The case of the decorated donkey (2001)

From the September 2001 issue of the Socialist Standard

Suhuyini reports on the African Union – the brainchild of Col Gadhafi – and in whose interests it can be expected to operate

The Zambian capital played host to African Heads of State for three days from 9-11 July. Their mission? To bury the dead Organisation of African Unity (OAU) and give birth to an African Union (AU). It took African leaders almost four decades to realise that their continental body was a woeful failure. But the sad aspect of the Lusaka summit is their inability to understand that they only met to enact a farcical scenario of a decorated donkey which still remains an ass.

The OAU

Created in 1963 ostensibly to address problems of the people of the continent, the OAU ended up only serving the selfish interests of African Heads of State, their foreign ministers and the staff of the secretariat in Addis Ababa like Salim Ahmed Salim. The masses of the African people still wallow in poverty and disease, die in senseless wars whilst illiteracy and ignorance are on the increase. The toothless bulldog that was the OAU looked on helplessly.

These leaders were able to see the hopelessness of the body. What they failed to discern, however, is the reasons for its uselessness. If they did, they would not have deceived themselves in renaming it as AU. The OAU could not stand the test of time for one main reason. The reason was because it was founded on the basis of money. Member States were to contribute money to run the affairs of the organisation. The resources of every country are controlled by a few very wealthy individuals. Even military regimes are not free from the influence of the owners of capital. Thus, having been formed with the resources of the rich, what else could the OAU do if not working in the interest of the owners of capital and not the poor masses? Is it not the one who pays the piper who calls the tune?

The OAU would not, for instance, take firm measures on the numerous conflicts and wars in Africa because wars are a matter of big business. Producers and distributors of arms and weapons make super-profits in war situations. Part of the money they make is used to sponsor governments’ contributions to the OAU. So, how can the OAU bite the finger that feeds it? In other words, the OAU was a reformist organisation, seeking to work within a world system which puts profits first and people second. Nothing can ever go on for the benefit of humankind as long as money is around. Only those who own capital can be free from want for they have the purchasing power.

And the AU?

The AU is to be modelled on the European Union and is the brainchild of Col Gadhafi, the life-president (or dictator?) of Libya. Reports have it that he has already given one million US dollars to fund the transformation. It is therefore not suprising that at the summit he was seen by the other Heads of State as the boss. In fact he reportedly (and surely on the basis of his cash) wanted the house to maintain Salim Ahmed Salim, the outgoing secretary-general, in the seat to effect the transformation.

Another VIP (“Very Ignorant Personality”) at the summit was the outgoing chairman General Gnassingbe Eyadema of Togo. A ruthless military dictator who took power in 1967 and has since been on top there. Then there was the host, President Frederick Chiluba, who reneged on his promise to abide by the constitutional demands to step down at the end of his second term. It was only through mass protests and resignations by his party’s bigwigs that it appears he will now back down. And even only three days before the summit his former close ally was assassinated and it is rumoured that the government had a hand in it.

This throws some light on the nature of the people promoting and ushering in the AU. We are told that this time a central bank, a parliament and a court will be established. The idea of an African Central Bank is a novelty, even though we have seen the African Development Bank based in Abidjan, Côte d’Ivoire. Like any other bank, the ADB and the one to be set up by the AU have one purpose—to create profits for the shareholders who part-own the company.

As regards the continental parliament, the following example will give us an insight into what it will be doing. In Gambia the average worker earns about 600 Dalasis a month. A member of parliament gets 7000 Dalasis a month though most of the decisions taken in all parliaments the world over are anti-working class. Therefore a Gambian in an all-African parliament will undoubtedly receieve more than what they are getting now. All at the expense of the poor masses.

Finally, who is an African court of justice going to try? Even those in the Hague and Arusha (Tanzania) have not done anything to the benefit of the people of the world. So what is the farce being staged?

Where parliaments and courts are institutions of oppression under the profit system, banks are the places from where all evil transactions are carried out with the intention of defrauding the masses. No wonder that the Heads of State said they were turning the OAU into a “larger trading bloc”.

Which way for Africa?

The operations of the AU can be predicted by considering the main programme the leaders discussed at the summit on the way forward for Africa. It was a plan called “The African Initiative” which is a merger of “The Millennium African Recovery Programme” (MAP) championed by Thabo Mbeki of South Africa and “Omega Plan” spearheaded by Abdoulie Wade of Senegal. The two main points of the Initiative are that democracy be consolidated and that the West should increase investment in Africa.

In our money-dominated world of today democracy can only mean the right of the rich to dictate to the poor. In the same vein increasing investment in Africa means pumping in more money to reap more profits. Investors are in search of profits, they are not humanitarians seeking to help the poor. The call for democracy and investment which the AU will implement means that governments should hold down the masses so that the rich can pillage and plunder without any hinderance.

Consciousness has many stages. The lowest stage is centred on people who think only about themselves. Selfishness. Others are a step higher. They are concerned only about their family. Then, there are those who check only their tribe mates, tribalists. Then there are the many nationalists defending their national flags no matter what. We also have the so-called Pan Africanists, the pax romana, the white supremacists, etc. But the highest stage of consciousness has to do with those who are internationalists. These are socialists who are not limited by space. They see every issue from a global perspective. Therefore whether it is ECOWAS, OAU, AU, Commonwealth, name it, no problem can ever be solved unless the money system is booted out and a moneyless system put in place where every one has a free access to any product or service. It is only then that Africans and humankind as a whole will be free from want.

