Remember Panama? (1991)

Book Review from the February 1991 issue of the Socialist Standard

Panama: Made in the USA. By John Weeks and Phil Goodman. Latin America Bureau. £4.99.

This is a timely reminder of President Bush’s hypocrisy in denouncing Saddam Hussein for “violating international law” with his invasion of Kuwait. The previous such violation had occurred in December 1989—when Bush ordered 24,000 US troops to invade Panama, capture its dictator and install a friendly puppet regime.

Panama, in fact, has in common with Kuwait the fact of being artificially created by an imperialist power in pursuit of its economic and strategic interests. Just as Kuwait was set up by Britain in 1899, so Panama was created by the US in 1903 as a breakaway from Colombia to provide a client state that would allow it to build—and then completely control—the Panama Canal. Ever since, as described in this booklet, the US has done what it liked there.

Blogger's Note:

An unsigned book review - which is annoying - but there's an outside chance it was written by Philip Bentley, who was known to review books published by the Latin American Bureau. 

The total spending chart (see above) appeared directly below the review in the original Standard, so I'm presuming it was in some way connected to the book review. 'Presuming' is a bit of a stretch. 

Cuban Background (1961)

From the January 1961 issue of the Socialist Standard

To anyone who follows the Latin American scene, so many aspects of Cuban politics seem familiar that there is a danger of failing to see just what distinguishes the Cuban question from the traditional turmoil in that part of the world.

When Spain’s colonies in the New World fought for independence a hundred and fifty years ago, their main source of inspiration was revolutionary France and the young United States. However, in one fundamentally important respect they fell short of the requirements of real social change; a unified and coherent class demanding the overthrow of the outmoded system on the strength of its mastery of the new productive and social forces.

As the present situation in the Congo shows, not all independence movements are the expression of a powerful embryo bourgeoisie, ready to effectively take the place of the former Imperialists on the backs of the local working-class and peasantry. The ousting of Spain from the Americas was due more to the weakness of Spain than to the strength of its colonies. The social vacuum, the rapid collapse into anarchy could not, in those days, become the concern of a United Nations Organisation acting as a broker and a policeman of international capital. The high-flown language of the constitutions drawn up by the South American disciples of Washington, Jefferson and even Tom Paine was not matched by the level of economic and class development in their respective regions. From Mexico in the north to Argentina in the south, the whole continent was to relapse into a state of autocracy where power rested with decadent, constantly feuding landowning interests.

At the turn of this century, the needs of European Industrialism led to the “Scramble for Africa”. Perhaps less spectacularly, and certainly without the formal annexation of territory as was the case in Africa, a similar process began in the Americas. The outcome of this process has, to a remarkable degree, run parallel to Afro-Asian developments. Britain, France, the USA and then Italy, Germany and Japan have, over the years, poured capital in and drained profits out. Vast rail networks were established. Soon hides and grain, meat and coffee, sugar and bananas, were flowing onto the world market.

The precious metals that had provided the funds for Spain’s “siglo de oro”, its century of supreme power and culture, were no longer of prime importance. Not silver from the mines of Potosí, but tin from neighbouring parts of Bolivia, was to become the source of immense wealth for the mighty foreign Corporations who were equally busy in their exploitation of copper and nitrates from Chile, petroleum from Venezuela, quebracho from Paraguay, and so on. Countries, most of them larger than any in Europe, were to become utterly dependent upon a single crop; here coffee, there bananas or sugar.

Guatemala, which in its time played the rôle of David to the American Goliath, is known as a banana republic. In Cuba, on whom the mantle has fallen, it is sugar that dominates. True, tobacco from these parts is justly famous throughout the world. In view of Cuba’s increasingly intimate relationship with the Russian Capitalist bloc we may yet witness the paradox of the Havana cigar as a status symbol of the Russian ruling class. We shall see bloated Commissars yet! Nevertheless, it is sugar that is Cuba’s economic life. As goes sugar so goes Cuba—boom or slump; it is the basis of its foreign trade which in this context means, overwhelmingly, trade with the USA. Fidel Castro now challenges the status quo.

As a “middle-class” Robin Hood, Fidel readily appealed to an American public weaned on the exploits of Davy Crocket. At the point where it became evident that in serving the needs of aspiring Cuban Capitalism the existing order of things would be upset, Castro fell from his pedestal. He was unmasked as the harbinger of “Communism” (read, Russian influence) in the Western Hemisphere. The bearded warrior of the mountains was romantic no longer.

The modern history of Cuba could be written around its relations with the United States. Of all the former Spanish colonies it was the last to break from the grip of the old country. It did so only to find itself a virtual colony of its erstwhile ally; to such an extent that there was an American governor at first, and US troops were not withdrawn from the island until eleven years after the signing of the peace treaty with Spain in 1898. US marines returned “to restore law and order” in 1920. The United States census of 1947 revealed that their industrial investments alone were only slightly less in Cuba than in Brazil; $64,000,000 as against $65,000,000 (Germán Arciniegas, The State of Latin America, p. 302). This figure later increased.

Trade Unions

Through this century, Cuban government has been a succession of “strongmen,” as Time magazine likes to call them, who have depended upon American patronage. Fractional alterations in US sugar tariffs in line with the protectionist demands of Hawaii or Porto Rico have had overnight repercussions on the Cuban economy. Laws passed by the US Senate actually reducing Cuba’s sugar quota, as in 1951, when the quota was varied in favour of Trujillo’s Dominican Republic, Peru and Porto Rico could mean and often did lead to gross economic instability. In working-class terms this means unemployment, destitution.

Out of bitter experience there grew in the 1930’s a significant labour movement. In a limited sphere, in the cigarette and cigar factories and the Havana docks, Spanish immigrants of the Anarcho-Syndicalist school had introduced the principles of trade-unionism at the turn of the century. In more recent times a far wider range of trades has become involved although at the price of Stalinist influence out-weighing that of the old Anarcho-Syndicalists who, for all their faults, did not compromise their class interests with the state requirements of a world power as do the so-called Communists. In fact, the Communists’ record in Cuba puts them in a rather curious position in relation to the current “togetherness” of their home and “mother” countries.

Batista, murderous and corrupt, Farouk to Castro’s Nasser, had been given Communist support in his early years of power (M. Poblete,  El movimiento obrero latinoamericano, p. 196). It was he who gave the Party legal recognition. Batista came to power first in October, 1940. In December of that year the second congress of the Communist-slanted Workers Federation of Cuba, T.U.C. of sorts, drew up a statement with which a Socialist could scarcely disagree.

“Cuban workers …. resolve to struggle against the Imperialist war, to expose its Imperialist character and the war-aims of both belligerents and to develop a nation-wide movement to ensure that our country keeps out of this criminal conflict“.

When “you know what” happened, new instructions were given out. The first resolution to be carried at the third: congress of the C.T.C. went as follows:

“The supreme task of the labour movement at the present time is to concentrate all its efforts and to use all its might towards the defeat of the Axis. Workers organised under the C.T.C. are willing to collaborate with all those in favour or national unity, that is to say, willing to subordinate any grievances that may arise within the country in their over-riding interest in destroying the foreign enemy. For the duration of the war, Cuban workers wish to avoid strikes and disputes likely to interfere with production.”

The congress called upon working-class youth to volunteer for service at the war-front.

C.P. just in time

Communist support for Castro’s guerrilla struggle came late but, like Russia’s entry into the war against Japan, in time. At this stage, however, it would be a mistake to regard Castro as a Caribbean Kadar, a mere puppet of the Eastern bloc. Like many a Nationalist before him he is attempting to play off one great power against another in the hope that advantages will accrue to the would-be elite he represents. It is the universal demand of the Latin American bourgeoisie to free their respective national economies from the preponderance of Anglo-American capital.

As early as 1926, in a polemic with Lozowsky, chief of the Profintern, Haya de la Torre, of Peru, pioneer student of the development processes of backward countries within the Imperialist orbit, denied the accusation by the Communists that he favoured unconditional support of Japan in the event of a war between that country and the U.S.A. Nevertheless, he considered it would be a valuable opportunity to take advantage of their rivalry (Haya de la Torre, El antimperialismo y el APRA, p. 101). A mightier rival appears on the scene and, one by one, the Latin American rulers see how to use their bargaining position to diversify their means of production and to intensify or quite often to initiate industrial development. Back in Havana from Prague just recently, a Castro man announced he had secured promises to establish thirty new industries by East European concerns. Of course, for a small power to attempt playing off the great powers involves considerable risks. It is sometimes swallowed up in the process.

