutions under democratic control.

These are all things that Humboldt in his classical liberal doctrine did not express and didn’t see, but I think that he might have accepted these conclusions. He does, for example, agree that state intervention in social life is legitimate “if freedom would destroy the very conditions without which not only freedom but even existence itself would be inconceivable”, which are precisely the circumstances that arise in an unconstrained capitalist economy. And he does, as in the remarks that I quoted, vigorously condemn the alienation of labor.

In any event, his criticism of bureaucracy and the autocratic state stands as a very eloquent forewarning of some of the most dismal aspects of modern history, and the important point is that the basis of his critique is applicable to a far broader range of coercive institutions than he imagined, in particular to the institutions of industrial capitalism.

Though he expresses a classical liberal doctrine, Humboldt is no primitive individualist, in the style of for example Rousseau. Rousseau extols the savage who lives within himself but Humboldt’s vision is entirely different. He sums up his remarks as follows: “The whole tenor of the ideas and arguments unfolded in this essay might fairly be reduced to this ‘that while they would break all fetters in human society, they would attempt to find as many new social bonds as possible, the isolated man is no more able to develop than the one who is fettered.’” And he, in fact, looks forward to a community of free association, without coercion by the state or other authoritarian institutions, in which free men can create and inquire and achieve the highest development of their powers.

In fact, far ahead of his time, he presents an anarchist vision that is appropriate perhaps to the next stage of industrial society. We can perhaps look forward to a day when these various strands will be brought together within the framework of libertarian socialism, a social form that barely exists today, though its elements can perhaps be perceived. For example, in the guarantee of individual rights that has achieved so far its fullest realization, though still tragically flawed, in the western democracies or in the Israeli kibbutzim or in the experiments of workers’ councils in Yugoslavia or in the effort to awaken popular consciousness and to create a new involvement in the social process which is a fundamental element in the third world revolutions coexisting uneasily with indefensible authoritarian practice.

Let me summarize the first point. The first concept of the state that I want to set up as a reference is classical liberal. Its doctrine is that the state functions should be drastically limited. But this familiar characterization is a very superficial one. More deeply, the classical liberal view develops from a certain concept of human nature, one that stresses the importance of diversity and free creation. Therefore, this view is in fundamental opposition to industrial capitalism with its wage slavery, its alienated labor and its hierarchic and authoritarian principles of social and economic organization.
At least in its ideal form, classical liberal thought is opposed as well to the concepts of possessive individualism that are intrinsic to capitalist ideology. It seeks to eliminate social fetters and to replace them by social bonds, not by competitive greed, not by predatory individualism, not of course by corporate empires, state or private. Classical libertarian thought seems to me, therefore, to lead directly to libertarian socialism or anarchism, if you like, when combined with an understanding of industrial capitalism.

Libertarian Socialism and Anarchism

The second point of reference that I want to discuss is the libertarian socialist vision of the state. A French writer, rather sympathetic to anarchism, once wrote that “anarchism has a broad back – like paper it endures anything.” And there are many shades of anarchism. I am concerned here only with one, namely the anarchism of Bakunin who wrote in his anarchist manifesto of 1865 that to be an anarchist one must first be a socialist. I am concerned with the anarchism of Adolf Fisher, one of the martyrs of the Hay Market affair in 1886, who said that every anarchist is a socialist but not every socialist is necessarily an anarchist. A consistent anarchist must oppose private ownership of the means of production. Such property is indeed, as Proudhon in his famous remark asserted, a form of theft. But a consistent anarchist will also oppose the organization of production by government.

Quoting “it means state socialism, the command of the state officials over production and the command of managers, scientists, shop officials in the shop. The goal of the working class is liberation from exploitation, and this goal is not reached and cannot be reached by a new directing and governing class substituting itself for the bourgeoisie. It is only realized by the workers themselves, being master over production, by some form of workers’ councils.” These remarks, it happens, are quoted from the left wing Marxist Anton Pannekoek, and in fact radical Marxism – what Lenin once called infantile ultra-leftism – merges with anarchist currents. This is an important point, I think, and let me give one further illustration of this convergence between left wing Marxism and socialist anarchism.

Consider the following characterization of revolutionary socialism: “The revolutionary socialist denies that state ownership can end in anything other than a bureaucratic despotism. We have seen why the state cannot democratically control industry. Industry can only be democratically owned and controlled by the workers electing directly from their own ranks industrial administrative committees. Socialism will fundamentally be an industrial system; its constituencies will be of an industrial character. Thus those carrying on the social activity and industries of society will be directly represented in the local and central councils of social administration. In this way the powers of such delegates will flow upwards from those carrying on the work and conversant with the needs of the community. When the central industrial administrative committee meets it will represent every phase of social activity. Hence the capitalist political or geographical state will be replaced by the industrial administrative committee of socialism. The transition from one social system to the other will be the social revolution. The political state throughout history has meant the government of men by ruling classes; the republic of socialism will be the government of industry administered on behalf of the whole community. The former meant the economic and political subjection of the many, the latter will mean the economic freedom of all. It will be, therefore, a true democracy.”

These remarks are taken from a book called “The State: Its Origins and Function”, written by William Paul in early 1917, just prior to Lenin’s “State and Revolution”, which is his most libertarian work.

William Paul was one of the founders of the British Communist Party, later the editor of the British Communist Party Journal. And it is interesting that his critique of state socialism resembles very closely, I think, the libertarian doctrine of the anarchists, in particular, in its principle that the state must disappear, to be replaced by the industrial organization of society in the course of the social revolution itself. Proudhon in 1851 wrote that what we put in place of the government is industrial organization, and many similar comments can be cited. That, in essence, is the fundamental idea of anarchist revolutionaries. What’s more important than the fact that many such statements can be cited is that these ideas have been realized in spontaneous revolutionary action several times. For example, in Germany and Italy after the first World War, in Catalonia in 1936.

One might argue, or at least I would argue, that council communism in this sense, in the sense of the long quotation that I read is the natural form of revolutionary socialism in an industrial society. It reflects the intuitive understanding that democracy is largely a sham when the industrial system is controlled by any form of autocratic elite, whether of owners, managers, technocrats, a vanguard party, a state bureaucracy, or whatever. Under these conditions of authoritarian domination, the classical liberal ideals which are expressed also by Marx and Bakunin and all true revolutionaries cannot be realized.

Man will, in other words, not be free to inquire and create, to develop his own potentialities to their fullest. The worker will remain a fragment of a human being, degraded, a tool in the productive process directed from above. And the ideas of revolutionary libertarian socialism, in this sense, have been submerged in the industrial societies of the past half century. The dominant ideologies have been those of state socialism and state capitalism.

But there has been an interesting resurgence in the last couple of years. In fact, the theses that I quoted from Anton Pannekoek were taken from a recent pamphlet of a radical French workers group, and the quotation that I read from William Paul on revolutionary socialism was taken from a paper by Walter Kendall at the National Conference on Workers Control in Sheffield, England, last March.

Both of these groups represent something significant. The Workers Control Movement in England, in particular, has developed into, I think, a remarkably significant force in the last few years. It includes some of the largest trade unions, for example the Amalgamated Engineering Federation which, I think, is the second largest trade union in England and which has taken these principles as its fundamental ideas. It’s had a series of successful conferences, putting out an interesting pamphlet literature, and on the continent there are parallel developments. May 1968 in France of course accelerated the growing interest in council communism and similar ideas and other forms of libertarian socialism in France and Germany, as it did in England.

Given the general conservative cast of our highly ideological society, it’s not too surprising that the United States is relatively untouched by these currents. But that too may change. The erosion of the Cold War mythology at least makes it possible to discuss some of these questions, and if the present wave of repression can be beaten back, if the left can overcome its more suicidal tendencies and build on the achievements of the past decade, the problem of how to organize industrial society on truly democratic lines, with democratic control in the workplace as well as in the community, this should become the dominant intellectual issue for those who are alive to the problems of contemporary society. And as a mass movement for revolutionary libertarian socialism develops, as I hope it will, speculation should proceed to action.

It may seem quixotic to group left Marxism and anarchism under the same rubric, as I have done, given the antagonism throughout the past century between the Marxists and the anarchists, beginning with the antagonism between Marx and Engels on the one hand and, for example, Proudhon and Bakunin on the other. In the nineteenth century at least, their differences with regard to the question of the state was significant, but in a sense it was tactical. The anarchists were convinced that capitalism and the state must be destroyed together. But Engels, in a letter of 1883, expressed his opposition to this idea as follows: “The anarchists put the thing upside down. They declare that the proletarian revolution must begin by doing away with the political organization of the state. But to destroy it at such a moment would be to destroy the only organism by means of which the victorious proletariat can assert its newly conquered power, hold down its adversaries and carry out that economic revolution of society without which the whole victory must end in a new defeat and in a mass slaughter of the workers, similar to those after the Paris commune.”