Suhuyini

Capitalism — terrorism unlimited (1) (1986)

From the June 1986 issue of the Socialist Standard

On the morning of 15 April, American planes bombed the Libyan capital of Tripoli, ostensibly in reprisal for Libyan support of terrorism, the most recent manifestation of which was the killing of an American at a Berlin disco. The planes were launched from US bases in Britain, indicating the extent of the British government's subservience to American policies and power. In the United States almost all politicians seemed to have jumped on the jingoistic bandwagon in support of the attack but in Britain even a number of establishment figures were critical of the government's acquiescence, and a number of other West European governments openly opposed the American action. The TV pictures of killed and wounded civilians, including children, in Tripoli served to emphasise the inevitable consequences of Reagan s adventure.

The Libyan bombing reveals yet again the bloody nature of capitalism and its attendant wars. It is not enough that there should be the unnecessary deaths of millions annually through starvation (in a world where food is destroyed because it cannot be sold profitably) and the continual violence and humiliation which constitutes daily life for wageworkers. In addition, capitalism's rulers frequently settle their differences — about control of the earth's wealth and inhabitants by warfare, killing and maiming in defence of their property and bank balances. Of course, it is not the rulers who do the killing and dying but the ordinary workers and peasants of the world.

Since he seized power in 1969, other capitalist governments have had as much trouble handling Libya's Colonel Gaddafi as they have had spelling his name. Cushioned by vast oil reserves and the wealth derived from them, the Libyan rulers have financed and supported groups from the IRA to Abu Nidal's Palestinian faction. The American bombing was avowedly aimed at curbing the Libyan state's support for terrorism.

Given that all capitalist states rely on the use of violence to protect their interests, one might wonder how they can dismiss some — but only some — forms of violence as "terrorism" and therefore beyond the pale of civilisation. The apologists' answer would generally be that the use of armed force by governments is legitimate, while its use by anti-government forces is terrorism. This distinction would have to be complicated slightly to allow for those violently opposing an enemy government. Reagan and friends would regard the Contras in Nicaragua as freedom-fighters, not terrorists. But in theory at least, the difference should be clear-cut: state violence is acceptable, indeed necessary, all other violence is terrorism and unacceptable.

The truth is that under capitalism all use of force, whether by governments in defence of the status quo or for conquest, or by would-be rulers wishing to gain power for themselves. is ultimately directed against working people. Whether labelled as terrorism or not. capitalist violence attacks the oppressed and exploited for the sake of their exploiters. Whether bombs in Tripoli or police charges in Wapping, violence is just one of the tools used by the capitalist class to defend and maintain their domination.

Socialists are not pacifists. If, at the time of the establishment of a socialist society, the overwhelming socialist majority were confronted by a recalcitrant pro-capitalist minority intent on sabotage and violence, we would have no compunction in using whatever force was necessary to suppress them. But socialism will be a society of peace and harmony which capitalism, with its in-built violence of armies, police forces and production lines, can never be.

Paul Bennett

Capitalism — terrorism unlimited (2) (1986)

From the June 1986 issue of the Socialist Standard

The murder of workers in airports in Rome and Vienna, the killing of two men in a Berlin disco and the bullet which killed a British policewoman have nothing to do with freedom-fighting or liberation. Freedom does not arise from the barrel of a gun; liberation will never be the product of the killers who claim to be serving higher causes.

Capitalism is an inherently violent social system. It was founded by violence; it has expanded and prospered due to violence; its much-cherished law and order is institutionalised violence. Killing is not capitalism gone wrong, but the system running as normal. The history of capitalism is a long and bloody story of murdering and maiming and threatening and plundering so that a small minority of the world's population — the capitalist class — may own and control the major resources of the earth to the exclusion of the vast majority who produce all the wealth — the working class. In every country in the world, including the so-called socialist countries (which are state capitalist), the minority on top owe their position to violence.

To those defenders of capitalism who make noises of disgust about the violence of the unauthorised terrorist let us ask, where did the capitalists obtain their property from? They won it in the early days of capitalism by forming armies and terrorising the poor peasants and small landlords and stealing their land from them. The appropriation of capitalist property was a process of successful mugging expeditions: the European aristocracy of today are the inheritors of the muggers' plundered gains. The common lands, hitherto used by the poor, were enclosed and appropriated by capitalists who forced others to keep out. The law of trespass ensured that non-property-owners could be killed — and many were if they tried to enter the land of the capitalists. The early history of capitalism, going on well into the last century in Britain, saw thousands of workers being killed for stealing the necessaries of life. The state, which is the machine of class violence used by the bosses to keep the workers in line, has killed numerous workers who have offended against the sacred rights of property.

How was the British Empire built if not by such terror tactics? The ruling class of Britain, armed with the Bible and the bullet, plundered the earth in the quest for profits. Those who stood in their way were killed. In the sixteenth century, when Britain went to war with Spain — readers will remember the defeat of the Armada — it was nothing different from the battle of power between the gangs of Chicago and New York in the 1930s. Workers were sent to their deaths in these imperial wars in order to determine which national group of capitalist gangsters would own and control new resources, territories and exploitable populations.