The overthrow of the Batista clique with its record of gangsterism in the Chicago tradition, has been followed by a vigorous and forward-looking regime under a new dictator; what in Spanish is wryly called a “dictablanda” rather than a “dictadura”, a mild dictatorship whose authority is used towards social reorganisation rather than to feather the generalissimo’s private nest. Be that as it may, the massive programme of nationalising most Western owned utilities, agrarian reform meaning the breakup and redistribution amongst the rural population of the great estates (a retrograde step from the long term point of view), the attack upon widespread illiteracy add up to a really serious attempt on the part of Cuba to enter the Capitalist arena on a more equal footing.

“In Europe, Imperialism is the culmination of a series of developments within Capitalism and is characterised by the export of capital and the capturing of markets and sources of raw materials in the economically backward countries. However, what in Europe is (according to Haya de la Torre whom we are quoting) ‘the last phase of Capitalism’ is in Latin America the first. For us Indo-Americans, imported capital marks our first step in modern capitalist society” (Haya de la Torre, El antimperialismo y el APRA, p. 51).

Pending a dramatic awakening of working-class consciousness within the metropolitan powers, the repetition elsewhere of our own bitter experience seems inevitable, though tragically so. But this much, at least, we can say: that the Socialist, on the strength of his Marxian analysis, cannot be deluded into believing that this latter-day development of Capitalism, the most inhuman of all social systems, whether of the state-owned variety or not, is the first stage of our revolution; the beginnings of a society built democratically by a conscious, international working-class to serve human needs on the basis of common ownership of the means of living— Socialism. Would that it were!

Eddie Grant

From America: The Panama Canal and the right of free access (1977)

From the October 1977 issue of the Socialist Standard

One of the hottest pieces for conversation in America these days is the Carter Administration’s treaty with Panama, scheduled for a pomp-and-ceremonial signing on Wednesday, Sept. 7, in Washington, with a glittering crowd of little Latin-American dictators and other dignitaries in attendance. Ownership of the Panama Canal is to be transferred to the Panamanian Government, effective as of 1999, albeit with continuing US rights in the area of military defense. As of this writing, opinion polls indicate that a sizeable majority of the US population opposes the deal and that, in the end, the US Senate will refuse to ratify. The Government is mounting an all-out propaganda blitz to win over popular sentiment and save the Treaty.

In a nutshell, the positions are: Pro: in the final analysis, it is free access and not ownership that is important. Panamanians in particular, and Latin Americans, in general, are said to feel that 75 years of US ownership of a waterway in their area is enough. Good public relations between US and the latinos demand the transfer. Con: “We” (the us Government) built the Canal and paid for it. It makes no sense to give it away to a tinhorn dictatorship. Surely American military muscle can easily handle the hostile guerrilla action by anti-Yanqui latinos, but to surrender it to Panama would be to invite trouble from the Communist world — particularly Soviet Russia — which might seize control.

There is much meat here for socialists to chew on. But first it may be helpful to have a look at some bare facts concerning the history of the Canal, facts which are easily verified in the history books. To begin with, the “sovereign” nation of Panama came into being just 75 years ago as the fruit of a conspiracy involving a French capitalist consortium, the Government of President Theodore Roosevelt, and Panamanian revolutionists who sought independence from Columbia of which the Isthmus of Panama was a part.

The French capitalist group had recently abandoned its attempt at building a canal across the Isthmus after sinking some $260 million. A major, insurmountable, obstacle for them was malaria-bearing mosquitoes that devastated the work force. Roosevelt's government now commenced negotiations with the Columbian Government to pick up the rights from the French after agreeing to pay some $40 million for their franchise and unfinished work. But the Columbian Parliament stalled, attempting to raise their ante, and the US Congress hemmed and hawed. Then, enter the conspirators, and a Gilbert & Sullivan-type production ensued.

The group of Panamanian rebel-nationalists was set in motion on the Atlantic side of the Isthmus and the flag of independence was raised. At the same time, three US warships showed up at Colon and Marines were landed to “restore order”. The entire Columbian military force on the Pacific side was bought off, privates receiving $50 a head and officers more, and the revolution was over — bloodless save for the accidental killing of a Chinaman. The news reached Washington at 11.30 in the morning of Nov. 6, 1903, and the Republic of Panama was recognised before one o’ clock of the same day.

There is much more, of course, to this fascinating tale of intrigue in high circles but the foregoing are, at least, among the more salient facts. American capitalism licked the malaria problem by draining the swamps that provided the breeding ground for the mosquitoes. In other words, rather than waste time swatting the critters or spraying them with the 1903 equivalent of Flit, the US got down to bed-rock — the source — and corrected it, a tactic we can hardly expect capitalism to pursue in its perpetual confrontation with problems such as poverty-in-the-midst-of-porential- abundance; war; discrimination, etc.

Now, what should we make of all this noise about the Canal, today? Does it really matter either to Panamanian or American workers which nation possesses the deed of ownership? President Carter tells us, soberly, that it is not ownership but free access that is really important. Aside from our feeling that this move is an attempt by US capitalism to get further out of the more overt type of colonialism, we can only wish that the majority would apply such reasoning to all of wealth-producing property. The reason that the Treaty is of no import either to American or Panamanian workers is that ownership and free access, under capitalism, is generally confined to the capitalist class, even in cases of government-owned and government-operated industry.

But in the face of this truth there is something strange, even weird, about capitalism. Whether or not the Panama Canal will actually become the property of the Panamanian capitalist class depends on how successful the political leaders are in selling a bill of goods to American and Panamanian workers in order to provide the necessary pressures on the politicians to pass and to ratify the legislation.

Socialists maintain, then, that there are three rather than two positions on the Panama Canal Treaty: (1) Agreement; (2) opposition; (3) a simple working-class declaration: It is not our property so don’t bother us. But think carefully about that point made by President Carter on ownership vs. free access. And apply it to the world situation. The answer is inescapable: World Socialism will mean the end of ownership in the sense of class ownership. And common ownership can only spell free access to all that is in and on the earth, even the Panama Canal, by all mankind.

Harry Morrison, 

WSP, Boston. 

Rise of American Civilisation, Beard 

A New American History, Woodward

Capitalism in the Caribbean - Part 2 (1962)

From the July 1962 issue of the Socialist Standard

Link to Part 1.

The economy of the West Indies underwent a transformation following the abolition of slavery—from a primitive form of capitalism with many feudal features to full capitalism based on wage labour.

With the loss of its tied labour force, the plantation system of agriculture broke down, and the sugar owners faced quick ruin. It was to prevent this sudden loss of their labourers that the sugar plantocracy in many islands introduced a transitory state between slavery and wage-labour—“apprenticeship”. Under slavery, of course, no wages were paid, the slave being kept by his owner and encouraged to grow his own food. Until the sugar owners could buy the labour-power of the “free'’ workers the ex-slaves were “apprenticed” to the estates. They had to work for their former owners for about three-quarters of the week without pay, and from their earnings for the remaining quarter they were able to buy their “freedom" when their apprenticeship ended.

In their efforts to reduce the cost of producing the sugar the owners were forced to introduce labour-saving machines; this became even more necessary in face of competition from sugar planters in other parts of the world, notably the East Indies and the U.S.A., and the introduction of beet-sugar farming in Europe and the U.S.A. To make matters worse for the West Indian sugar owners the British Government drastically cut the subsidy which it had long paid for West Indian sugar when it became apparent that cheaper sources of sugar were available elsewhere. In addition, West Indian cotton and tobacco were virtually eliminated from the world's markets during the middle of the nineteenth century by improved farming in the southern states of America and Eli Whitney's cotton saw-gin.