Now, the Paris Commune, I think it is fair to say, did represent the ideas of libertarian socialism, of anarchism if you like, and Marx wrote about it with great enthusiasm. In fact, the experience of the commune led him to modify his concept of the role of the state and to take on something more of an anarchist perspective of the nature of social revolution, as you can see, for example, by looking at the introduction to the Communist Manifesto, the edition that was published in 1872. The commune was of course drowned in blood, as the anarchist communes of Spain were destroyed by Fascist and Communist armies. And it might be argued that more dictatorial structures would have defended the revolution against such forces. But I doubt this very much, at least in the case of Spain, it seems to me that a more consistent libertarian policy might have provided the only possible defense of the revolution.

Of course this can be contested and this is a long story that I don’t want to go into here, but at the very least it is clear that one would have to be rather naive, after the events of the past half century, to fail to see the truth in Bakunin’s repeated warnings that the red bureaucracy would prove to be the most violent and terrible lie of the century. “Take the most radical revolutionary and place him on the throne of all Russia”, he said in 1870, “or give him dictatorial power, and before a year has passed he will become worse than the Czar himself.”

I’m afraid, in this respect Bakunin was all too perceptive, and this kind of warning was repeatedly voiced from the left. For example, in the 1890’s the anarchosyndicalist Fernand Pelloutier asked, “Must the transitional state to be endured necessarily or inevitably be the collectivist jail? Might it not consist of a free organization limited exclusively by the needs of production and consumption, all political institutions having disappeared?”

I don’t pretend to know the answer to that question, but I think that it is tolerably clear that unless the answer is positive, the chances for a truly democratic revolution that will achieve the humanistic ideals of the left are perhaps rather slight. I think Martin Buber put the problem quite succinctly when he said: “One cannot in the nature of things expect a little tree that has been turned into a club to put forth leaves.” For just this reason, it is essential that a powerful revolutionary movement exist in the United States, if there are to be any reasonable possibilities for democratic social change of a radical sort anywhere in the capitalist world. And comparable remarks, I think, undoubtedly hold for the Russian empire.

Lenin until the end of his life stressed the idea that “it is an elementary truth of Marxism that the victory of socialism requires the joint effort of workers in a number of advanced countries. At the very least it requires that the great centers of world imperialism be impeded by domestic pressures from counter revolutionary intervention. Only such possibilities will permit any revolution to overthrow its own coercive state institutions as it tries to bring the economy under direct democratic control.

Let me summarize briefly again. I have mentioned so far two reference points for discussion of the state, classical liberalism and libertarian socialism. They are in agreement that the functions of the state are repressive and that state action must be limited. The libertarian socialist goes on to insist that the state power must be eliminated in favor of the democratic organization of the industrial society with direct popular control over all institutions by those who participate in as well as those who are directly affected by the workings of these institutions. So one might imagine a system of workers’ councils, consumer councils, commune assemblies, regional federations, and so on, with the kind of representation that is direct and revocable, in the sense that representatives are directly answerable to and return directly to the well defined and integrated social group for which they speak in some higher order organization, something obviously very different than our system of representation.

Now it might very well be asked whether such a social structure is feasible in a complex, highly technological society. There are counter arguments, and I think they fall into two main categories. The first category is that such an organization is contrary to human nature, and the second category says roughly that it is incompatible with the demands of efficiency. I’d like to briefly consider each of these.

Consider the first, that a free society is contrary to human nature. It is often asked, do men really want freedom, do they want the responsibility that goes with it. Or would they prefer to be ruled by a benevolent master. Consistently, apologists for the existing distribution of power have held to one or another version of the idea of the happy slave. Two hundred years ago Rousseau denounced the sophistic politicians and intellectuals “who search for ways to obscure the fact,” so he maintained, “that the essential and the defining property of man is his freedom. They attribute to man a natural inclination to servitude, without thinking that it is the same for freedom as for innocence and virtue. Their value is felt only as long as one enjoys them oneself, and the taste for them is lost as soon as one has lost them.” As proof of this doctrine he refers to the marvels done by all free peoples to guard themselves from oppression. “True” he says “those who have abandoned the life of a free man do nothing but boast incessantly of the peace, the repose they enjoy in their chains. But when I see the others sacrifice pleasures, repose, wealth, power and life itself for the preservation of this sole good which is so disdained by those who have lost it, when I see multitudes of entirely naked savages scorn European voluptuousness and endure hunger, fire, the sword and death to preserve only their independence, I feel it does not behoove slaves to reason about freedom.” A comment to which we can perhaps give a contemporary interpretation.

Rather similar thoughts were expressed by Kant 40 years later. He cannot, he says, “accept the proposition that certain people are not right for freedom, for example, the serfs of some landlord. If one accepts this assumption, freedom will never be achieved. For one cannot arrive at the maturity for freedom without having already acquired it. One must be free to learn how to make use of ones powers freely and usefully. The first attempts will surely be brutal and will lead to a state of affairs more painful and dangerous than the former condition, under the dominance but also the protection of an external authority. However, one can achieve reason only through ones own experiences, and one must be free to be able to undertake them. To accept the principle that freedom is worthless for those under ones control and that one has the right to refuse it to them forever is an infringement on the right of God himself, who has created man to be free.”

This particular remark is interesting because of its context as well. Kant on this occasion was defending the French revolution during the terror against those who claimed that it showed the masses to be unready for the privilege of freedom. And his remarks, too, I think, have obvious contemporary relevance. No rational person will approve of violence and terror, and in particular the terror of the post-revolutionary state that has fallen into the hands of a grim autocracy has more than once reached indescribable levels of savagery. At the same time, no person of understanding or humanity will too quickly condemn the violence that often occurs, when long subdued masses rise against their oppressors or take their first steps toward liberty and social reconstruction.

Humboldt, just a few years before Kant, had expressed a view that was very similar to that. He also said that freedom and variety are the preconditions for human self-realization. “Nothing promotes this rightness for freedom so much as freedom itself. This truth perhaps may not be acknowledged by those who have so often used this unrightness as an excuse for continuing repression, but it seems to me to follow unquestionably from the very nature of man. The incapacity for freedom can only arise from a want of moral and intellectual power. To heighten this power is the only way to supply the want, but to do so presupposes the freedom which awakens spontaneous activity. Those who do not comprehend this may justly be suspected of misunderstanding human nature, and wishing to make men into machines.”

Rosa Luxemburg’s fraternal sympathetic critique of Bolshevik ideology and practice was given in very similar terms. “Only the active participation of the masses in self-government and social reconstruction could bring about the complete spiritual transformation in the masses degraded by centuries of bourgeois class rule, just as only their creative experience and spontaneous action can solve the myriad problems of creating a libertarian socialist society.”

She went on to say that historically the errors committed by a truly revolutionary movement are infinitely more fruitful than the infallibility of the cleverest central committee, and I think that these remarks can be translated immediately for the somewhat parallel ideology of the soulful corporation which is now fairly popular among American academics. For example, Carl Kaysen writes: “No longer the agent of proprietorships seeking to maximize return on investment, management sees itself as responsible to stock holders, employees, customers, general public and perhaps most important the firm itself as an institution. There is no display of greed or graspingness, there is no attempt to push off on the workers and the community at least part of the social costs of the enterprise. The modern corporation is a soulful corporation.”

Similarly, the vanguard party is a soulful party. In both cases those who urge that men submit to the rule of these benevolent autocracies may, I think, justly be accused of wishing to make men into machines. Now, the correctness of the view that is expressed by Rousseau and Kant and Humboldt and Luxemburg and innumerable others, I don’t think that the correctness of this is for the moment susceptible to scientific proof. One can only evaluate it in terms of experience and intuition. But one can also point out the social consequences of adopting the view that men are born to be free, or that they are born to be ruled by benevolent autocrats.

What of the second question, the question of efficiency? Is democratic control of the industrial system, down to its smallest functional units, incompatible with efficiency? This is very frequently argued on several grounds. For example, some say that centralized management is a technological imperative, but I think the argument is exceedingly weak when one looks into it. The very same technology that brings relevant information to the board of managers can bring it at the time that it is needed to everyone in the work force. The technology that is now capable of eliminating the stupefying labor that turns men into specialized tools of production permits in principle the leisure and the educational opportunities that make them able to use this information in a rational way. Furthermore, even an economic elite which is dripping with soulfulness, to use Ralph Miliband’s phrase, is constrained by the system in which it functions to organize production for certain ends: power, growth, profit, but not in the nature of the case human needs, needs that to an ever more critical degree can be expressed only in collective terms. It is surely conceivable and is perhaps even likely that decisions made by the collective itself, will reflect these needs and interests as well as those made by various soulful elites.

In any event, it is a bit difficult to take seriously arguments about efficiency in a society that devotes such enormous resources to waste and destruction. As everyone knows, the very concept of efficiency is dripping with ideology. Maximization of commodities is hardly the only measure of a decent existence. The point is familiar, and no elaboration is necessary.

State Socialism and State Capitalism

Let me turn to the two final points of reference: the Bolshevik or state socialist and the state capitalist. As I have tried to suggest, they have points in common, and in interesting respects they diverge from the classical liberal ideal or its later elaboration in libertarian socialism. Since I am concerned with our society, let me make a few rather elementary observations about the role of the state, its likely evolution and the ideological assumptions that accompany and sometimes disguise these phenomena.