In the late nineteenth century two new national gangs of European capitalists came on to the scene: Italy in 1860 and Germany in 1870. They made efforts to enter as rivals in the competition for world domination and so more workers — in their millions — were killed in wars. The workers who were slaughtered in world wars for economic interests which were not theirs were not regarded as the victims of terrorism. But that is precisely what they were.

In this century the British robber class has lost its Empire and must rest content with exploiting the workers at home. The British working class was poor when British capitalists had an Empire and we are poor today: one thing is certain, the Empire never belonged to us.

Today two new major empires — superpowers in modem times — dominate the world: America and Russia. The President of the USA now sermonises about the evil of terrorism. The status quo must not be disturbed. Does this man Reagan not know that without terrorism the American state would never have been established? The revolutionaries of 1776 who threw off British imperial rule were regarded by the British ruling class as terrorists. Had they been defeated the name of George Washington would have been listed in the history books together with Gerry Adams and the PLO leaders. The rulers of Israel echo their American masters in condemning terrorism. In the 1940s these same leaders who now have state power were themselves terrorists, killing British soldiers in order to gain state power. Once the American terrorists obtained power in 1776 they became legal terrorists and many thousands of native Americans (Red Indians) were murdered callously by the state because they were in its way. In 1986. while Reagan makes complaints about Libyan-backed terrorists damaging American capitalist interests. American-backed terrorists are being given huge amounts of money by his administration in order to dislodge the elected government of Nicaragua.

The class struggle is a messy, violent process. The capitalists will stop at nothing in their struggle for more power within the world market. The Libyan government is seen to represent a new form of Islamic, Arab nationalism which could endanger existing interests in Africa and the Middle East. As capitalism develops — if workers let it — more power blocs will emerge, all competing for supremacy, and one would be naive not to predict such rivalry leading to wars, both local and frighteningly global.

Workers have no interest at all in ever supporting the capitalists of the country where they live. In recent years the Arab ruling class has prospered greatly due to massive oil profits, but the Arab workers are still living in some of the most deprived conditions in the world. Arab workers have nothing to gain by the expansion of their masters' powers. In the USA. the alleged land of capitalist prosperity. it was reported in the newspaper of the Longshoremen's Union in March 1986 that government figures state that 22.2 million Americans are now living below the official poverty line and 9.1 million of them are in jobs but cannot afford to make ends meet. So much for the incentive for workers to fight to make their bosses rich.

Who are the real terrorists? Yes, the deluded workers with home-made bombs and the fanatics who fire at innocent crowds are killers, but let them not divert us from the killing which goes on with the blessing of the boss class. According to a report from the International Labour Organisation in Geneva, in 1984 10.4 million workers were injured and 28,500 were killed in accidents at work. (This is based on information from seventy countries). How many of these deaths and injuries were the direct result of capitalists making a profit out of unsafe working conditions for those they exploit? In a recent report from the Health and Safety Executive we are told that over the last three years 400 British building workers have been killed and 30,000 injured, many seriously. According to the report.

It is possible that economic pressures may have resulted in a general lowering in the degree of safety and supervision on site, and in the increase in the practice of undercutting at the expense of safety.

The recession has led capitalists in the construction industry — notoriously, some of the worst employers in Britain — to risk killing their employees for the sake of offering more competitive prices. We have read no report of Thatcher sending the anti-terrorist squad to the building bosses to ensure that justice is done for the 400 men who have died. On the contrary, it has been recent government policy to go in for what is called deregulation in the construction industry — they have cut the number of inspectors employed to check that building sites are conforming to legal safety standards. According to Richard Peto. Reader in Cancer Studies at Oxford University.

 . . . there will be a total of about 50,000 asbestos-induced deaths in Britain over the next thirty years . . . 50,000 deaths is a number so enormous that it is difficult to comprehend. For example, it greatly exceeds the number of murders during the same period . . .

Those who die from asbestos-caused cancer — and we have plenty of evidence to show that many workers already have — will die for profit: 50.000 sacrifices to the god of profit makes anything planned by the PLO or the IRA look like kids playing with a peashooter.

So workers must beware not to be conned into believing that the "baddies" are only those whose violence is not initiated by the capitalist rulers. While we must oppose the senseless killing of WPC Fletcher we remember the workers who have been murdered. injured and abused by the British police; we must oppose the bombers, but never forget the greater violence perpetrated in the name of profit. When 15 million children under five annually die while food is locked away or dumped in the sea the capitalists are in no position to lecture workers about what is evil. Those who have invested millions of pounds, dollars and roubles in the weaponry which could annihilate the entire planet have no right to tell workers that violence is to be deprecated. Those who allowed thousands to die and suffer at Bhopal in India because there was profit to be made for Union Carbide cannot preach about senseless killing. The numerous capitalists who have investments in bloody dictatorships, such as South Africa where over a thousand workers have been killed in the last year for protesting, are hypocrites when they take it on themselves to attack the Libyan regime. The capitalists are the people of violence and tyranny and any words of theirs against certain violence and some tyrannies are worthless and contemptible.

Only socialists can oppose terrorism because only socialists stand in opposition to the system which causes it. There is no other way to destroy the misery caused by organised violence than to abolish its cause.