To combat the twin capitalist problems of the rising cost of labour-power and the falling price of sugar, the West Indian sugar owners were forced to re-organise their industry; apart from introducing mechanisation, absentee ownership was discouraged, immigration (especially of European skilled artisans) encouraged, and serious attempts were made to build up an adequate, dependable, labour force.

In the islands with a long history of slavery, like Barbados, Antigua, and St. Kitts, there was an adequate supply of labour-power but in fast developing countries with little history of slavery (especially Trinidad and British Guiana) the shortage of labourers was acute. To these two countries, therefore, came regular shiploads of peasants from Madeira and India—indentured labourers who signed contracts or bonds to work on the estates as “free" workers. The workers from Madeira did not measure up to the exacting working conditions on the sugar estates in the tropics, but the Indians were quite at home. These “East Indians" were largely responsible for the agricultural wealth of Trinidad and British Guiana, and now number about half the population of Trinidad.

Although sugar-cane farming is the “monoculture" of the West Indies, other agricultural crops in different islands are important sources of profit for sections of the owning class. The (American) United Fruit Co., of which Elders and Fyffes are a subsidiary company, usually lakes about half of Jamaica's large banana crop. Citrus fruit, coffee, and cocoa are also grown on a considerable scale in certain islands. Grenadian planters enjoy a virtual monopoly of the spice trade in the West Indies.

Timber was, and is, the main industry in British Honduras. Timber, including hard woods, is also grown in Jamaica. Trinidad and British Guiana. The tourist industry, catering mainly for vacationing Americans, has developed considerably especially in Jamaica and is now a major source of profit for hotel and shop keepers; on the Jamaican north coast prices are quoted first in U.S. dollars. Trinidad is unique among the West Indian territories in having two important mineral deposits. The famous Pitch Lake, discovered in Raleigh's day, is the only source of natural asphalt in the world; despite competition from synthetic pitches produced during the refinery of oil. profits of the Trinidad Lake Asphalt Co. still assure a comfortable income for its shareholders.

In addition, oil was found in Trinidad towards the end of the nineteenth century. Although production has increased phenomenally since then, Trinidad's contribution towards the world's total oil production is less than half of one per cent; and because of the unsatisfactory geological formation of the oil-bearing layers, the cost of producing oil in Trinidad is among the highest in the world. However, its geographical position plus its stable government gives its oil industry a special importance in the eyes of British and American capitalists. After the second world war, American capitalism entered the Trinidad oil industry by acquiring a large field and the largest refinery. To prevent further American economic invasion, British Petroleum (half-owned by the British Government on behalf of the British capitalist class) recently took over three “independent" oilfields.

The bauxite industry (in Jamaica and British Guiana) is an important recent addition to West Indian capitalism.

As capitalism improved its methods of production in the Caribbean, so also it improved its methods of administration, to control the growing working class and to assure profits for the owners. In British territories, Crown Colony government superseded the inefficient and self-interested rule of the sugar plantocracy. Crown Colony government which has lasted, with few modifications, until the present time of the “wind of change", was largely responsible for the introduction of organised health services, thereby virtually eliminating the two killing diseases cholera and yellow fever and providing a reasonably fit working class. It also built a greatly improved transport system, the British mode of law-making and enforcement and a rudimentary educational system.

The French islands had always been closely tied to France, the colonial assemblies (which were instituted in 1787) being only advisory in character. Following emancipation, attempts to decentralise the islands' administration were abandoned, and Martinique and Guadeloupe became departments of metropolitan France, which they are today.

The development of capitalism in the larger islands of Cuba, Haiti and the Dominican Republic, and Puerto Rico is inextricably bound up with the interests of United States capitalism: capital investment, trading rights, and military bases for the defence of the Panama Canal.

After abolition in the British islands, the British Government pressed for the end of slavery in Cuba, whose sugar was underselling Jamaican sugar. The United States opposed British intervention, and later took the opportunity to gain firm control of Cuban affairs by a decisive and speedy military victory. The excuse for this was the loss of American property in the Cuban civil war of 1895 and the sinking of the American warship Maine in Havana harbour. Although American forces withdrew in 1902, American governors had effectively made Cuba a "friendly" country, and the establishment of the naval base at Guantanamo left no doubts about United States interest in the island.

Despite the oft-stated “principle" of the American State Department in the "self-determination and self-government of small nations”, Cuba has never been free of the intervention of American capitalism, political and military. U.S. naval forces were sent to Cuba in 1912 to protect American property during a Negro revolt, and the U.S. marines were sent in 1917 by President Wilson, also “to protect American lives and property". This touching concern for Cuban affairs apparently paid off. because as a result of the boom in sugar after the first world war a greatly increased concentration of wealth fell into the hands of American capitalists.

The growth of Cuban nationalism brought, first, the dictatorial regime of Machado, then in 1933-4 the left-wing government of Batista. With a history of strong left-wing parties (Cuba is the only country in the Caribbean with a Communist Party of any influence, thought to be a result of Spanish immigration during the 1920's), Cuba was the natural birthplace of Fidel Castro and his followers who seized power in 1958 and have ruled the island since then with all the trappings of a police state.

The Dominican Republic and Haiti have been of minor importance to the United States, both as markets and sources of capital, and any American interference there has been largely because of the islands strategic value. Both states of the island of Hispaniola have developed with dictatorial governments, and are at an uneasy peace with each other. Haiti is economically poor: the country is governed by a mulatto élite and the rest of the population are illiterate Negro peasants. The Dominican Republic, which is largely populated by descendants of Spanish settlers, is richer by virtue of sugar farming and the modest influx of American capital. The dictatorial regime of General Trujillo, which had ruled the country with no pretences of democracy for almost thirty years recently lost its iron control and the Trujillos were deposed. It is still loo early to say whether more democratic institutions for ruling the working-class will emerge; in the meantime the country has been "de-Trujillo-ised ” to the extent of the capital of Ciudad Trujillo being renamed Santo Domingo, the name given it by Columbus.

After centuries of Spanish rule, Puerto Rico was ceded to the United States in 1898 by the Treaty of Paris. America wished to gain control of the island (especially the fort of San Juan), not so much for her own use, but to prevent this strategic outpost failing into the hands of rival imperialist gangs. The sugar industry in Puerto Rico attracted American capital, and within a few years three or four American Corporations gained control of the industry and acquired more than half of the land suitable for cane growing. Although nominally American citizens. Puerto Rican workers soon discovered that, despite housing schemes, improved medical services, etc., they extracted little benefit from possessing American passports. It has been estimated that the average per capita income in Puerto Rico is less than one-fourth of that in the United States. In an attempt to relieve unemployment, the Puerto Rican government has encouraged emigration to the U.S.A., where, especially in New York, Puerto Rican immigrants meet similar problems that West Indian immigrants encounter in Great Britain.

No account of American capitalism's interference in the Caribbean would be complete without reference to the military bases in various West Indian islands granted to the United States during the early stages of World War Two by the British Government in return for fifty-odd old destroyers. The destroyers have all gone (some were reported to have sunk on their first Atlantic crossing), but the bases remain. They are a constant source of annoyance to West Indian politicians. especially Dr. Eric Williams. Premier of Trinidad and Tobago, who has apparently dedicated himself to the task of wresting the naval base of Chaguaramas in north-west Trinidad from the American Government.

Michael La Touche

(To be concluded)

Vietnam-again? (1972)

From the December 1972 issue of the Socialist Standard

If one war can be more depraved and dehumanising than another, then only in these terms is there a winner in Vietnam. For more than thirty years, virtually non-stop, Vietnam has been ravaged by the modern military hardware of rival armies. Back in 1941 the Japanese; then the British, then the French, the Vietnamese themselves, and finally the Americans. The wholesale slaughter and destruction, and the indifference to human suffering has been common to them all. The lying and hypocrisy of the politicians on all sides has been outstripped only by their gory deeds.

In the name of peace, the war steadily escalated for eight years. In the name of freedom, brutal dictators were installed and people whose “freedom” was denied burned themselves alive in protest. In the name of democracy, elections were suspended. In the name of liberation, many hundreds of thousands of men, women, and children have been blown to pieces or burned alive with napalm. On the ideological pretence of stemming “communism” every conceivable horror and outrage has been practised. Regardless of how many Vietnamese were killed in the process, they had to be “saved”. The utter ruthlessness of governments purporting to be champions of the “free” world could hardly be surpassed by those of police-state dictatorships.