To begin with, it is obvious that we can distinguish two systems of power, the political system and the economic system. The former consists in principle of elected representatives of the people who set public policy. The latter in principle is a system of private power, a system of private empires, that are free from public control, except in the remote and indirect ways in which even a feudal nobility or a totalitarian dictatorship must be responsive to the public will. There are several immediate consequences of this organization of society.

The first is that in a subtle way an authoritarian cast of mind is induced in a very large mass of the population which is subject to arbitrary decree from above. I think that this has a great effect on the general character of the culture. The effect is the belief that one must obey arbitrary dictates and accede to authority. And I think that in fact a remarkable and exciting fact about the youth movement in recent years is that it is challenging and beginning to break down some of these authoritarian patterns.

The second fact that is important is that the range of decisions that are in principle subject to public democratic control is quite narrow. For example, it excludes in law in principle the central institutions in any advanced industrial society, i.e. the entire commercial, industrial and financial system. And a third fact is that even within the narrow range of issues that are submitted in principle to democratic decision making, the centers of private power of course exert an inordinately heavy influence in perfectly obvious ways, through control of the media, through control of political organizations or in fact by the simple and direct means of supplying the top personnel for the parliamentary system itself, as they obviously do. Richard Barnet in his recent study of the top 400 decision makers in the postwar national security system reports that most have, I quote now, “come from executive suites and law offices within shouting distance of each other, in 15 city blocks in 5 major cities.” And every other study shows the same thing.

In short, the democratic system at best functions within a narrow range in a capitalist democracy, and even within this narrow range its functioning is enormously biased by the concentrations of private power and by the authoritarian and passive modes of thinking that are induced by autocratic institutions such as industries, for example. It is a truism but one that must be constantly stressed that capitalism and democracy are ultimately quite incompatible. And a careful look at the matter merely strengthens this conclusion. There are perfectly obvious processes of centralization of control taking place in both the political and the industrial system. As far as the political system is concerned, in every parliamentary democracy, not only ours, the role of parliament in policy formation has been declining in the years since WWII, as everyone knows and political commentators repeatedly point out.

In other words, the executive becomes increasingly powerful as the planning functions of the state become more significant. The House Armed Services Committee a couple of years ago described the role of Congress as that of a sometimes querulous but essentially kindly uncle who complains while furiously puffing on his pipe but who finally, as everyone expects, gives in and hands over the allowance. And careful studies of civil military decisions since WWII show that this is quite an accurate perception.

Senator Vandenberg 20 years ago expressed his fear that the American chief executive would become the number one warlord of the earth, his phrase. That has since occurred. The clearest decision is the decision to escalate in Vietnam in February 1965, in cynical disregard of the expressed will of the electorate. This incident reveals, I think, with perfect clarity the role of the public in decisions about peace and war, the role of the public in decisions about the main lines about public policy in general. And it also suggests the irrelevance of electoral politics to major decisions of national policy.

Unfortunately, you can’t vote the rascals out, because you never voted them in, in the first place. The corporate executives and the corporation lawyers and so on who overwhelmingly staff the executive, assisted increasingly by a university based mandarin class, remain in power no matter whom you elect.

Furthermore, it is interesting to note that this ruling elite is pretty clear about its social role. As an example take Robert McNamara, who is the person widely praised in liberal circles for his humanity, his technical brilliance and his campaign to control the military. His views of social organization, I think, are quite illuminating. He says that vital decision making in policy matters as well as in business must remain at the top. That is partly, though not completely, what the top is for. And he goes on to suggest that this is apparently a divine imperative. I quote: “God is clearly democratic, he distributes brain power universally, but he quite justifiably expects us to do something efficient and constructive with that priceless gift. That’s what management is all about. Management in the end is the most creative of all the arts, for its medium is human talent itself. The real threat to democracy comes from under-management. The under-management of society is not the respect of liberty, it is simply to let some force other than reason shape reality. If it is not reason that rules man then man falls short of his potential.”

So reason then is to be identified as the centralization of decision making at the top in the hands of management. Popular involvement in decision making is a threat to liberty, a violation of reason. Reason is embodied in autocratic, tightly managed institutions. Strengthening these institutions within which man can function most efficiently is, in his words, “the great human adventure of our times.” All this has a faintly familiar ring to it. It is the authentic voice of the technical intelligentsia, the liberal intelligentsia of the technocratic corporate elite in a modern society.

There is a parallel process of centralization in economic life. A recent FTC report notes that the 200 largest manufacturing corporations now control about two thirds of all manufacturing assets. At the beginning of WWII the same amount of power was spread over a thousand corporations. The report says: “A small industrial elite of huge conglomerate companies is gobbling up American business and largely destroying competitive free enterprise.” Furthermore it says: “These two hundred corporations are partially linked with each other and with other corporations in ways that may prevent or discourage independent behavior in market decisions.” What is novel about such observations is only their source, the FTC. They are familiar, to the point of cliche, among left-liberal commentators on American society.

The centralization of power also has an international dimension. Quoting from Foreign Affairs, it has been pointed that “on the basis of the gross value of their output, US enterprises abroad in the aggregate comprise the third largest country in the world, with a gross product greater than that of any country except the United States and the Soviet Union. American firms control over half the automobile industry in England, almost 40% of petroleum in Germany, over 40% of the telegraphic, telephone and electronic and business equipment in France, 75% of the computers. Within a decade, given present trends, more than half of the British exports will be from American owned companies.” Furthermore, these are highly-concentrated investments: 40% of direct investment in Germany, France and Britain is by three firms, American firms.

George Ball has explained that the project of constructing an integrated world economy, dominated by American capital, an empire in other words, is no idealistic pipe dream, but a hard headed prediction. It is a role, he says, into which we are being pushed by the imperatives of our own economy, the major instrument being the multinational corporation which George Ball describes as follows: “In its modern form, the multinational corporation, or one with worldwide operations and markets, is a distinctly American development. Through such corporations it has become possible for the first time to use the world’s resources with maximum efficiency. But there must be greater unification of the world economy to give full play to the benefits of multinational corporations.”

These multinational corporations are the beneficiary of the mobilization of resources by the federal government, and its world wide operations and markets are backed ultimately by American military force, now based in dozens of countries. It is not difficult to guess who will reap the benefits from the integrated world economy, which is the domain of operation of these American based international economic institutions.

At this stage in the discussion one has to mention the specter of communism. What is the threat of communism to this system? For a clear and cogent answer, one can turn to an extensive study of the Woodrow Wilson Foundation and National Planning Association called the Political Economy of American Foreign Policy, a very important book. It was compiled by a representative segment of the tiny elite that largely sets public policy for whoever is technically in office. In effect, it’s as close as you can come to a manifesto of the American ruling class.

Here they define the primary threat of communism as “the economic transformation of the communist powers in ways which reduce their willingness or ability to complement the industrial economies of the West.” That is the primary threat of communism. Communism, in short, reduces the willingness and ability of underdeveloped countries to function in the world capitalist economy in the manner of, for example, the Philippines which has developed a colonial economy of a classic type, after 75 years of American tutelage and domination. It is this doctrine which explains why British economist Joan Robinson describes the American crusade against communism as a crusade against development.

The cold war ideology and the international communist conspiracy function in an important way as essentially a propaganda device to mobilize support at a particular historical moment for this long time imperial enterprise. In fact, I believe that this is probably the main function of the cold war. It serves as a useful device for the managers of American society and their counterparts in the Soviet Union to control their own populations and their own respective imperial systems. I think that the persistence of the cold war can be in part explained by its utility for the managers of the two great world systems.

There is one final element that has to be added to this picture, namely the ongoing militarization of American society. How does this enter in? To see, one has to look back at WWII and to recall that prior to WWII, of course, we were deep in the depression. WWII taught an important economic lesson, it taught the lesson that government induced production in a carefully controlled economy – centrally controlled – could overcome the effects of a depression.

I think this is what Charles E. Wilson had in mind at the end of 1944 when he proposed that we have a permanent war economy in the postwar world. Of course, the trouble is that in a capitalist economy there are only a number of ways in which government intervention can take place. It can’t be competitive with the private empires for example, which is to say that it can’t be any useful production. In fact, it has to be the production of luxury goods, goods not capital, not useful commodities, which would be competitive. And unfortunately there is only one category of luxury goods that can be produced endlessly with rapid obsolescence, quickly wasting, and no limit on how many of them you can use. We all know what that is.

This whole matter is described pretty well by the business historian Alfred Chandler. He describes the economic lessons of WWII as follows: “The government spent far more than the most enthusiastic New Dealer had ever proposed. Most of the output of the expenditures was destroyed or left on the battlefields of Europe or Asia but the resulting increased demand sent the nation into a period of prosperity, the likes of which had never before been seen. Moreover, the supplying of huge armies and navies fighting the most massive war of all time required a tight centralized control of the national economy. This effort brought corporate managers to Washington to carry out one of the most complex pieces of economic planning in history. That experience lessened the ideological fears over the government’s role in stabilizing the economy.”