Let us consider the other choices which have been proposed. There are those who say that we need new, more responsible leaders: Mondale instead of Reagan. Kinnock instead of Thatcher. Do they really believe that Mondale, faced with a perceived threat to US power, would not respond militarily? Does anyone seriously believe that Kinnock, tied to the terms of the military agreement with the USA which allows British bases to be used for American military attacks, would have acted differently from Thatcher? The fact is that these leaders have no option but to dance to the tune of capitalism, for its logic governs them, not they it. Others rather simple-mindedly argue that more faith should be placed in the United Nations, more appropriately known as the Disunited Thieves. The class struggle cannot be fought out around a conference table and the rivalry between capitalist and capitalist will turn violent quite regardless of resolutions passed by diplomats.

Some argue that Britain should turn from alliance with the American Empire to the Russian. The Russian ruling class could never be so callous as to bomb civilians, we are told. But they have killed over 100,000 workers in Afghanistan since they invaded it and one would be naive to imagine that Russian bombs would not carry out a similar raid to the US one if Russian imperial interests are threatened. It has even been suggested that workers in Britain should support Gadaffy because, in the words of the unfailingly foolish Revolutionary Communist Party, any enemy of the British bosses must be supported by the British workers. According to that logic workers in Britain should have supported Mussolini and Hitler — and. indeed, the RCP urged workers to support Galtieri's struggle for the Malvinas in 1982. This sort of pathetic nonsense is what passes as Marxist-Leninism. From other quarters we are urged to return to religious slumber — like born-again Christian Reagan whose interpretation of "Thou Shalt Not Kill" contains an addendum: "unless under instructions from the White House".

Gadaffy is a Muslim, a believer in the faith of Islam which is the Arabic word for submission. It is time for workers to reject the posture of submission for it has been the position of the wage-slave class for too long. There are no answers to violence within the system of violence and that is why peace and security depend entirely on the establishment of a worldwide socialist society now. Tomorrow might be one bomb blast too late.

Steve Coleman

Reagan and Gadaffy — terrorists both (1986)

From the May 1986 issue of the Socialist Standard

The callous incursion of US military might on Libya cannot be justified on the pretext of securing a better and safer world than the cowardly bombings by covert agents. Terrorism is no less terrorism when it is executed by the state and dressed up in the hideous morality of nationalism.

The Socialist Party condemns, without hesitation, the actions of the Reagan government and the assistance given to it by the British government, whilst warning our fellow workers not to be beguiled into an unwarranted sympathy for the Gadaffy regime that such actions may prompt. The conflict of interests that is here involved is not one in which workers anywhere have a stake. The background against which this latest tragedy is played out is that of a global system of economic competition. It is a system rife with conflict in which war is endemic — the brutal expression of its insane logic — notwithstanding that wars are fought by and large by those who have nothing to gain and quite possibly everything to lose.

The Socialist Party points out firmly that a free society can never by fashioned by coercion. Conversely, armed might can never be the agent of liberation in any real sense of the word. The attack on Libya can only foster a greater insecurity, a more insidious erosion of what limited freedoms there are as a result of the tightening spiral of tit-for-tat reprisals it will inevitably provoke, Behind ail the cant and hypocrisy it represents nothing more than the latest addition to the bloodstained chronicle of capitalist butchery.

Tiny Tips (2011)

The Tiny Tips column from the April 2011 issue of the Socialist Standard

MEXICO CITY (AFP) – A 19-year-old Mexican woman was in the ninth day of a hunger strike in front of the British embassy, demanding an invitation to the wedding of Britain’s Prince William and Kate Middleton, she told AFP:

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An American couple who have sailed the world with a yacht full of Bibles were hijacked by Somali pirates, and the U.S. said Saturday it is assessing possible options:

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A record 5.26 million people worked unpaid overtime last year, clocking up an average of more than seven hours a week without pay, according to a new study. The TUC said workers were missing out on almost £5,500 a year, worth £29bn to the economy. One in five employees regularly put in extra unpaid hours last year, with public-sector workers most likely to work unpaid overtime, said the TUC:

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21-year-old Sacha Hall is facing trial for allegedly helping herself to food that had been thrown out and was awaiting disposal:

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“We must be prudent. We know what our political line is: We don’t support invasions, or massacres, or anything like that no matter who does it. A campaign of lies is being spun together regarding Libya,” said Chavez, in a televised speech. “I’m not going to condemn him (Gadaffi),” he said.“I’d be a coward to condemn someone who has been my friend”:

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Joseph Nye of Harvard’s Kennedy School wrote in The New Republic in 2007 that Muammar Qaddafi was interested in discussing “direct democracy.” Anthony Giddens of the London School of Economics wrote in the Guardian the same year that Libya under Qaddafi could become “the Norway of North Africa.” Benjamin Barber of Rutgers University wrote in the Washington Post, also in 2007, that Libya under Gaddafi could become “the first Arab state to transition peacefully and without overt Western intervention to a stable, non-autocratic government.” Great minds think alike? Actually, no: all were being paid by Libyan money, under a $3 million per year contract with a consulting group which promised to “enhance the profile of Libya and Muammar Gaddaffi” in Britain and the US:

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Death threats from Muslim fundamentalists have forced a British Imam to retract his claim that Islam is compatible with Darwin’s theory of evolution.