Humiliation & Protest

America has suffered the humiliation of having to bring members of her armed forces to trial, accused of atrocities against the people they were supposed to be defending, while those atrocities were condoned by the then deputy leader of British Labour government. We have witnessed the spectacle of returning military personnel denouncing the war and their own brutal conduct. The American Army has had to face the desertion of tens of thousands of its men, while the scale of drug-taking was so vast among those who remained in the war, it had to be virtually ignored.

There have been massive demonstrations against the war, throughout America’s largest cities, with the added irony that the same coercive State apparatus which carried on the war was frequently used against the demonstrators. In Britain, as in other parts of the world, there were also demonstrations. The British “left” which organised the protests here were not opposed to the war as such, but were anti-America, and favoured a Northern victory. They dragged out all the anti-working-class arguments about national independence and home-rule to justify their support for the bloody butchers on the other side. As with CND before them, the protest reached fever pitch and then fizzled out. Since October 1968 there has been hardly a peep out of them. Such movements inevitably dissipate the enthusiasm of the workers who support them. Capitalism mocks all such limited objectives when its vital interests are at stake. The tragedy is that this same enthusiasm coupled with Socialist ideas could rid the world of the scourge of capitalism itself.

Amazing Gracey

As the misery and the bombing drag on towards the end of another year, it is worth remembering that it was the post-war British Labour government who restarted the war after taking over from the Japanese in 1945. In September of that year 20,000 British troops arrived, and General Gracey was set up as military dictator.

Despite the fact that the Vietminh (the forerunners of today’s Vietcong) had control of Saigon, the Labour government co-operated with the French ruling class, who wanted their colony back. The Labour government helped ship back French troops. General Gracey closed down the press and used the Japanese army to post a proclamation saying: “I hereby warn all wrongdoers, especially looters and saboteurs of public property and those carrying out similar activities, that they will be summarily shot.”

After arming former French prisoners who immediately started shooting up the Vietminh, Gracey disarmed them, and used Japanese forces to put down the guerrilla war he had sparked off. He ordered British troops: “Always use the maximum force to ensure wiping out any hostiles we may meet”. Like the Americans, the British had no way of knowing “hostiles” from innocent people. A British and Japanese military operation followed before the British left it to the French to continue the slaughter in March 1946. It was thus that “liberation” came to the people of Vietnam. Even the great American butcher General MacArthur (who wanted to use A-bombs in Korea) condemned as “ignoble” the conduct of the British Labour government in Indo-China.

With Friends Like These …

The French government carried on the war for eight years with financial aid from America, and the active support of the French Communist Party, whose deputies consistently voted for increased arms expenditure, in full knowledge that the arms were being used for killing their own “comrades” in Indochina. During 1946 Charles Tillon, a Communist, was in fact Minister for Armaments. These same deputies including Thorez, the C.P. Vice-Premier, voted unanimous congratulations to General Leclere after the bombardment of Haiphong where 6,000 civilians were killed.

On the other side, Ho Chi Minh wasted no time proving himself at least as treacherous and murderous as his adversaries. After running phony elections in January 1946, where 70 seats were promised to non-Communists (provided they did not compete in the election) he spent the next ten months liquidating 202 out of 444 elected representatives. The Vietminh carried out wholesale murder of opponents, in particular Trotskyists. One popular Trotskyist leader Ta Tu Thau, had three trials and three acquittals before he was shot. As a result of Cardinal Spellman’s campaign of propaganda half a million Catholics left North Vietnam in the mid-1950’s. This helped create serious food shortages, which led to peasant uprisings in late 1956. Ho Chi Minn’s army crushed the “rebels” and killed or deported 6,000 farmers.

. . . who needs the Enemy?

The Chinese ruling class whilst pouring military aid into the North and conducting a propaganda war against “American Imperialism” has supplied steel for American army and air bases. The Russian bosses have done much the same thing, trading with both sides, and there have been the usual hypocritical accusations and counter-accusations hurled between the Chinese and Rusian rulers.

If Presidents Kennedy, Johnson and Nixon have been the wililng tools of American capitalism in prosecuting the war, (backed up by Wilson and Heath on behalf of British capitalism) Mao Tse Tung, Brezhnev and Ho Chi Minh were as soaked in the blood of the working class as their western counterparts.

Wilson’s Labour government supplied some of the napalm which American forces used to burn alive so many thousands of men, women, and children. They also trained South Vietnamese forces and built bases for the U.S. air force.

Workers Have no Country

If anyone doubts that the sordid economic motives of capitalism lie behind the war in Vietnam, the U.S. News and World Report for the 16 April 1954 said: “One of the world’s richest areas is open to the winner in Indo-China — tin, rubber, rice, key strategic raw materials are what the war is really about” (quoted in Solidarity Pamphlet, The Rape of Vietnam, from which other material in this article has been taken).

The fact that the world has absorbed the emotional shock waves of the war in Vietnam, and a generation has lived with the stock-piling of H-bombs, is a measure of the terrifying extent of capitalism’s conditioning. It is also a damning indictment of this system of society.

The Socialist Party of Great Britain and its companion parties including the World Socialist Party of the U.S. have consistently opposed all wars. Taking our stand on the basis of the interests of the world’s working class, we condemned the two world wars as thieves’-quarrels of rival capitalist classes. We declared that no war is worth the shedding of a single drop of workers’ blood. We re-affirm that attitude. Vietnam is likewise a thieves’ war. The workers and peasants own no country on either side. They will find themselves as firmly shackled to the juggernaut of exploitation, whoever emerges as their new masters. Neither can “peace” be long secure, for fresh conflicts and future wars are inseparable from continuing capitalism. Vast air bases and thousands of planes stand in readiness to continue the war, despite the much-trumpeted withdrawal of ground forces. More than three million dead for nothing. And how many more millions will be slaughtered before the working class gets rid of the slaughter-house, remains a very open question.

Harry Baldwin

Political Ideas and Class Interests: A Glance at Argentina (1944)

From the November 1944 issue of the Socialist Standard

Marx wrote a century ago that all history, since the rise of class divided society, has been a history of class struggles. Constitutions have been made and unmade, kings dethroned and executed, treaties and alliances have been sworn (and broken), wars and civil wars have been fought, all involving the interests of rival classes; though the class interest at stake has always been half-hidden under the slogans phrased in terms of supposedly universal truths and philosophies.

Though modern capitalist writers are constantly having the real nature of the struggles forced on their attention, they usually abhor admitting it. When Liberals and Tories fight elections they are ready enough to accuse each other of having sinister designs against the workers, but neither—for obvious reasons—will admit that it fights to further the interest of its own section of the propertied class. So with wars, each of which has its appropriate collection of abstract aims and justifications—democracy, freedom of the seas, national independence, self-determination, rule of law, the just rights of superior races, etc., etc. On the Allied side in this war pride of place has been given to the idea of overthrowing dictatorship, and to suit this view politicians and the Press have studiously refrained from harping on the fact that a large number of the Allied countries are themselves dictatorships.

This expedient lack of candour has not, of course, been applied so rigorously to neutral countries. So when Russia made its treaty with Germany in August, 1939, it was permissible to refer to Russia as a dictatorship. “If war comes,” said the Daily Express (August 26th, 1939), “the issue will be clearer. The democracies will be ranged against totalitarian States.” Naturally that candour lapsed again when Russia became an Ally and is now customarily described as a democracy.

Later in the war most of the South American Republics, many of them dictatorships, gave support to the Allied side, with, however, the notable exception of Argentina, which has been much criticised for showing no enthusiasm. Criticism has been levelled against the near-Fascist dictatorship in that country, and the unilluminating explanation that has contented the capitalist press has been that the Argentine Government is anti-Ally because its own ideas are against democracy, and it therefore “sympathises” with Nazi Germany. Such an “explanation” is obviously inadequate. If sympathies and abstract ideals were a real guide to international alignments, half the history of all the Powers would be utterly incomprehensible, since they have all of them waged wars in the past in alliances which contained Christian Powers on opposite sides, Christian and non-Christian Powers on the same side, democratic powers and dictatorships, kingdoms and republics, white and yellow peoples all in seemingly inexplicable groupings. Let us, however, look further at Argentina.