This is a conservative commentator, I might point out. It may be added that the ensuing cold war carried further the depoliticization of the American society and created the kind of psychological environment in which the government is able to intervene in part through fiscal policies, in part through public work and public services, but very largely, of course, through defense spending.

In this way, to use Alfred Chandler’s words, “the government acts as a coordinator of last resort when managers are unable to maintain a high level of aggregate demand.” As another conservative business historian, Joseph Monsen, writes, “enlightened corporate managers, far from fearing government intervention in the economy, view the new economics as a technique for increasing corporate viability.”

Of course, the most cynical use of these ideas is by the managers of the publicly subsidized war industries. There was a remarkable series in the Washington Post about a year ago, by Bernard Nossiter. For example, he quoted Samuel Downer, financial vice president of LTV Aerospace, one of the big new conglomerates, who explained why the postwar world must be bolstered by military orders. He said: “Its selling appeal is the defense of the home. This is one of the greatest appeals the politicians have to adjusting the system. If you’re the president and you need a control factor in the economy, and you need to sell this factor, you can’t sell Harlem and Watts but you can sell self-preservation, a new environment. We are going to increase defense budgets as long as those bastards in Russia are ahead of us. The American people understand this.”

Of course, those bastards aren’t exactly ahead of us in this deadly and cynical game, but that is only a minor embarrassment to the thesis. In times of need, we can always follow Dean Rusk, Hubert Humphrey and other luminaries and appeal to the billion Chinese armed to the teeth and setting out on world conquest.

Again, I want to emphasize the role in this system of the cold war as a technique of domestic control, a technique for developing the climate of paranoia and psychosis in which the tax payer will be willing to provide an enormous endless subsidy to the technologically advanced sectors of American industry and the corporations that dominate this increasingly centralized system.

Of course, it is perfectly obvious that Russian imperialism is not an invention of American ideologists. It is real enough for the Hungarians and the Czechs, for example. What is an invention is the uses to which it is put, for example by Dean Acheson in 1950 or Walt Rostow a decade later, when they pretend that the Vietnam war is an example of Russian imperialism. Or by the Johnson administration in 1965 when it justifies the Dominican intervention with reference to the Sino-Soviet military bloc. Or by the Kennedy intellectuals, who as Townsend Hoopes put it in an article in the Washington Monthly in the last month, were deluded by the tensions of the cold war years, and could not perceive that the triumph of the national revolution in Vietnam would not be a triumph for Moscow and Peking. It was the most remarkable degree of delusion on the part of presumably literate men.

Or, for example, by Eugene Rostow who in a recent book that was very widely praised by liberal senators and academic intellectuals, outlined the series of challenges to world order in the modern era as follows: “Napoleon, Kaiser Wilhelm, Hitler,” and continuing in the postwar world, “general strikes in France and Italy, the civil war in Greece, and the attack on South Vietnam where Russia has put us to severe tests in its efforts to spread communism by the sword.”

This is a very interesting series of challenges to world order: Napoleon, Kaiser Wilhelm, Hitler, general strikes in France and Italy, the civil war in Greece and the Russian attack on South Vietnam. If one thinks it through, he can reach some pretty interesting conclusions about modern history.

One can continue with this indefinitely. I mean to suggest that the cold war is highly functional both to the American elite and its Soviet counterpart who in a perfectly similar way exploit Western imperialism, which they did not invent, as they send their armies into Czechoslovakia.

It is important in both cases in providing an ideology for empire and for the government subsidized system here of military capitalism. It is predictable then that the challenges to this ideology will be bitterly resisted, by force if necessary. In many ways, American society is indeed open and liberal values are preserved. However, as poor people and black people and other ethnic minorities know very well, the liberal veneer is pretty thin. Mark Twain once wrote that “it is by the goodness of God that in our country we have those three unspeakably precious things: freedom of speech, freedom of conscience, and the prudence never to practice either of them.” Those who lack the prudence may well pay the cost.

Roughly speaking, I think it is accurate to say that a corporate elite of managers and owners governs the economy and the political system as well, at least in very large measure. The people, so-called, do exercise an occasional choice among those who Marx once called the rival factions and adventurers of the ruling classes. Those who find this characterization too harsh may prefer the formulations of a modern democratic theorist like Joseph Schumpeter who describes modern political democracy, favorably, “as a system in which the deciding of issues by the electorate is secondary to the election of the men who are to do the deciding. The political party”, he says accurately, “is a group whose members propose to act in concert in the competitive struggle for political power. If that were not so, it would be impossible for different parties to adopt exactly or almost exactly the same program.” That’s all the advantages of political democracy, as he sees it.

This program that both parties adopt more or less exactly and the individuals who compete for power express a narrow conservative ideology, basically the interests of one or another element in the corporate elite, with some modifications. This is obviously no conspiracy. I think it is simply implicit in the system of corporate capitalism. These people and the institutions they represent are in effect in power, and their interests are the national interest. It is this interest that is served primarily and overwhelmingly by the overseas empire and the growing system of military state capitalism at home.

If we were to withdraw the consent of the governed, as I think we should, we are withdrawing our consent to have these men and the interests they represent, govern and manage American society and impose their concept of world order and their criteria for legitimate political and economic development in much of the world. Although an immense effort of propaganda and mystification is carried on to conceal these facts, nonetheless facts they remain.

We have today the technical and material resources to meet man’s animal needs. We have not developed the cultural and moral resources or the democratic forms of social organization that make possible the humane and rational use of our material wealth and power. Conceivably, the classical liberal ideals, as expressed and developed in their libertarian socialist form, are achievable. But if so, only by a popular revolutionary movement, rooted in wide strata of the population, and committed to the elimination of repressive and authoritarian institutions, state and private. To create such a movement is the challenge we face and must meet if there is to be an escape from contemporary barbarism.

________

Text source here.

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1. Η ΣΤΡΑΤΗΓΙΚΗ ΤΗΣ ΑΠΟΣΠΑΣΗΣ ΤΗΣ ΠΡΟΣΟΧΗΣ

Το θεμελιώδες στοιχείο τού κοινωνικού ελέγχου είναι η στρατηγική τής απόσπασης τής προσοχής που έγκειται στην εκτροπή τής προσοχής τού κοινού από τα σημαντικά προβλήματα και τις αποφασισμένες από τις οικονομικές και πολιτικές ελίτ αλλαγές μέσω τής τεχνικής τού κατακλυσμού συνεχόμενων αντιπερισπασμών και ασήμαντων πληροφοριών. Η στρατηγική τής απόσπασης τής προσοχής είναι επίσης απαραίτητη για να μην επιτρέψει στο κοινό να ενδιαφερθεί για απαραίτητες γνώσεις στους τομείς τής επιστήμης, τής οικονομίας, τής ψυχολογίας, τής νευροβιολογίας και τής κυβερνητικής. «Διατηρήστε την προσοχή τού κοινού αποσπασμένη, μακριά από τα αληθινά κοινωνικά προβλήματα, αιχμάλωτη θεμάτων που δεν έχουν καμία σημασία. Διατηρήστε το κοινό απασχολημένο, τόσο πολύ ώστε να μην έχει καθόλου χρόνο για να σκεφτεί – πίσω στο αγρόκτημα, όπως τα υπόλοιπα ζώα» (απόσπασμα από το κείμενο: “Αθόρυβα όπλα για ήρεμους πολέμους”).

2. ΔΗΜΙΟΥΡΓΙΑ ΠΡΟΒΛΗΜΑΤΩΝ ΚΑΙ ΜΕΤΑ ΠΡΟΣΦΟΡΑ ΛΥΣΕΩΝ

Αυτή η μέθοδος καλείται επίσης «πρόβλημα-αντίδραση-λύση». Δημιουργείται ένα πρόβλημα, μια προβλεφθείσα «κατάσταση» για να υπάρξει μια κάποια αντίδραση από τον κόσμο, με σκοπό αυτός ο ίδιος να ορίσει τα μέτρα που η εξουσία θέλει να τον κάνει να δεχτεί. Για παράδειγμα: Αφήνεται να ξεδιπλωθεί και να ενταθεί η αστική βία ή οργανώνονται αιματηρές επιθέσεις που αποσκοπούν στο να απαιτήσει ο κόσμος νόμους ασφαλείας και πολιτικές εις βάρος τής ελευθερίας. Ή ακόμα: Δημιουργούν μία οικονομική κρίση ώστε να γίνει αποδεκτή ως αναγκαίο κακό η υποχώρηση των κοινωνικών δικαιωμάτων και η διάλυση των δημόσιων υπηρεσιών.