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‘This week a report by government advisor Lord Hutton stating that public sector workers should work for ten years longer, for less pay, was released on the same day as the Forbes Rich list, which showed  that the number of billionaires in the world has risen from 1011 to 1210 in one year. If you plotted a graph of the wealth of the richest people in the world it would be shooting off the charts, with loads of fat cats looking on, toasting each other and chuffing on cigars:

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Who'll mourn the Emperor? (1996)

Bokassa's coronation in 1976.

From the December 1996 issue of the Socialist Standard

In 1920, France took full control of their tiny African colony Ubangi-Shari (later the Central African Republic) and immediately leased 50 percent of it to 17 French companies, giving them freedom to exploit the indigenous population in whatever manner they saw fit.

This exploitation would take the form of forced labour, torture and hostage-taking in an attempt to force the population to collect rubber vine.

It was at the hands of the guards of one of these French companies that a certain Chief Mindogen was flogged to death for failing to provide sufficient rubber vine collectors.

Against this backdrop, Jean Bedal Bokassa, son of Chief Mindogen grew up with a superstitious fascination for French power and an obsession with French history, particularly the Napoleonic era, an obsession which led him to enlist in the French army and which played some part in his sycophantic rise to the rank of lieutenant during French campaigns of the 40s and 50s.

On leaving the army, Bokassa quickly found a position in David Dacko’s corrupt and chaotic government as Chief of Staff of the Ministry of Defence.

At this time the French were a bit uneasy about Dacko’s corrupt government, fearing for their businesses and strategic interests should a potential "Marxist"-led uprising occur and though the country was officially independent—it had been since I960—France still retained the right to interfere at their leisure.

They had in fact been planning a coup when Bokassa, catching a whiff of their intentions, out-manoeuvred them and took control of the capital with forces loyal to himself.

Although the French did not at first take too kindly to this wagon-jumping, Bokassa seemed such a pleasant enough old Francophile that it seemed a shame to oppose him, and besides, he was anything but a "communist”. So they sat back and left the affairs of the Central African Republic to the new president, confident he could fare no worse than Dacko.

However, as Ian Schott points out; "There was little to distinguish Bokassa from any other confused, violent and corrupt post-colonial regime. It was run on the simple maxim ‘to the victors—the spoils”' (World Famous Dictators, 1992, P-78).

Anything resembling democracy was trampled upon and nepotism was rampant. Those loyal to Bokassa were rewarded with promotion and huge salaries and those who upset him met an early death.

Still France backed him, to the tune of $20 million per year. Most of this, though, was bi-lateral aid which tended to increase France’s interests in the country. It was followed by the donation of French paratroopers to Bokassa’s army.

From then on the country’s budget was treated by Bokassa as his own personal bank account. He privatised state assets, had shares in every national business including the diamond industry and secured a total monopoly on foreign trade. None complained. The entire civil service had either been bribed or were too afraid to speak out.

Twelve years later the country was almost as bankrupt as it had been on 31 December 1965 when Bokassa assumed the tide of President of the Armed Forces, the Ministry of Information and Ministry for Justice.

In December 1976, Bokassa decided it was time his 2.5 million population needed an Emperor—himself. Almost 35 percent of the state’s $70 million budget was subverted to the ensuing Napoleonic-style coronation.

No expense was spared. Bokassa donned a velvet ankle-length sword. He trailed a 30-foot-long crimson velvet, gold-embroidered and ermine-trimmed mantle and was carried to his gold-trimmed throne, backed by a huge golden eagle with outstretched wings, in a gilded coach drawn by eight white Normandy horses.

Although the event was frowned upon by the British and the US, invited representatives of both countries returning their golden invitation cards—the US so infuriated they cut off aid—the French expressed their approval by donating $2.5 million to the event, in order that the 2,500 imbecilic international guests could be ferried about in a huge fleet of limousines escorted by 200 BMW motorbikes.

The world had apparently given Bokassa the legitimacy he had sought and he revelled in it. From this point his extravagance was now only to be matched by his inhumanity.

When he discovered an attempted break-in at his palace, he drove in a fury to the local prison and personally beat three innocent victims to death. When schoolchildren protested at the compulsory wearing of expensive uniforms made at a factory owned by himself, he sent the troops in who promptly massacred between 150 and 200 of them. And when teachers and students distributed leaflets condemning his personal wealth, his "Imperial Guard" rounded up hundreds who were later beaten to death. Bokassa participating fully at Ngaragbi prison—all this in the International Year of the Child!

These and other such episodes finally began to embarrass the French government As they pondered their predicament they set up a five-nation African Mission of Inquiry to investigate the many charges against Bokassa. including cannibalism, whilst at the same time desperately seeking a means of ousting him before he could be found guilty and world opinion turned against a French government that has sponsored him.

The inquiry found him guilty and. a month later, sanctions already beginning to bite, Bokassa went cap-in-hand to Libya’s Colonel Gadaffi for help.

In his absence the French launched "Operation Barracuda", a bloodless coup, brought David Dacko out of retirement and installed him in Bokassa's palace as president.

Gadaffi soon got fed up with Bokassa, just as he had with Amin years earlier. Homeless, friendless, Bokassa roamed about until settling down on the Ivory Coast to sell tropical fish. After an even more depressing spell in France, Bokassa returned to his homeland, where his death penalty had been passed in his absence. This was commuted to life imprisonment

Six years later Bokassa was released and immediately applied for the post of president. Amazingly his offer was turned down!