The first curious fact to notice is that democratic U.S.A. and democratic Great Britain are at loggerheads over the attitude to be adopted towards Argentina. Roosevelt’s Government—in the name of democracy—wants stronger action against this South American Republic which is out of step, but the British Government holds aloof and wants to continue its existing trading relationships. The Economist (August 5th, 1944), putting the British capitalist point of view, admits that something else enters into the question besides abstract ideals, that something else being “British long-term trading interests.” “For decades,” says the Economist, “Argentina has been one of the main suppliers of cheap food for Britain’s industrial population. In return, it has been a valuable market for British goods, and a fertile ground for British capital—to the great benefit of both Countries.”

The article goes on to remark rather acidly that “In British eyes, American policy in Argentina is suspected of being moved less by the desire to defeat Hitler than by the desire to extend the influence of Washington from the northern half of South America to Cape Horn—in short, by a doubtless beneficent but none the less real imperialism.”

Then the writer quotes the President of the American Import-Export Bank, who admitted that when U.S.A. interests lend money to South American borrowers, the U.S.A. insists “that all machinery and materials not available in the country of the borrower shall be purchased or leased in the United States, and that such machinery and materials shall be transported in American ships.”

This is a usual procedure when capitalism lends abroad, and has its counterpart in a British-Argentine agreement of 1935, which forced Argentina “to discriminate against American goods.”

In short, Britain and U.S.A. are both moved by the capitalist necessity of finding markets and favourable areas for investment of capital.

Further light is thrown on the situation by a candid letter from an American correspondent, Isobel Fisk, in the Economist for September 23rd, 1944.

She largely admits the charge of imperialism against the U.S. Government, but urges that on a long view Britain and U.S.A. should act together because if they don’t it will be worse for both of them. Her case, in brief, is this : Argentina has been almost entirely an agrarian country producing wheat, meat, etc., for export, and importing machinery and other manufactured goods from Britain. This has suited both the British industrialists and investors and the Argentine landowning class, the latter having fought “tooth and nail” against efforts by rival Argentine interests to build up manufacturing industry in that country. (According to the Statesmen’s Year Book, 1940, there were in the whole country only 36 factories employing more than l,000 workers, in a population which totals 13,000,000.)

The rival Argentine interests are those behind the present dictatorship of President Farrell. They want to build up industry and end Argentina’s dependency on the British market. Their argument, in the words of Colonel Labarca, a member of the Argentine Government, is that “in the twentieth century all countries are trying to process their own raw materials; they know, that they can obtain very low prices by direct sale; they know that, on the other hand, when industrialised they will manufacture a wide variety of products and will utilise by-products, which will give work to their labourers. . . . Everybody now knows that a country has either the economy of a colony or of a world power, and that only the countries which are capable of elaborating what nature places within their reach are worthy of preserving their independence. . …”

The issue, then, in Argentina is not just one of democracy and dictatorship, but whether the landowners or the growing industrialists shall dominate, and the latter are prepared to use dictatorship and armed force to impose their will.

Miss Fisk, though the words she uses are that British and American interests should join together to try “to put down this American brand of Fascism which has sprung up in Buenos Aires,” makes no attempt to conceal the real issue. If Colonel Farrell and his fellow-Fascists succeed, “British investments,” she says, are “in mortal danger.” and “the system by which Britain bought Argentine meat and sold manufactures is doomed to go.”

The Economist, however, doubts whether an attempt to coerce Argentina now would be practicable, and is not prepared to support such a policy if the outcome is to be that of enabling American capital to get control there. Rather the Economist would prefer to wait till the end of the war in the evident hope that the changed situation then will put back the state of affairs that existed in 1939, with the landowners in power and British investments and exports safeguarded not only against Farrell’s group but also against U.S.A. interests. So much for the proclaimed concern of the British and American Governments with the establishment of democracy and overthrow of dictatorship.

There is another class interest that neither the Economist nor Miss Fisk takes into account, the world-wide interest of the working class. We are not concerned to prop up one or the other propertied class in Argentina, nor to try to safeguard British investments, or to make an open door for the products and investments of U.S.A. capitalists. The paramount interest of the working class inside and outside Argentina is to destroy the capitalist system and institute Socialism. Then there will be no problems of markets and investments to solve, and no country will have to face the choice between being a colony or a world power — all will be Socialist.

Edgar Hardcastle

Editorial: Armies of Liberation (1944)

Editorial from the October 1944 issue of the Socialist Standard

“Our men marched singing with a smiling light in their eyes. They had done their job. They thought it was the war to end war. They had won, they thought, the greatest victory in the world.” (Sir Philip Gibbs on the Armistice, 1918. Evening Standard, September 6, 1944.)

“It is against Hitlerism we fight. And we have no quarrel save with those who would help to perpetuate its tyranny in Europe. Because this is the issue, it transcends national frontiers. It transcends nationality itself. . . . Thus the freedom-loving German Socialists make common cause with the British Trades Union Congress, whose president said yesterday that ‘We stand four-square until we have smashed Hitlerism forever and created a world of true brotherhood among the worker'” (Daily Herald Editorial, September 5, 1939.)

If the course of war is rarely predictable, the same is true about war’s aftermath. There are people who, forgetting what happened after 1918, went into the war in 1939 with a simple faith that the military defeat of Nazi Germany would solve all problems and liberate humanity from a prison of oppression into a world of universal peace, and harmony; they must already be wondering. The departure of the German armies from the occupied countries opens up a situation quite unlike the visions of the Daily Herald five years ago. The war, said the Herald, was not to be one for possessions but for spiritual values in keeping with true internationalism. Yet the coming end of hostilities in Europe finds most of the Powers staking out their claims for territories. Russia wants a large slice of Poland and offers in return that Poland shall have a large slice of Germany. This is 1918 again, but on a larger scale, for the Labour Party 25 years ago vigorously condemned the Treaty which gave Poland comparatively small areas in which the population was German or Russian. Russia, according to Negley Farson (who defends the claim), wants to keep the former Baltic Republics of Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia, though he makes no pretence that the population’s views will be considered : —

“In 1940, under strictly Soviet commissar-conducted plebiscites, Stalin made the people of all three little countries declare themselves members of constituent republics of the U.S.S.R. Not even the Russians will try to pretend there was any such thing as a choice or freedom about it.” Daily Mail, July 26, 1944.)

American spokesmen are busy laying claims to strategically situated territories in the West Indies and the Pacific. China is demanding territories all round the Pacific, hitherto conquered and held by Japan and the Western Powers. French political parties are contemplating an extension of France to the Rhine and beyond, and most of the smaller Powers that were early on the winning side are hoping to get something in the carve-up.

The Daily Express, in its editorial on September 18th, 1944, candidly admits and encourages the Imperialist aims of U.S. A. and Britain.

“Here is a section of American opinion arguing in favour of United States Imperialism after this war. And here in this country concern and apprehension are sometimes expressed in high places on that account. Such fears are quite out of place. If British Imperialism is good for the British, then American Imperialism is good for the Americans. . . . The American Imperialists want a foothold in Dakar, and in the East and the Far East. They seek control of those islands in the Pacific which have been a source of menace and misery to them when held by the Japanese. Is that a good policy for the Americans ? Of course, it is. … Is it good for Britain too? Of course.”

It will be noticed that the Express here writes as if the world is going to be divided between American and British Imperialisms, saying nothing about the fact that other Powers (among them Russia) will also want a say.

It will be argued that these claims are justified on the ground that the Allied Powers will need to hold territories to bar any further attempt by German capitalism to gain military and economic control of Europe—but is this what the Daily Herald and its supporters envisaged by their talk in 1939 of “a world of true brotherhood among the workers?” Obviously the post-war world is going to be a world of capitalist competition, as it was before. Sir Stafford Cripps is so apprehensive about this that he warns us : “A return to open competition between the nations will inevitably lead to another and even more disastrous war” (Daily Express, September 18, 1944).