3. Η ΣΤΡΑΤΗΓΙΚΗ ΤΗΣ ΣΤΑΔΙΑΚΗΣ ΕΦΑΡΜΟΓΗΣ

Για να γίνουν αποδεκτά τα διάφορα απαράδεκτα μέτρα, αρκεί η σταδιακή εφαρμογή τους, λίγο-λίγο, επί συναπτά έτη. Κατά αυτόν τον τρόπο επιβλήθηκαν τις δεκαετίες του ΄80 και ΄90 οι δραστικά νέες κοινωνικοοικονομικές συνθήκες (νεοφιλελευθερισμός): ανύπαρκτο κράτος, ιδιωτικοποιήσεις, ανασφάλεια, ελαστικότητα, μαζική ανεργία, μισθοί που δεν εξασφαλίζουν ένα αξιοπρεπές εισόδημα, τόσες αλλαγές που θα είχαν προκαλέσει επανάσταση αν είχαν εφαρμοστεί μονομιάς.

4. Η ΣΤΡΑΤΗΓΙΚΗ ΤΗΣ ΑΝΑΜΟΝΗΣ

Ένας άλλος τρόπος για να γίνει αποδεκτή μια αντιλαϊκή απόφαση είναι να την παρουσιάσουν ως «επώδυνη και αναγκαία», εξασφαλίζοντας τη συγκατάβαση του λαού τη δεδομένη χρονική στιγμή και εφαρμόζοντάς τη στο μέλλον. Είναι πιο εύκολο να γίνει αποδεκτή μια μελλοντική θυσία απ’ ό,τι μία άμεση. Κατά πρώτον επειδή η προσπάθεια δεν καταβάλλεται άμεσα και κατά δεύτερον επειδή το κοινό, η μάζα, πάντα έχει την τάση να ελπίζει αφελώς ότι «τα πράγματα θα φτιάξουν στο μέλλον» και ότι οι απαιτούμενες θυσίες θα αποφευχθούν. Αυτό δίνει περισσότερο χρόνο στο κοινό να συνηθίσει στην ιδέα των αλλαγών και να τις αποδεχτεί με παραίτηση όταν φτάσει το πλήρωμα του χρόνου.

5. ΑΠΕΥΘΥΝΣΗ ΤΟΥ ΛΟΓΟΥ ΣΤΟ ΚΟΙΝΟ ΣΑΝ ΑΥΤΟ ΝΑ ΕΙΝΑΙ ΣΤΗΝ ΠΑΙΔΙΚΗ ΗΛΙΚΙΑ

Η πλειονότητα των διαφημίσεων που απευθύνονται στο ευρύ κοινό χρησιμοποιούν λόγο, επιχειρήματα, προσωπικότητες και τόνο τής φωνής, όλα ιδιαίτερα παιδικά, πολλές φορές στα όρια τής αδυναμίας, σαν ο θεατής να ήταν μικρό παιδάκι ή διανοητικά καθυστερημένος. Όσο περισσότερο θέλουν να εξαπατήσουν το θεατή τόσο πιο πολύ υιοθετούν έναν παιδικό τόνο. Γιατί; «Αν κάποιος απευθύνεται σε ένα άτομο σαν αυτό να ήταν 12 χρονών ή και μικρότερο, αυτό λόγω τής υποβολής είναι πολύ πιθανό να τείνει σε μια απάντηση ή αντίδραση απογυμνωμένη από κάθε κριτική σκέψη, όπως αυτή ενός μικρού παιδιού» (βλ. “Αθόρυβα όπλα για ήρεμους πολέμους”).

6. ΠΟΛΥ ΠΕΡΙΣΣΟΤΕΡΗ ΧΡΗΣΗ ΤΟΥ ΣΥΝΑΙΣΘΗΜΑΤΟΣ, ΠΑΡΑ ΤΗΣ ΛΟΓΙΚΗΣ

Η χρήση του συναισθήματος είναι μια κλασική τεχνική προκειμένου να επιτευχθεί βραχυκύκλωμα στη λογική ανάλυση και στην κριτική σκέψη των ατόμων. Από την άλλη, η χρήση των συναισθημάτων ανοίγει την πόρτα για την πρόσβαση στο ασυνείδητο και την εμφύτευση ιδεών, επιθυμιών, φόβων, καταναγκασμών ή την προτροπή για ορισμένες συμπεριφορές.

7. Η ΔΙΑΤΗΡΗΣΗ ΤΟΥ ΚΟΙΝΟΥ ΣΤΗΝ ΑΓΝΟΙΑ ΚΑΙ ΣΤΗ ΜΕΤΡΙΟΤΗΤΑ

Κάντε το κοινό να είναι ανήμπορο να κατανοήσει τις μεθόδους και τις τεχνολογίες που χρησιμοποιούνται για τον έλεγχο και τη σκλαβιά του. «Η ποιότητα της εκπαίδευσης που δίνεται στις κατώτερες κοινωνικές τάξεις πρέπει να είναι η φτωχότερη και μετριότερη δυνατή, έτσι ώστε το χάσμα της άγνοιας μεταξύ των κατώτερων και των ανώτερων κοινωνικών τάξεων να είναι και να παραμένει αδύνατον να γεφυρωθεί» (βλ. “Αθόρυβα όπλα για ήρεμους πολέμους”).

8. ΕΝΘΑΡΡΥΝΣΗ ΤΟΥ ΚΟΙΝΟΥ ΝΑ ΕΙΝΑΙ ΙΚΑΝΟΠΟΙΗΜΕΝΟ ΜΕ ΤΗ ΜΕΤΡΙΟΤΗΤΑ

Προωθήστε στο κοινό την ιδέα ότι είναι της μόδας να είσαι ηλίθιος, χυδαίος και αμόρφωτος.

9. ΕΝΙΣΧΥΣΗ ΤΗΣ ΑΥΤΟ-ΕΝΟΧΗΣ

Κάντε τα άτομα να πιστέψουν ότι αυτά και μόνον αυτά είναι ένοχα για την κακοτυχία τους, εξαιτίας τής ανεπάρκειας τής νοημοσύνης τους, των ικανοτήτων ή των προσπαθειών τους. Έτσι, τα άτομα αντί να εξεγείρονται ενάντια στο οικονομικό σύστημα, υποτιμούν τους εαυτούς τους και νιώθουν ενοχές, κάτι που δημιουργεί μια γενικευμένη κατάσταση κατάθλιψης, τής οποίας απόρροια είναι η αναστολή τής δράσης. Και όπως γνωρίζουμε χωρίς δράση, δεν υπάρχει επανάσταση.

10. ΤΟ ΣΥΣΤΗΜΑ ΓΝΩΡΙΖΕΙ ΤΑ ΑΤΟΜΑ ΚΑΛΥΤΕΡΑ ΑΠ’ ΟΤΙ ΑΥΤΑ ΤΟΥΣ ΕΑΥΤΟΥΣ ΤΟΥΣ

Κατά τα τελευταία 50 χρόνια, η ταχεία πρόοδος τής επιστήμης έχει δημιουργήσει ένα αυξανόμενο κενό μεταξύ των γνώσεων τού κοινού και εκείνων που κατέχουν και χρησιμοποιούν οι κυρίαρχες ελίτ. Χάρη στη βιολογία, στη νευροβιολογία και στην εφαρμοσμένη ψυχολογία, το σύστημα έχει επιτύχει μια εξελιγμένη κατανόηση των ανθρώπων, τόσο σωματικά όσο και ψυχολογικά. Το σύστημα έχει καταφέρει να γνωρίζει καλύτερα τον «μέσο άνθρωπο» απ’ ό,τι αυτός γνωρίζει τον εαυτό του. Αυτό σημαίνει ότι στις περισσότερες περιπτώσεις το σύστημα ασκεί μεγαλύτερο έλεγχο και μεγάλη εξουσία πάνω στα άτομα, μεγαλύτερη από αυτήν που τα ίδια ασκούν στους εαυτούς τους.

___________

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people fromGAZA

WILL NEVER FORGET CHRISTMAS 2008

and JANUARY 2009 :

MASSACRE OF PALESTINIANS

by israelian army with the help

of U.S.A. and European Union

we will never forget!

Gaza And Its Aftermath

Noam Chomsky interviewed by Assaf Kfoury

February 09, 2009 By Noam Chomsky

and Assaf Kfoury

For more than three weeks, starting December 27th, Gaza and its 1.5 million people bore the brunt of a massive Israeli military campaign, supported and abetted by the US government. While Israel has now stopped its devastating air and ground operations in Gaza, it continues the total blockade from both the land and the sea, still pursuing the futile goal of trying to destroy Hamas and allied resistance groups by punishing the population around them.

Noam Chomsky gives a preliminary assessment of the US-Israel war on Gaza and its consequences in an interview conducted by Assaf Kfoury on January 31, 2009. The Arabic translation of the interview will appear in the Beirut daily as-Safir.

The public response in the US

AK: From the carnage in Gaza in recent weeks, there is a silver lining in the US, at least at the popular level. The devastation of Gaza has elicited something different, compared to the Lebanon war of 2006, or the Lebanon war of 1982, or other episodes of violence visited by Israel on Palestinians and Lebanese.