On 3 November 1996 Bokassa died at the age of 75, in a country where the average life expectancy is 48. There is little doubt that there will be few more delighted to see him go than the French government As long as he lived he served as a poignant reminder of France’s imperial excesses.

Bokassa’s type still exist however, in Libya, Zaire and Nigeria and a host of other African countries where the colonial experiment still reverberates down the years—stark reminders of the true nature of capitalism and how the seemingly benevolent gift of "independence" blossoms all too often into abject tyranny and terror when ill-educated dictators try to run a country in a manner in which their colonial forbears also failed. 

John Bissett

Proper Gander: Living The Dream (2016)

The Proper Gander column from the December 2016 issue of the Socialist Standard

It might sound obvious, but the way we react to global events depends on what information we have about them. In his latest epic polemic, Adam Curtis takes this simple point and turns it into something deeper and more unsettling. He argues that the way we have come to see the world is through a process of ‘Hypernormalisation’, also the name of his film, available through the BBC iPlayer.

The title comes from Alexei Yurchak’s book Everything Was Forever, Until It Was No More, which analysed the mood in the Soviet Union during its last decades. Yurchak coined the term ‘hypernormalised’ to describe the strange way that Soviet society was perceived by its populace at the time. Official pronouncements about matters like rates of commodity production were recognised as unreliable by most people every time they went to an empty shop or joined a food queue. But without alternative explanations, everybody had to act as if the official story was real, distorting their sense of reality. An analogy familiar from many workplaces is how targets and outcomes are measured, which everyone involved realises are manipulated and fake, but which we all pretend are objective and accurate. We’ve bought into a ‘dreamworld’, shaped from the top by politicians and financiers, as a way of covering up how they don’t have control over events, from suicide bombings to Brexit, from corruption to migration. The aim is to maintain as much stability as possible in an unstable world.

The political and social climate in which this shift in perception has taken place developed from the mid-70s. Then, according to Curtis, the way authority was exercised changed from old-fashioned political negotiation to new-style power through money and threats. Two examples he gives are from 1975, when in America, banks stopped lending to businesses, and took authority away from politicians, and in Syria, where President Assad’s attempts to unite Arab nations were scotched by the then US Secretary of State, Henry Kissinger. He used an approach he called ‘Constructive Ambiguity’ to fracture alliances between Arab states by misleading them about the details of treaties between other nations. This succeeded in disuniting the Middle East and infuriating Assad. These events helped shape the world we live in now, of tensions between Islamic states and a West still facing a financial crisis. Being unable to control the situation has meant that governments focus on manipulating our understanding of them, through other tactics like ‘Perception Management’. One example of this was the American government and armed forces engineering the UFO phenomenon. Curtis argues that they spread disinformation that the strange lights and shapes people were seeing in the skies could be alien spacecraft, to cover-up their real explanation as experimental military planes.

The strategy of Perception Management is more than just telling lies, though. Its ‘highest achievement’ was when George W Bush and Tony Blair turned to Colonel Gaddafi of Libya for help with the situation in Iraq. The Public Relations industry, espionage and most academics all contributed to Gaddafi’s reinvention as an ally, having been demonised by the West for years. Gaddafi pretended to dismantle weapons of mass destruction he didn’t have, and took the blame for the Lockerbie bombing in exchange for sanctions against Libya being lifted, introducing the odd notion of accepting responsibility for something you don’t admit doing. Gaddafi’s role and persona has been remodelled by Western states, regardless of the truth about him, whatever that is.

The government and media personified conflict in the Middle East with ‘evil people’ like Saddam Hussein, Assad of Syria and, sometimes, Colonel Gaddafi. This distracted us from how the conflict was really shaped, as described in Curtis’ previous broadcast (see Socialist Standard, March 2015). In Bitter Lake, he argued that American and European military and economic involvement in the Middle East fuelled jihadism and suicide bombings, which in turn fuelled more Western involvement, creating a feedback loop.

In Russia, perception has been manipulated through the work of ‘Political Technologists’, such as Vladislav Surkov, now working as a personal adviser to President Putin. Surkov sponsored fascist groups, and anti-fascist groups, and parties opposed to Putin. Then he let it be known that he was doing this, so that no-one could tell how real these organisations were.

When so much about the outside world is confusing and contradictory, we’ve turned to cyberspace to find some reassurance. But the algorithms behind social media mean that we get pulled to online content which isn’t likely to challenge our views. According to Curtis, in an age of individualism, we find security in having ourselves reflected back at us.

Radical politics has also changed to fit with our uncertain times, and now tries to influence people’s thinking through personal expression, not through collective action. So, singers, artists, comedians and writers (including Curtis himself) voice radical ideas which may empower them and produce great, perceptive works, but they can’t change the world because that relies on working together. Curtis says that radicalism now doesn’t involve people giving themselves to a collective project as much as those in the 1960s civil rights movement did.