What of the promised re-establishment of democratic methods ? In some of the defeated countries this is likely, though experience after the last war shows that such re-establishment is no guarantee of permanence in a world of capitalist poverty and crisis. Moreover, one-party dictatorship is still the rule in Russia, and, according to the News-Chronicle correspondent recently in China, the present trend is towards totalitarianism in that country. He writes : —

“Already in China there is no freedom of the Press or of speech or assembly—no right to express any opinion that does not conform with the Government’s political line.” (News-Chronicle, May 2, 1944).

He pointed out that the Kuomintang Government (which he referred to as “Kuomintang Fascists”) has half a million of its best troops engaged, not in fighting the Japanese armies, but in blockading the Chinese Communist forces. He ended his article with the ominous words, “A Fascist China might in time be as dangerous as an Imperial Japan.”

Coming back to Europe and the populations liberated from Nazi occupation, no one need doubt the enthusiasm with which liberation has in the main been received, even though this is by no means universal. A correspondent with the advancing Allied armies in France records that in Alsace and Lorraine (territories annexed by Germany in 1871 and “liberated” in the first world war) the reception of the Allies was distinctly cold :—

“As you near Germany and touch the fringe of Alsace-Lorraine, you can sense the change in the attitude of a people that has lived so near to Germany as to be almost German in outlook and in blood. No longer, as we enter a village, do we get the vociferous welcome that cheered our progress to Paris. . . . The villagers look on you sourly; they are less ready to be helpful. Cases of sabotage which we never had in Normandy or on the way to Paris are now being reported.” (News-Chronicle, September 7, 1944.)

What sort of world is it into which the populations are liberated? Are they to open one prison door only to find they are faced with others? Since the world is still to be a world of capitalism, that is what is bound to happen. What is going to be the outcome when workers find that liberation and the end of the war merely means a return to the old chaotic conditions of pre-war capitalism, aggravated for at least some time by the problems of the switch-over to peace? Some will turn to Socialism, others will fall for new nostrums or return to old ones.

Mr. Alan Moorehead, writing on his impressions of France and Belgium, says that from the standpoint of living conditions, life under German overlordship was not as bad as had been reported—”if you were willing to obey the Germans and keep out of their way, then you did not have a bad life—certainly a more comfortable one than in war-time England (Daily Express, September 10, 1944), The reason why the Germans were “hated passionately and viciously” was “because they took away the one thing the people finally cared about, their liberty.” When the Germans went, the population regained their right to take part in political activities, but as the war in Europe ends they will also suffer in the changeover which will affect workers in all countries, the change from capitalism working at full pressure for war and providing full employment to capitalism resuming its normal peace-time condition with unemployment again mounting in volume. This has already occurred in Italy. The Manchester Guardian writes : —

“The economic situation is admittedly disastrous, and it is claimed, it is to be hoped wrongly, that the Germans allowed the people more food than the Allies…. It is extremely short-sighted to allow the Italian people to fall into a mood of such misery and despair that they will blame us for their misfortunes, rather than the Fascist Government which led them to disaster. (Manchester Guardian, August 15, 1944.)

A Times correspondent in Rome writes in a similar strain : —

“The Allies cannot afford to have the population of a capital city on their lines of communication reduced to desperation. A hungry and idle people becomes an easy prey to any extremist political agitation which promises it a quick way out of its troubles.” (September 8, 1944.)

Part of the present difficulty in Italy may be due to military demands on transport, but even when these have ceased and everything is normal again, Italian workers, like other workers, are going to have to face the usual evil results of capitalism. The war has not removed these evils; they are as insoluble as they were before 1939 or before 1914, though this was not at all foreseen by leaders of the Labour Party when they went into the war. They did not envisage the war ending with a return to the conditions of 1939 but vainly imagined that capitalism would be on its last legs and Socialism almost here—just as they had in the world war of 1914-1918. Here is an extract from a speech by a Labour Party spokesman, Mr. Arthur Greenwood, M.P., at his Party’s Conference at Bournemouth in May, 1940. It makes curious reading now : —

“Because we have the courage of our convictions as a movement now, we shall have greater power when it is over than we have to-day. We shall have a trembling capitalist system which can never recover again. We shall have broken the back of the vested interests, and we can build a Socialist commonwealth which will be a powerful factor in the world.” (Daily Herald, May 14, 1940.)

It would be an insult to Mr. Greenwood’s intelligence to ask if he thinks that his prophecy has been fulfilled. Instead, we would like to ask whether he would risk prophesying what the state of Europe and the world, seething with nationalistic hatreds and torn by the rival claims of capitalist groups, will be like at the end of the next four years. Will it be Socialism triumphant, democracy safe, and “true brotherhood among the workers,” or will it be the same old capitalism? Austrian workers who declared (Manchester Guardian, July 33, 1944) “that they do not intend to work for Anglo-American capitalists but desire to collaborate with progressive elements in the Allied countries,” have the right view of the situation, but, contrary to Mr. Greenwood’s anticipation of a trembling and broken capitalist class, that class is in power and the world is still their world.

Not mere release from foreign rule or home-bred dictatorship, but only Socialism will ultimately unite the world’s workers and achieve their emancipation. The workers’ army of liberation is the international army of class-conscious, politically organised Socialists, bent on achieving the conquest of political power for the purpose of ending capitalism and inaugurating world-wide Socialist society.

Voice From The Back: The US Is Staying Indefinitely (2005)

The Voice From The Back Column from the October 2005 issue of the Socialist Standard

The US Is Staying Indefinitely

“The Air Force’s top general said Monday that American warplanes would have to support Iraq’s fledgling security forces well after American ground troops eventually withdraw from the country…. In an interview earlier this month, General Jumper was even more explicit when asked about the Air Force’s future in Iraq. “We will continue with a rotational presence of some type in that area more or less indefinitely”, he said. “We have interests in that part of the world and an interest in staying in touch with the militaries over there” (New York Times, 30 August). The “interest” they have, is of course, Iraq’s oil.

Blessed Are The Warmakers

When the priests and ministers in the USA prattle on about “blessed are the peacemakers” they obviously don’t know much about how capitalism operates. “The United States is the largest supplier of weapons to developing nations, a US congressional study says. It delivered more than $US 9.6 billion in arms to countries including those in the Near East and Asia in 2004, and boosted worldwide sales to the highest amount since 2000. The total worldwide value of all agreements to sell arms last year was close to $US 37 billion, and nearly 59 per cent of the agreements were with developing nations, according to the Congressional Research Service report” (Sydney Morning Herald ,31 August).

Blessed are the Poor?

Another piece of nonsense much favoured by the bible bashers is “blessed are the poor”. Good news then for the pious in the USA according to the latest figures. “The number of Americans living below the poverty line rose for the fourth successive year during 2004, extending the gap between rich and poor in the world’s wealthiest nation. …. At the other end of the scale, a survey of the biggest US companies by compensation consultancy Pearl Meyers found the average payout for chief executives rose 13% in 2004 to $10.5 million.” (Guardian, 31 August). You are living in New York on minimum wage? Oh, blessed one! Consult the US Bureau of Statistics.

The Doom Machine

We often hear scares about the likely effects of global warning, but this report seems to come from a reliable source and should scare us all. “Only extraordinary changes in the output of warming gases now and until 2050 would make any difference, Martin Parry told the British Association science festival. … The estimates came from a government-funded study by Professor Parry’s team at the Hadley Centre, the Met Office’s climates forecasting centre” (Times, 6 September). The report was carried under the headline “Ozone rise will doom millions to starvation” and calculated that about 500 million are at risk but by 2050 this would rise to 550 million. Truly, modern capitalism has become a doom machine!

Priorities

“The world’s poorest people are being denied access to drugs because pharmaceutical companies are focusing their resources on diseases suffered by wealthy, middle-aged Americans, such as obesity and heart disease, a leading expert will say tomorrow. Dr David Rhodes, the Health Protection Agency’s (HPA) head of business development will claim that spiralling costs are driving firms to invest primarily in drugs that tackle diseases of older Americans” (Observer, 11 September). This is good business practice according to the ethics of capitalism, a bit tough on those suffering from tuberculosis, malaria and water-borne diseases in the less developed countries, though.