This time, for the first time perhaps, the public response in the US has been closer to the public response outside the US. Greater sympathy and support for the Palestinians, more criticism and anger at Israel’s actions. There were almost daily protests and demos, in major cities in the US, closer to the kind of public expressions we had been accustomed to see in Europe, Latin America, Asia and elsewhere.

This time, for example, we have seen significant participation in the US of Jewish groups in support of the Palestinians and against the Israeli government. We had never seen it before, certainly not to the same extent. This kind of participation has been coming through, not always in the mainstream media to be sure, but through alternative media channels on the Internet. For example, when 8 Jewish activists chained themselves and obstructed entrance to the Israeli consulate in Los Angeles while others carried signs reading “Closed For War Crimes” on January 14, the news came through the alternative channels, but not the New York Times, Washington Post and other major newspapers in the US.

Is this an exaggeration of the public response? And if it is not, can it be developed into a popular movement and, by extension, an effective pressure group on policy-makers?

NC: You are quite right that there was a difference in the reaction, a very noticeable difference, and that might turn out to be important. Many people, even knowing little about the matter, were revolted by the savage cruelty and cowardice of the IDF, brutally attacking defenseless people locked in a cage.

But we have to be careful in assessing the popular reaction. Most people are unaware of anything beyond the highly sanitized version that passes through media filters. Al-Jazeera is effectively barred in the US, so there was little direct visual reporting. And while the reality cannot be totally concealed, it is presented in fragments, and within a framework of apologetics — and of course portrays the US as an innocent bystander, dedicated to peace and justice, as always.

The strong and principled reaction is from a select part of the population. Polls showed a pretty even split between support for the invasion and opposition to it, and the opposition is mostly on grounds of “disproportion.” More revealing are the polls after the war ended — ended theoretically, that is; it is continuing, bitterly, though the facts are scarcely reported. A CNN poll on Jan. 24 found that 60% supported Israel, 17% the Palestinians. 63% felt that Israeli military action was justified, 30% disagreed. A Pew poll had rather similar results (Bloomberg News, Jan. 24).

The results are not surprising in the light of how the events were reported and interpreted by the media and the political class. The mantra is that Israel has the right to defend itself against rockets. Virtually no one pointed out that the issue is quite different: did Israel have a right to resort to violence in self-defense? No state has that right if there are peaceful alternatives. And in this case there surely were. A narrow alternative would have been for Israel to accept a ceasefire, as proposed by Hamas shortly before the invasion. In the past, Israel had accepted ceasefires formally, but never in reality, including the ceasefire in July 2008, observed by Hamas (Israel concedes that Hamas did not fire a single rocket) but not by Israel, which terminated it with a direct attack on November 4. A broader alternative would have been for Israel to stop its US-backed criminal activities in the occupied territories, both in Gaza and the West Bank, such as the near-complete economic strangulation of Gaza since January 2006. That is the way to stop the rocket firing. But matters like these are almost entirely off the agenda in mainstream discussion.

It is remarkable that even when George Mitchell was appointed Obama’s special envoy, these obvious facts were suppressed. That is quite an impressive achievement by the doctrinal system and its practitioners. Mitchell’s major success, after all, was to broker a peace agreement in Northern Ireland. The British agreed to end their violent response to IRA terror and to attend to the legitimate grievances that were at its root. The cycle of violence was broken. There was progress in human and civil rights in northern Ireland, and IRA terror ended. The analogy to Israel-Palestine is so close that it took real discipline for the media and educated classes to be able “not to see it.”

The official response in the US

AK: By contrast, public pronouncements by US officials do not seem to change. If we were to listen to what the politicians say in Washington, we would think it has always been the Palestinians’ fault. The Palestinians are to blame for all the bloodshed and hostilities, now and in decades past, since 1948 and before. In the recent Gaza events, for example, that the Israeli-to-Palestinian casualty ration was one-to-a-hundred or one-to-a-thousand does not seem to disturb their conscience in any way. That Gaza has been reduced to a large impoverished, blockaded, and practically defenseless ghetto, does not seem to bother them.

So was passed in the US Congress the perverted resolution condemning Hamas for Israel’s attack, by a vote of 390 to 5 and 22 voting present in the House and by unanimous voice vote in the Senate. In fact, however limited, there is more dissent in the Israeli media than in the US Congress. But what is remarkable is that if US officials are out of office, they may say the truth or something closer to it, e.g., former President Carter’s statements.

What are the reasons for this grotesque disconnect between official policy and public opinion in the US? The same imbalance between the two is on other issues. But, on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, it is extreme.

NC: It is worth noting that it is not all that different in Europe. Statements by EU officials are often as bad as those of Congress. You are quite right about Carter, but he is unique, and sharply criticized in mainstream circles. One illustration is that in punishment for his crime of honesty, he was effectively barred from the Democratic Party Convention in August 2008. That is unusual if not unprecedented for a former President.

Furthermore, the disconnect you mention, while very real, is not far beyond the norm: on a host of major issues, public opinion and public policy are sharply disconnected. The observation has even entered mainstream political science (see, for example, Benjamin Page, The Foreign Policy Disconnect; the same is true of domestic policy). That is one of the reasons why party managers design the marketing campaigns called “elections” so that that they largely avoid issues and focus on personalities, body language, and other trivialities. The general population objects and wants issues discussed, polls show. But here too we find the familiar disconnect between the public and policy.

Consider, for example, the invasion of Iraq. There was substantial public opposition, but virtually no principled opposition among the political class and media. Obama, for example, is praised by critics of the war for having taken a principled stand. That is false, which is a revealing illustration of the prevailing conformism to power, even among dissidents. Obama regarded the war as a “strategic blunder.” One could have read the same in Pravda when Russia invaded Afghanistan. Nazi generals said the same about Hitler’s two-front war, after Stalingrad. There is nothing “principled” about such a stand. It is completely unprincipled.

Authentic opposition begins by applying to ourselves the same standards we apply to others. It therefore would have condemned the war as a crime, in fact “the supreme international crime” that encompasses all the evil that follows, in the wording of the Nuremberg Tribunal. Much of the public did take that position, but it was, and remains, inexpressible in the media or the corridors of power.

The same was true of the Vietnam war. By the war’s end, 70% of the public regarded it as “fundamentally wrong and immoral,” not “a mistake.” Within the media and journals of opinion, the most extreme criticism was that the US began with “blundering efforts to do good” but it became a “disaster,” costing us too much, and we were therefore unable to realize our laudable goals (according to Anthony Lewis of the New York Times, who was at the critical extreme within mainstream opinion).

These are the standard kinds of criticisms of state crimes that do not succeed at acceptable cost. They are similar to the critique of Israel’s attack on Gaza that one finds throughout mainstream commentary, which maintains that the attack was clearly justified, but “disproportionate,” and with few gains for Israel.

There are many other examples. In fact, it is the norm. It is a fundamental doctrine of the ideological system that we cannot apply to ourselves the standards we rightly apply to enemies. Whatever the facts, our leaders are benevolent in intent while their enemies are wicked and deserve harsh punishment. Our leaders may sometimes fall into “strategic blunders,” and there are some bad people (like the torturers at Abu Ghraib in Iraq, or the soldiers at My Lai in Vietnam). But our fundamental benevolence remains untainted, and the leadership is immune. This is quite the opposite of the Nuremberg tribunal after World War 2, which did not try SS guards who threw people into gas chambers, but rather the leadership, accused of such crimes as “preemptive war.”

Elite intellectuals in the West sometimes reach levels that are literally reminiscent of North Korea in their worship of state power and doctrine. Thus in the Clinton years, US foreign policy was praised by elite intellectuals in the US and Europe for entering a “noble phase” with a “saintly glow,” as an “idealistic New World bent on saving humanity” is acting from “altruism alone,” in defense of “principles and values” for the first time in history; and on, and on, one of the most embarrassing periods of Western intellectual history. Praise of Israel sometimes reaches similar rhetorical heights. But public opinion is often far more sober and reasonable.

I nevertheless agree that the US-Israel case goes beyond the norm, even though I think it fits within the general pattern of “our conformist subservience to those in power,” to borrow the characterization of Western intellectuals by Hans Morgenthau, the founder of “realist” international relations theory.

Before Israel’s massive victory in 1967, Israel was largely ignored by intellectual opinion, consistent with the US stand of mild but not particularly strong support. But after Israel’s triumph of arms, everything changed. Israel had performed a major service to US power by destroying the center of secular Arab nationalism (represented by Nasser’s Egypt) and protecting the radical Islamists of Saudi Arabia who were Washington’s primary ally. That service established the US-Israel relationship in its current form. Significantly, Israel’s successful use of force also won great praise among the educated classes, with a large impact on reporting and commentary that lasts until the present. The reasons were partly domestic. It is important to recall that at that time the US was failing to suppress Vietnamese resistance. The mood among liberal intellectuals was captured accurately by the prominent historian Arthur Schlesinger, who wrote that US violence will probably not succeed, but if it does, “we may all be saluting the wisdom and statesmanship of the American government.”