He discusses the two recent movements which did involve people acting collectively: the Arab Spring and Occupy. He argues that the Occupy movement set out to make real the original aim of the internet, as a leaderless space, free from politics and hierarchies. The sharing and spreading of ideas which the internet enables means that it could be used to organise a revolution without leaders, and it contributed to both how the Occupy movement and Arab Spring operated. However, after using social media to organise themselves, radicals in the Arab Spring ground to a halt without having a vision of what they wanted society to be. Hard-line Islamists did have a plan for the future, though, and this gave them the drive to gain power. In the West, the Occupy movement lacked a programme to really change society, and instead became confused and dominated by meetings. Its members had no vision of a future world, so instead the movement was less about ideas than how to manage situations.

In interviews, Curtis has emphasised that not seeing a better, future society is central to the problem of our ‘hypernormal’ perception of capitalism. We’ve lost the ‘thrill’ of wanting to jump into an unknown future, and find reassurance in accepting the version of reality presented by (and suited to) the capitalist class and its apologists.

Rulers manipulating the ‘truth’ is nothing new. The difference now is the sophistication with which this is done, whether through Perception Management, Constructive Ambiguity, Political Technologists or algorithms. Curtis’ argument isn’t just that these approaches are used to keep control of us, but also to cover up the lack of control each section of the ruling class has over global events. His aim is to help us see through the ‘hypernormalised’ version of reality we are fed, to raise awareness of our awareness.

Mike Foster

Never say oil (2004)

From the April 2004 issue of the Socialist Standard

Truth, it seems, is not just the first casualty of war. It’s also the first casualty of preparations for war. In the days of open imperialism, if a state felt that its “vital interests”, i.e. the economic or strategic interests of its capitalist class, were at stake it simply went to war. Certainly, at least if another major capitalist Power was involved, certain minimum diplomatic niceties had to be met such as sending a 24 or 48 hour ultimatum, to allow embassy staff to withdraw  but that was the only requirement.

After the Second World War the victorious Powers decided to establish a legal framework for future wars. They hadn’t been so rash as to promise, as they had during the first world slaughter, that this had been a war to end all wars and so the UN Charter was drawn up. Basically, this makes war as an instrument of foreign policy illegal under international law unless certain conditions are met. States are still allowed to go to war if they consider that their “vital interests” are at stake (that’s the main let-out clause; the other is “self-defence”), but they have to demonstrate this to the UN.

So, when the Bush/Cheney regime in America decided that the vital interests of its capitalist class required the overthrow of the Saddam regime in Iraq, they had to come up with a more internationally acceptable reason than the real one of wanting to control an alternative source of oil should the Saudi princes be toppled and to control territory where they could install bases near to both the Middle East and the Caspian oilfields. Other UN members, some of whom had their own imperialist reasons for not wanting America to take over Iraq, would not have agreed. So the would-be aggressor states decided to play the “weapons of mass destruction” card.

The US  and British  governments probably knew very well that Iraq didn’t have such weapons and that the primitive ones it had once possessed had been destroyed after the last Gulf War. After all, Bush and Blair would hardly have sent their troops in to face certain death from chemical and germ warfare if they thought that Iraq really had such weapons. The Iraqi regime helped their case by dragging its feet over the matter, but it had probably concluded (rightly, as it happened) that America and Britain were going to invade anyway and presumably decided that allowing some doubt as to whether it might have some weapons of mass destruction was the only chance it had of dissuading the attackers.

The Bush/Cheney regime couldn’t care a fig about the UN  in his State of the Union address. In January Bush baldly declared that the US didn’t need permission from anybody to go to war to protect its “vital interests”  but Blair, ever the unctuous hypocrite, does.

Revelations by Claire Short, who was a cabinet minister at the time and supported the attack on Iraq, show that the British Labour government was prepared to go to great lengths to try to secure UN approval, including listening in on the Secretary General’s phone conversations. When Short revealed this, the whole Establishment turned on her: how dare she reveal the dirty tricks of “our” brave secret service! They must be allowed to do such things to protect Britain’s (read: the British capitalist class’s) vital interests! No doubt, they did other things too, such as trying to bribe or blackmail African or South American ministers and ambassadors but we’ll never know. Under capitalism where a democratic principle such as the right to full information conflicts with “vital interests“, it’s the democratic principle that is ditched.

In any event, it didn’t work. The UN did not back the US/British attack on Iraq, so they had to make do with invoking the other let-out article in the UN Charter, relating to “self-defence”. Bush let the US media put about  the lie that there was some connection between the saddam regime and Al Qaeda even though Bin Laden hated Saddam as much as Bush. Blair let the British media put it about that Iraq had missiles that could be filled with lethal germs and sent to rain down on British troops in Cyprus (all the papers printed maps showing this possibility).

It now turns out that this claim about missiles was untrue and people are demanding an enquiry into whether or not Blair and his ministers knew it was untrue and on whether or not Blair “took Britain into war” on the basis of false or falsified information. But this is all a side-show. It was not missiles of mass destruction that was at issue in the war, but oil. In fact, all this fuss about the (non-existent) weapons of mass destruction is a diversion from the real reason why America and Britain attacked Iraq. Lord Hutton never even mentioned the word “oil” once.

In this sense it is irrelevant whether the information supplied and given out about weapons of mass destruction was accurate or not. This was just the reason invoked to be seen to be complying with the UN Charter. It was not the real reason for the war.

Of course when you don’t tell the truth there’s always a strong risk that you’ll be found out. Blair has been. From his point of view, it might have been better if he had told the truth from the start  that America and Britain went to war for economic and strategic reasons related to oil; that it was a threat to their vital interests that the second largest oil field in the world should be controlled by a unpredictable and hostile regime such as Saddam’s; and that they wanted to install a more compliant set of rulers in Baghdad.