A World In Crisis

The columnist Lee Randall certainly summed up the nightmare of capitalism well when she wrote: “Twirl the globe and stab your finger anywhere. I could spend whole days writing cheques for innocent victims of war, natural disasters, terrorism, disease or poverty, and it wouldn’t be enough. Every tomorrow brings new woes. … I’m sure I’m not alone in feeling overwhelmed, uncertain about what can and should be done. But I’m open to ideas” (Scotsman, 10 September). How about world socialism, Lee?

World View: Bombs and poverty on an American island (2000)

From the July 2000 issue of the Socialist Standard

Vieques is in the news. The United States, it seems, just can’t stop bombing it. It’s the best place in the world (maybe the Universe?) for bombing, says the chief of US naval operations, Admiral Jay Johnson. “Vieques is an irreplaceable asset,” he claims.

Vieques, which is a 20-mile-long island eight miles east of Puerto Rico, is administratively part of Puerto Rico, and its inhabitants, like the Puerto Ricans, are American citizens although they cannot vote in Presidential elections. In 1941, the US navy appropriated more than two-thirds of the island’s 52 square miles, forcing the 9,300 local population to live on a small central strip between the naval bases at the east and west of the island. For almost 60 years, the navy has used Vieques for bomb and bombardment exercises for up to 200 days a year. Up to 12 months ago, only one local civilian had been killed by a missile; and operations were then suspended as protesters occupied beaches on the firing ranges littered with unexploded munitions. Since then, more protesters moved on to other sealed-off bomb sites and beaches, and dared the US authorities to bomb them or arrest them. On Thursday, 4 May, about 160 protesters were removed from the beaches, but were not arrested.

According to the Guardian (5 May),

“The islanders blame the navy for a cancer rate that is 27 percent higher than on the Puerto Rican mainland, stunted economic development, damage to the environment and to fishing grounds which, other than tourism and service industries, provide the local employment opportunities.”

The unemployment rate is 50 percent.

President Clinton has suggested a compromise by which the navy would drop dummy bombs until 2003, and then leave Vieques, in return for US investment of $40 million in the local economy. However, a referendum which many of the islanders consider to be a bribe, has been mooted whereby $50 million of Federal money would be added if the islanders support a return to live bombing.

The United States took possession of Puerto Rico and Vieques in 1898. According to Josué de Castro (Geography of Hunger), “it found a population which, if not exactly swimming in wealth and abundance, was far from the misery and hunger that it suffers in our times” (1952). Until the United States’s occupation, 75 percent of the arable land comprised smallholdings of about 12 acres, devoted mainly to subsistence crops. Following the occupation, the United States Military Census Commission noted that “this general ownership of farms has unquestionably had a great influence in producing the contented condition of the people”. The main industry, sugar, flourished. But, as de Castro points out: “Profound changes were soon brought about” in Puerto Rico.

The small growers were driven out, and were replaced by great, American-owned plantations; and “through the agency of United States’s capital, the sugar industry fell under monopolistic control of a small but powerful group of absentee owners”. American corporations also developed tobacco and coffee production—all for export to the American mainland. The Puerto Ricans were no longer able to feed themselves. And the island had to import 60 percent of its food, all of which was expensive, from the United States. Not surprisingly, for decades during the last century, undernourishment was prevalent and living conditions deteriorated. By 1950, the population of Puerto Rico had doubled (people suffering from malnutrition and dietary deficiencies always have high birth-rates). Of course the Americans built roads—and even luxury hotels and the like. Denis Healey MP, recalled that when he was Labour Chancellor of the Exchequer, in 1977, “President Ford invited us all to Puerto Rico . . . we met in a millionaires’ holiday camp on a palm fringed beach, and stayed in luxurious bungalows, travelling from one to another in electric buggies” (The Time of My Life).

Meanwhile, between 1945 and 1965, one-third of Puerto Rico’s population emigrated to mainland United States; and by 1980, two million Puerto Rican workers lived in America, with around three million remaining on the island, where at least conditions had improved somewhat.

In the early part of the last century, the reformist American Socialist Party, both among Puerto Ricans in New York, where most Puerto Rican immigrants lived and on the island itself, had considerable influence. It popularised trade unionism and, in a somewhat general form, class-struggle politics. In the 1930s, with the decline of the Socialist Party, the political scene came to be dominated by nationalist and Labor parties, together with the leftist People’s Democratic Party, in both the mainland and on the island. Puerto Rican nationalists supported an uprising on the island in 1950, when an attempt on President Truman’s life was made by members of the Nationalist Party. In the late 1960s, radical groups similar to the Black Panthers emerged; and, later, a Maoist party, the Organisation of Puerto Rican Revolutionary Workers, was formed in Chicago and New York. On the island, another reformist and pro-nationalist Puerto Rican Socialist Party (PSP) was founded in 1971, which had a strong base in the trade union movement. Unfortunately, however, no party as yet has been formed by Puerto Rican workers with the sole object of establishing socialism and rejecting nationalist and reformist programmes.

They have embraced the cul-de-sac of nationalism, to a large extent, because of the repressive and exploitative actions of both American-based corporations and the American state. The use of Vieques Island as a base by the CIA in the 1960s to infiltrate Cuba, and the more recent use of the island for bomb practice, has only exacerbated the situation. As a postscript, it is worth noting that the US navy “often lends Vieques to its allies, including Britain, for bombing exercises” (Guardian, 3 May). How thoughtful!

The US navy resumed bombing on Vieques on 8 May, using non-explosive ordnance. By the middle of May, 225 protesters had been removed from the site.

Peter E. Newell

Guns and coffee in El Salvador (1981)

From the June 1981 issue of the Socialist Standard

Since the defeat of the American-backed dictatorship in Nicaragua in 1979, the American ruling class has been concerned that the testing-ground for the “domino” theory would shift from Southeast Asia to its own backyard, Central America. Would Guatemala and El Salvador be the next countries to instal new rulers who were less well-disposed towards the US? In El Salvador, in particular, massive American military aid is being used to maintain in power a ferociously repressive junta.

Since the late nineteenth century, El Salvador has been a leading coffee grower and exporter. In the 1880s, with the help of conveniently passed laws, Indian communities were uprooted from their land and large coffee plantations were formed. Many former peasants became seasonal workers on the coffee estates, able to find employment only between November and March. Since 1930, there has been much urban industrial development, largely in the form of capital-intensive export industries owned by US corporations such as Exxon, Texaco and Westinghouse Electric. But El Salvador remains a predominantly agricultural country.

It is also a land of great poverty and inequality. The entire economy — agriculture, finance, industry — is dominated by a tiny elite of fourteen families. Two per cent of the population controls over sixty per cent of the cultivable land. At the other extreme, only one peasant family in twenty owns enough land to support themselves, while on 1974 figures over forty per cent of urban wage-workers were earning less than the legal minimum of around five pounds a week. About half of El Salvador’s infants die of malnutrition or related ailments before their first birthday. Such is the status quo the American government is defending, to the tune of ten million dollars in 1980-1.

For half a century El Salvador has been ruled by one military dictatorship after another. In 1930, in the midst of the world depression, the candidate of the reformist Labour Party was elected President, only to be overthrown by the army in the following year. In 1932, after the so-called Communist Party had won some local elections, the generals refused to recognise the result and a large-scale peasant uprising took place. It was put down brutally: between twenty and thirty thousand people were killed (equal to between one and two per cent of the total population!). Since then, the government has been in the possession of a series of different factions of the army and the fourteen families, with some mock elections but no political democracy. Since 1960, many peasants have been won to support of the the regime in power by means of a rural paramilitary body known as the National Democratic Organisation, or ORDEN. Its members were helped to avoid the worst poverty by means of such “favours” as special credit terms, preference in employment, or extra health care. ORDEN members acted as informers against suspected subversives in the villages. Thus many potential opponents were recruited as bulwarks of the government.

The Christian Democrat Party was founded in I960. In 1972 their presidential candidate was deprived of electoral victory by yet another army coup. By this time, guerrilla organisations were being formed in the countryside, aimed at resisting ORDEN and, in the long run, at taking over the government themselves. Besides ORDEN, there are other pro-regime terrorist groups ranged against the guerrillas. In addition, there is a veritable plethora of “left-wing” opposition groupings of various kinds, religious, political, trade-union, student. Since April 1980, these have come together in the Revolutinary Democratic Front (FDR).