Israel came along and showed how to treat Third World upstarts properly; there were witticisms about how we should send Moshe Dayan to help our military in Vietnam. Furthermore, Israel was able to sustain an aura of profound humanitarianism: it was upholding the highest values, “shooting and crying” in the idiom of the day, in self-defense against an implacable foe bent on its destruction. The combination of humanitarianism and mastery of the means of violence is irresistible to the mainstream intellectual culture. And much has happened since to reinforce the imagery.

All of this is quite apart from the powerful strategic and economic factors underlying US-Israel relations, as well as deep-seated cultural links between the two countries, including their historical experience as they are shaped by imagery and myth. The US, after all, is the only country to have been founded as a “nascent empire”: a superior race was removing the native scourge that had no legitimate right to be here, and was bringing civilization and development to a wild land. After liberation from England, the father of the country. George Washington, declared that “the gradual extension of our settlements will as certainly cause the savage, as the wolf, to retire; both being beasts of prey, though they differ in shape.” Israel’s reigning mythology and rhetoric, and of course practice, strike a very familiar chord; and accordingly receive the same acclaim. It is also useful to remember that Christian Zionism long precedes Jewish Zionism, and both movements are animated by a kind of messianic providentialism: God has a design for the world, and we, the chosen people, are the agents of the divine mission. There is a counterpart among secular elements. It is not surprising that the numerically dominant component of the “Israel lobby,” by a large measure, consists of evangelical Christians; deeply anti-Semitic but strongly supportive of Israeli expansion and violence as an agency of divine will. That has been particularly significant during the past 30 years, when party managers realized that they could mobilize a huge voting bloc by presenting the candidates they market as “people of faith.”

Such factors as these should not be ignored.

The wider context

AK: Reading or hearing the daily reports of the atrocities in Gaza, we naturally focus attention on the events themselves. We focus on the immediate and largely ignore the larger context. Specifically, we ignore the role which the state of Israel has played in support of US and Western interests. This is perhaps unavoidable, given the scale of the catastrophe befalling the Palestinians now.

But stepping back a little from the events, how would you place the most recent attack on Gaza in the wider context, which has developed over several decades? But also looking ahead, what will be likely developments that may redefine Israel’s role in the US-led Western alliance, perhaps pulling the two apart, and allowing or forcing a different relationship between Israel and its neighbors?

NC: There is no need to review here the evolution of the US-Israel relationship. To mention just the bare bones, since 1967, the relationship has conformed to the recognition by US intelligence 50 years ago that a “logical corollary” of US opposition to “radical” (that is, independent) Arab nationalism is reliance on Israel as a base for US domination of the region and its incomparable energy resources. It was clearly understood that this would alienate the “Arab street.” But that was dismissed as insignificant. At the same time, the National Security Council, the highest planning circle, gave a clear answer to Eisenhower’s question why there is a “campaign of hatred” against us among the population, though not the leaders. The reason, they explained, is that there is a perception in the Arab world that the US blocks democracy and development, and supports tyranny, so as to gain control of the oil resources. The NSC observed that the perception is accurate, and concluded that we must continue on this course. It is the task of the allied dictatorships to control “the street.” That was long before US support for Israel became a major issue. These remain guiding principles.

By now Israel is virtually an offshore US military base and intelligence center. That fact was illustrated dramatically on December 31, right in the midst of the fierce attack on Gaza, by a Pentagon announcement that the US was commissioning a German commercial vessel to bring a huge shipment of armaments to Israel (the shipment was blocked by the Greek government, so different means had to be found). The announcement passed without notice, just as the media takes no notice of the fact that Israel is relying on US weapons, in violation of US law. The few who inquired were informed that the arms were not intended for Israel’s attack on Gaza, but were being pre-positioned for the use of the US military — that is, for aggression, which is routinely called “defense” and commitment to “stability.”

Israel is also a valued high-tech center, as illustrated by the increase of investment in Israel by leading US high-tech firms: Intel, Microsoft, etc. In military industry, relations are so intimate that one of the leading Israeli military producers, Rafael, plans to move most of its development and manufacturing operations to the US — to provide the arms more efficiently to the IDF. And Israel performs many other services to state and corporate power.

In contrast, Palestinians offer nothing to US power centers. They are weak, impoverished, and defenseless. Accordingly, they have no rights, by elementary principles of statecraft. In fact they have negative rights, since their plight stirs up “the Arab street.” Enhancing Israeli power at the expense of Palestinians therefore makes sense.

The primary goal of the attack on Gaza was to silence any Palestinian opposition to the US-backed Israeli takeover of whatever is of value in the West Bank, while undermining the prospects for a viable two-state settlement in accord with the international consensus that the US and Israel have blocked for over 30 years, in international isolation, and still do — other facts that are scrupulously kept from the general public and unknown to the educated classes as well, with rare exceptions. West Bank opposition has been largely controlled by Israeli violence, now with the support of collaborationist Palestinian forces trained and armed by the US and its friendly dictators: it is notable that Obama, in his few statements on the conflict, stressed Jordan’s constructive role in training these forces. But Gaza — the other portion of what remains of Palestine — had not yet been subdued. In that context the destruction of Gaza and annihilation of its social and cultural institutions makes good strategic sense.

And it also makes sense for US-backed Israeli settlement and development projects to proceed in the West Bank while attention is diverted to the destruction of Gaza.

But there are counter-forces. These actions rely on the willingness of the West to support them, and on the complicity of Arab leaders. And all of this in turn depends on whether the populations will passively accept their contribution to criminal violence, repression, and illegal expansion. On that matter, as you mentioned before, the mood is changing, and may change sufficiently to bring the US to conformity with the overwhelming international call for a viable two-state settlement, and to induce the EU to adopt a stance more independent of US power. Something similar might happen, in some fashion, in the Arab world. Palestinians have shown astonishing courage and endurance, but they cannot, alone, confront the overwhelming power of US, tolerated or supported by the EU and the Arab dictatorships.

The long view

AK: This is related to the previous question, but away from global geopolitics and closer to how Israeli society views itself, if it is to live peacefully with its neighbors in the future. There are well-informed commentators who have a bleak reading of Israel’s history, not because of its past deeds, but because of how it projects itself now and into the future — a society that will remain an advance post of the West against a rising East — and because of its dogged refusal to acknowledge that its interests, as it sees them, have been predicated on the destruction of Palestinian society and antagonism to its neighbors.

This is a reading that can come from the right, reflecting the view of an unavoidable “clash of civilizations” as propounded by people like Samuel Huntington. And it can come from the left, that there is no possible compromise, that this is “the logic of colonial power.” This is the title of a recent essay by Nir Rosen, commenting on the Gaza events. Rosen is an intelligent journalist and highly informed on Middle East affairs. According to Rosen, short of a transformation which Israel and its overwhelming majority reject, Israelis and Palestinians cannot coexist in historic Palestine, one of the two national groups will have to be excluded (forced to flee or emigrate, or just killed). One of the two societies is doomed in the long run. But, of course, such a scenario cannot be limited to Israel/Palestine and will engulf an already deeply wounded region into many more decades of bloodletting.

Anything in the horizon that may give the lie to this apocalyptic vision?

NC: The description is accurate enough, but I am skeptical about the conclusion, for reasons to which I will return.

As for the description, in 1971, Israel made a fateful decision: President Sadat of Egypt offered a full peace treaty to Israel, with nothing for the Palestinians. While he spoke of implementing full withdrawal, in accord with UN 242 as understood at the time by the US along with others, it was clear that his prime concern was the Sinai. If Israel had accepted Sadat’s peace offer, its security would have been largely guaranteed. Israel considered the offer, recognizing it to be a genuine peace offer, but rejected it, preferring expansion — at that time to the northeast Sinai, where programs were soon implemented to drive out the Bedouin inhabitants and to build Jewish settlements and a major port city, Yamit.

Israel was compelled to accept Sadat’s 1971 offer, at Camp David in 1978-79, but only after a major war that was a near-disaster for Israel.

Since 1971 Israel has, with rare exceptions, preferred expansion to security. That of course entails reliance on the US as its protector. There have been many examples. One of the most noteworthy was Israel’s invasion of Lebanon in 1982, intended, as was hardly concealed, to put an end to annoying Palestinian peace initiatives and to enable Israel to carry out its illegal settlement and development programs (another goal, not achieved, was to install a client state in Lebanon). The pretext for the attack was to protect the Galilee from rocketing from Lebanon. That was utter fraud, but it is commonly accepted in the US, even by critics of Israeli policies, like Jimmy Carter: that is the one serious error in Carter’s book on Israel-Palestine, but was ignored in the barrage of criticism, because the lie is so convenient and commonly accepted. The goal of the war was expansion. It hardly contributed to security.

One cannot say that the policy has failed. It has largely achieved the goals explained by General Ezer Weizmann, commander of the Air Force in 1967 (later President of Israel): Contrary to the propaganda, Israel faced no threat of destruction at the time but the conquests enabled it to “exist according to the scale, spirit and quality she now embodies … We entered the SixâÂÂ?’Day War in order to secure a position in which we can manage our lives here according to our wishes without external pressures.”