Once Iraq had been invaded and easily conquered (peashooters aren’t very effective against machine guns, since that was the scale of the difference between the two sides), and the Saddam regime toppled, Blair, Shaw, Blunkett and the other Labour leaders came out with another justification for the war: to overthrow a nasty dictator. Saddam was indeed a nasty dictator but, quite apart from the fact that this wouldn’t have made the war any more legal in terms of the UN charter (the UN charter doesn’t outlaw dictators), this too can’t have been the real reason as there are plenty of other nasty dictators around. The Saudi prices for instance, but America and Britain did not propose a war to overthrow them; they are allies and friends, nice dictators. A nasty dictatorship is alright provided it poses no threat to the vital economic and strategic interests of the capitalist class in America or Britain.

Before Bin Laden was ever heard of (except by the CIA operatives training him for guerrilla warfare in Russian-occupied Afghanistan), two nasty dictators were running neck-and-neck for the most evil person in the world. One was Saddam Hussein. The other was Colonel (though, surely, he must be a Generalissimo or Field Marshall by now) Gaddafi. He’s done all the things Saddam did, and perhaps more. But now that he’s agreed to call off his challenge to US world domination (no doubt he doesn’t want to end up living in a hole in the desert), he’s OK. It’s against Britain’s “vital interests” now to call him a nasty dictator. It is even rumoured that Blair’s next foreign trip is going to be to Libya, so he can shake Gaddafi’s blood-stained hands  or rather so they can both shake each other’s blood-stained hands. What hypocrisy!

But what’s so special about Gaddafi? Yes, you’ve guessed it.. He’s not just any old tin-pot dictator. The power and wealth of his regime derive from sitting on an oil-field, which US capital is anxious to modernise so as to increase the world supply of oil.

The fact is that the foreign policy of capitalist States isn’t, and can’t be, based on “ethical” considerations. It is based on what the old 19th imperialist Lord Palmerston called “interests” and what his counterparts on the Continent, Metternich and Bismarck, called “Realpolitik”.  The UN Charter is just a scrap of paper. All it has done is forced governments to be even more dishonest about the reasons they go to war.

Adam Buick

Editorial: Libya: job done? (2011)

Editorial from the October 2011 issue of the Socialist Standard

The ‘Arab Spring’ flowered in Libya in February of this year. A series of protests against living conditions, then against the government, quickly escalated into a civil war aimed at removing the dictator Muammar Gaddafi. On 19 March, the British government, with its American and French partners, launched a bombing campaign, ostensibly to ‘protect citizens’ from Gaddafi’s troops. Just six months later, on 15 September, the French president, Nicolas Sarkozy, and the British prime minister, David Cameron, landed in the Libyan capital, Tripoli, to declare, in effect, ‘job done’.

But what job is being done? If you’re gullible enough to believe the rhetoric of politicians, then Western intervention in Libya was all about protecting citizens from dictators and helping revolutionaries establish democracy. But the real reason for Nato’s concern is quite obvious. The real reason is oil.

You needn’t take socialists’ word for it. Mustafa Abdul Jalil, a former Gaddafi henchman and now chairman of the National Transitional Council, was anxious to assure Cameron and Sarkozy of the intentions of the new regime: “The supportive role of France and Britain will have a future influence. Until now we have signed no [oil] contracts and we will honour all previous contracts. But our friends will have a premier role according to their efforts in supporting Libya,” he said (Financial Times, 15 September).

Indeed, it’s so blindingly obvious that the Western intervention in Libya was about oil that it is instructive to watch commentators who are obliged, for ideological reasons, to deny it.

George Friedman of Stratfor.com, for example, in one of his regular email reports (30 August), said that he “sympathised” with those who thought the war must be about oil and tried to find “a deep conspiracy” to explain it. But Friedman dismisses the “theory” for the simple reason that Gaddafi “loved selling oil”, that he would simply change the arrangements about oil if pressure was brought to bear because he “was as cynical as they come”, and it was therefore “not necessary to actually go to war to get whatever concessions were wanted”. Friedman then concludes that the official explanation is therefore “the only rational one”.

It’s a daft argument. Friedman is dismissing a silly theory no one believes in – that there was a “deep conspiracy” to start a war to steal Gaddafi’s oil – in order to discredit and dismiss a different theory which is obviously true, but socialist, and hence to be suppressed – the theory, namely, that all capitalist economies have a vital strategic interest in guaranteeing their supplies of raw materials, most crucially oil, and that therefore those countries’ states pursue foreign policies with such interests in mind. Formerly, that meant installing and arming the dictatorships the Arab Spring rose up to overthrow. Since the Arab Spring, it has meant scrambling to come up with some other way of installing or supporting regimes that will be subservient to Western capitalist interests.

And it is in this sense that, for now at any rate, the Nato intervention seems to be going so well. For a relatively low cost, and with relatively few Western casualties, Britain, France and America looks like it has got rid of a tyrant they had struggled to control for decades, staged a brilliant PR exercise supporting a democratic revolution in the Middle East, and are about to help install a regime friendly to its vital strategic oil interests in a country with the largest oil reserves in Africa. Job done indeed.