The current Salvadoran government came to power in a coup in October 1979, when the Christian Democrats and a section of the army overthrew the existing military regime. The new junta promised “radical reforms”, and set up a cabinet involving civilian ministers. However, it immediately proclaimed a state of emergency and banned meetings of more than three people. Clearly the junta was not even superficially different from—let alone better than—the outright military dictatorships that preceded it. By the end of 1979, the junta w.as openly backing its own terrorist organisations. In 1980 El Salvador entered a period of civil war. On the one side were the army and the other state-run terrorists (supported and trained by the Americans) and on the other the guerrillas, backed by opposition movements and, supposedly, supplied with arms by Cuba. In the first nine months of 1980 alone, five thousand Salvadorans were killed in the fighting.

What are the two sides fighting for? The government and the army are defending the existing order and the interests of the present ruling élite, the Salvadoran capitalist class, and the American companies who own much of Salvadoran industry. The American military aid is designed to protect the massive profits of these US companies, and to defend America’s strategic interests in Central America. The guerrillas are a nationalist movement, fighting against United States control of the Salvadoran economy and government, and aiming to establish Salvadoran state capitalism. This is apparent from an examination of the “Programmatic Platform of the Revolutionary Democratic Government”, issued in February 1980 by the Revolutionary Coordinating Committee of the Masses, the umbrella grouping of guerrilla organisations.

The platform calls for widespread nationalisation of the banking and finance system, of foreign trade, of electricity distribution, of petroleum refining. It is stated, though, that “None of this will affect small or medium-sized private businesses, which will be given all kinds of stimulus and support in the various branches of the national economy”. There will be an agrarian reform, and the tax system will supposedly be transformed “so that tax payments no longer fall upon the workers”. (As taxes are a burden only on the capitalist class anyway, this transformation is difficult to envisage.) There will be wage regulation, price controls, increased social services, no unemployment . . . It all sounds quite impressive, till you realise that you’ve heard it all before from politicians elsewhere, and that the supposed benefits of nationalisation never quite permeate to the workers. State-run enterprises will still be concerned with making a profit and the platform admits as much: “the state will receive substantial income from the activity of the nationalised sector of the economy”. They will still be subject to the ups and downs of the world markets, in coffee for instance. As elsewhere, nationalised industries will be concerned to keep profits up by keeping wages down, and to discharge workers when what they produce cannot be sold profitably.

The workers and peasants of HI Salvador have nothing to gain by supporting the opposition groups or guerrillas, who will simply become their new rulers and exploiters. The platform we have discussed aims at no radical transformation of society: it envisages the continuation and further development of capitalism in El Salvador, a society of haves and have-nots. The change will be in the personnel of the ruling class, and a change from private to predominantly state capitalism. And that makes no difference to anyone but the capitalists themselves.

Paul Bennett

Buddhism—a big zero (1998)

Book Review from the October 1998 issue of the Socialist Standard

The Compassionate Revolution: Radical Politics and Buddhism by David Edwards, Green Books, 228 pages, £9.99.

It is well worth reading this book, or at least around two-thirds of it. Much of Edwards’s work revolves around an incisive analysis of US foreign policy and the nature and operation of the media industry.

The sheer scale of what successive American governments have done to further the “national interest” (i.e. the creation of market-friendly world conditions overseen by effective client states) is exposed at some length. From the installation by military coups and coercion of murderous regimes throughout the South and Central Americas, to the subsequent official training and funding of the state death squads of those regimes, to the more indirect support given to other “friendly nations” (Algeria, Indonesia etc) who maintain conditions favourable to US capital through mass murder; the whole story of America’s fight for “democracy and freedom” is shown in all its bloody reality. Indeed, if you were so inclined, you could write a whole new chapter on it every month of every year. You could include the headings “Panama” and “Somalia”, two other parts of Planet Capitalism where the World’s Copper has recently been to restore Law and Order. In both, atrocious destruction and loss of civilian life was the result. However, for public consumption these onslaughts were labelled “removing dictatorship” (installed, incidentally, by the US) and “peace-keeping”—labelled and packaged for the proles by the media, that is.

Which brings us to Edwards’s analysis of the role of the media, which he credits largely to Noam Chomsky’s Propaganda Model. Essentially, hideous acts of state terrorism are generally presented as noble quests for justice, not because of some conspiracy or official state censorship, but because of the basic operation of capitalism. It’s all about money after all: the ruthless securing of markets, trade routes, raw materials to make the world safe for the profit system-and the media (as it is vaguely termed) is part of that system. Edwards puts it well:

“The modern mass media is not, as some . . . like to remark, controlled by corporations; it is corporations. Businesses do not control the car industry; the car industry is big business. Likewise, the media is made up of large corporations, all in the business of maximising profits . . . This immediately suggests that, at the very least, media corporations might have a tendency to be sympathetic to the status quo, to other corporations, and to the profit-maximising motive of the corporate system . . .” (p.62).

Far from some Orwellian vision of state control ITN, the Guardian, and pals are voluntarily “on message” because this is in the long-term interest of their product. Although the odd “exposé” of “scandals” is acceptable (the cleaning up of the system’s image can only make it more secure after all), an attack on the foundations of their system is unimaginable. As Edwards puts it, the media operates in such a way as to ensure that “something remains ‘missing in the middle'”. By their very nature media corporations could hardly provide their consumers with the missing analysis that links corporations and western governments with massacres in Guatemala and starving children.

Sad to say that after an approach such as this the final third of Edwards’s book is so infuriating. The contrast actually seems disconcertingly odd, but then this reviewer is a socialist. I will restrain myself from actual anger if only because Edwards informs us that the “real enemy . . . is anger itself”. Earlier he identifies problems, such as the rape of Latin America, and their cause: capitalism. His conclusion, though, is not the abolition of that system; and therefore the book’s title is misleading. Edwards counsels that we, as individuals, practice compassion and meditation in the Buddhist tradition. Rather than urging us to relieve the capitalist class of their power to oppress and destroy us he advises us to pity and nurture them, because then they will surely stop their anti-human activities.

To summarise, he argues that “rich and poor are united by suffering” and that if the rich became a bit kinder by way of the individual promotion of “compassion for . . . both rich and poor”, then our problems would just melt away.

So what has Buddhism got to do with revolution? Nothing at all apparently, as Edwards sees nothing wrong with the rule of a parasitic elite, just as long as they are nice about it, and the approach he suggests can only lead to the continuation of the abusive system he has previously bemoaned. Compassion for the bosses? This book itself contains enough reasons why we should give the lot of them the boot immediately.

Ben Malcolm

American imperialism (1998)

Book Review from the August 1998 issue of the Socialist Standard

Killing Hope: U.S. Military and CIA Interventions Since World War II by William Blum. Black Rose Books, Montreal, Canada. $19.99 (Canadian). £12.99 in UK, pp. 458. 1998

BIum hasn’t a clue as to what kind of society existed in the former Soviet Union, or eastern Europe. or what exists in China or Cuba today. And this is annoying to this socialist reader. Nevertheless, Killing Hope has much to recommend it, as a work of reference and an exposé of American policy in general, and the CIA in particular, since the end of World War II.

Blum’s account, and exposé, covers the entire world. He mentions that within days of the Japanese defeat in China they were being used by the Americans against Mao’s Red Army; how the U.S. influenced the Italian election of 1948; how they, together with Britain, supported the monarchists, and Nazi collaborators in Greece, even before the end of the war in Europe. Interference in the internal affairs of Albania, Germany, Cuba, most Latin American countries, Angola, Iraq, Libya, Afghanistan, and many more, are all detailed. Even the CIA’s involvement in the ousting of Gough Whitlam’s Labour government in Australia in 1975 is described in considerable detail – all in the interest of American capitalism, and its quest for world hegemony, which it has largely achieved. Truly a sordid business.

Blum’s account is particularly useful, because every important statement is reliably sourced.

Peter E. Newell