The same reasoning holds for the expansion into the occupied territories. It is illegal as Israel was at once advised by the government’s top legal advisers, but that does not matter: it enhances the “scale, spirit and quality” of the state. The Palestinians are systematically crushed, but neighboring states pose little security threat, and in fact relations are slowly improving. And with firm US backing, Israel can reach the same conclusion as that of the Eisenhower administration 50 years ago: the “Arab street” does not matter, as long as the populations can be controlled by force.

There is a tendency to underestimate the efficacy of violence. Quite often it succeeds. The history of the United States is a very clear example. The colonies became a territorial empire by violence, though some of the founders lamented the fate of “that hapless race of native Americans, which we are exterminating with such merciless and perfidious cruelty,” so wrote John Quincy Adams, long after his own major contribution to the crimes. And it has greatly expanded its power since. On a smaller scale, Israel might aspire to a similar course, at least as long as its actions receive US backing.

The outcome might not be as apocalyptic as the grim forecast of Nir Rosen and others. From 1967, Israel has had plans to take over whatever is of value in the occupied territories, and to leave the Palestinians to “live like dogs,” as Moshe Dayan put it, perhaps as picturesque figures leading goats in the distance for tourists to watch as they speed along Israeli-only superhighways. These are the plans that are being implemented right now. They are not concealed, except from the American public, which sustains them. Contrary to many erroneous conclusions, these plans should not pose an insuperable “demographic problem” for Israel — the perennial problem of too many non-Jews in a “democratic Jewish state.” Palestinians can be left to rot, without Israel taking responsibility for them. They can call the fragments left to them a “state” if they like, or they can call them “fried chicken,” as the ultra-right Netanyahu government suggested in 1996 when it came into office, as it presumably will again in a few weeks. That appears to be the first indication by an Israeli government that it might tolerate a Palestinian state; the prospect had been forcefully rejected by Prime Minister Shimon Peres, as he was about to leave office in 1996. Gazans can survive as “drugged roaches scurrying in a bottle,” in the elegant phrase of Chief of Staff Rafael Eitan. Arab citizens of Israel can be removed either by transfer or by border modifications, in accord with the proposals of Avigdor Lieberman, the Moldovan head of an ultra-nationalist right-wing party that is expected to gain in the elections, and to be part of the governing coalition. His proposal was at first bitterly denounced as racist, but it has now migrated to the center as the country lurches to the jingoist right. It is advocated, for example, by Tsipi Livni, the head of Kadima, considered a dove in the Israeli spectrum.

Hardly attractive, but not apocalyptic either. And not at all unlikely as matters are now progressing.

Is there any hope for a more attractive future? Quite definitely. Eight years ago, in negotiations in Taba, Israeli and Palestinian high officials came close to an agreement that approximated the long-standing international consensus. In their last press conference they said that in a few more days they might have concluded an agreement, but the negotiations were called off prematurely by Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak. That week in Taba is the one real break in over 30 years of US-Israeli rejectionism. The negotiations could proceed because they were tolerated by President Clinton, in his last month in office: in fact, they took place within the loose framework of his “parameters.” It is worth noting that the famous Lobby, which rarely challenges US power, was silent at the time.

A great deal has happened since then, but the fundamentals have not changed so radically that a return to that possibility is out of the question. What it requires, again, is the willingness of the US government to permit a peaceful diplomatic settlement. And while there is no sign of that now, with sufficient pressure within the US, or from the outside, it could happen. If such an arrangement is reached, it may be a step towards a more humane outcome in the future.

The complicity of Arab states

AK: Not to forget, it is not only Israel that has been implicated in the devastation of Palestinian society. Arab states, in particular Egypt and Saudi Arabia, have played a particularly pernicious role in the recent Gaza onslaught. Both made clear that Hamas cannot be allowed to prevail in Gaza. That Hamas was democratically elected in January 2006 mattered for naught, it had to be destroyed, no matter the price to be paid by the Gaza population. Egypt and Saudi Arabia are crucial pieces in the system of domination led by the US.

Part of the battle for a progressive grassroots movement in the US in relation to Israel is relatively easy to identify. The tasks are straightforward: confront the Israeli lobby AIPAC and the many apologists of Israeli excesses in the intelligentsia, promote dissent within the American-Jewish community, demand accountability for the enormous foreign aid package that Israel receives from the US, etc.

But where do we begin to confront the US-Egypt connection and the US-Saudi Arabia connection? True, Egypt is the recipient of the second largest foreign aid package from the US, for which we should demand accountability, but there is no constituency to speak of inside American society that is prone to defend the excesses of the Egyptian dictatorship. In the case of Saudi Arabia, there is even less in which we can engage political activists. It seems we need to confront these connections simultaneously (US-Israel, US-Egypt, US-Saudi Arabia) and expose the way they deeply depend on each other. How do we do this?

NC: It is true that Egypt is the second-largest recipient of US aid, but that is because of its willingness to support — at least tacitly — US-backed Israeli policies, and US regional policies generally. If the US were to permit a peaceful diplomatic settlement for Israel-Palestine, the need to support the Egyptian dictatorship would decline, and opposition here could more easily be organized. Saudi Arabia is a different matter. It is the oldest and most valued US ally in the region, for obvious reasons: that is where most of the oil is. Like Egypt, Saudi Arabia long ago joined the international consensus that the US and Israel have blocked. The “Saudi plan,” adopted by the Arab League, even goes beyond the consensus in calling for full normalization of relations with Israel. It is significant that President Obama, in his first foreign policy statements, praised the plan while deliberately excluding its central component: a two-state settlement. But though so far Obama is at least as extremist as Bush on these matters, that too can change, and if the US joins the rest of the world, the US-Saudi connections can be addressed in a different manner. That is not the whole story, of course; oil politics is a separate matter, though of course related. But I think that a lot of ground would be cleared if the US were to abandon its rejectionist stand.

Back to the immediate

AK: There is now a cease-fire of sorts. It is a very temporary relief. It stops the carnage, but does it make the Palestinian plight any less desperate? Yes, after what has happened in Gaza in recent weeks, peace with Israel seems more remote than ever. Israel may not have achieved all of its proclaimed goals in Gaza, and some commentators on the left even maintain that “Israel was defeated” or that “the war on Gaza was a another setback for Israel” — allowing for some hyperbole, perhaps this is so from a long-term historical perspective. But for the immediate next few years, Israel, far more than the Palestinians, can continue to live with an unresolved conflict. Israeli society continues to function reasonably well, on its own terms of antagonism to Palestinians and other Arabs around them, and its economy is still running and barely affected by the Gaza war. More perhaps, a continuing unresolved conflict is precisely what Israeli leaders want. By contrast, Palestinian society is more fragmented than ever, its economy largely broken and increasingly dependent on external handouts. Obviously it will be a long struggle to turn things around, but for the immediate, where do we focus our efforts in the US and the West more generally? What can we do in specific ways to provide the Palestinians with sustenance for the long haul and help them survive for a better day?

NC: You are right to say “of sorts.” Hamas did call for a cease-fire, but Israel, while formally issuing its own cease-fire, instantly rejected it. Israel insisted that no cease-fire can be implemented without the return of the captured soldier Gilad Shalit. He is a household name in the West, unlike the Muammar brothers, the two Gaza civilians kidnapped in an IDF raid one day before the capture of Shalit. Uncontroversially, kidnapping civilians is a far more serious crime than capture of a soldier of an attacking army, but in the West, only Shalit exists — and of course there is no attention to Israel’s regular practice over many decades of kidnapping civilians in Lebanon or on the high seas, sending them to Israeli prisons, sometimes secret prisons, sometimes held as hostages for many years. But thanks to deep-seated Western racism and imperial mentality, the Israel demand that there can be no cease-fire without the release of Shalit appears reasonable.

That is only the beginning, however. The London Financial Times reports that “rebuilding homes and fixing Gaza’s broken infrastructure will depend on Israel’s willingness to let in cement, bricks and machinery. Israel is adamant that it will not allow in such supplies in the near future, fearing that a speedy reconstruction of the war-ravaged strip would benefit Hamas and enhance its legitimacy.” That form of savagery is also considered natural among Western elites, who have only contempt for democracy unless free elections come out “the right way.” Hence Israel can continue its brutal siege, undermining the cease-fire. A siege of course is an act of war.

I also agree that Israel “can continue to live with an unresolved conflict.” In fact, a leading principle of Zionist doctrine long before the state was established, and continuing since, has been to try to delay diplomacy while establishing “facts on the ground,” to determine the contours of some eventual settlement. That is exactly what is happening now.

Apart from providing Palestinians with whatever relief we can, the focus of action should, as you say, be in the United States. What are the proper tactics? For those who care about the fate of the Palestinians, the tactics will be chosen so that they work — primarily, work to pressure the US government to depart from its rejectionist stance, so that diplomatic efforts can proceed, and Israel will withdraw to negotiated borders.

the article found in:

http://www.zcommunications.org/znet/viewArticle/20518

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