American 'Fascism'.

We shouldn't use the word Fascism lightly. The US certainly isn't fascist today but the crisis has opened the door to political uncertainty. We can't see where things could go and that's worrying enough. That being said Fascism, as it was in the 20th Century, is not simply going to spring up again. It will come in a very different form, don't forget Fascism doesn't really have any universal or coherent set of characteristics (except maybe an extreme reactive tendency of nationalism). The similarities between America and Germany in the 20s are quite worrying because we know what happened in the Wiemar Republic. This isn't unique to America at this time, a poll found that 48% of Brits would vote for a far-right party if it wasn't fascistic in imagery. It's not unusual to see a rise of anti-immigrant nativism and nationalist populism in recessions, but this isn't just another recession. Walter Benjamin seems to have it right when he deemed Fascism to be the product of a failed revolution.

The United States is effectively the only society on earth founded as a federal capitalist republic. There is no monarchical feudal backdrop as there is in Europe and this means that American conservatism tends to be quite different from traditional conservatism in Europe. It's not that the Europeans don't have a long history of extermination, slavery and war (if anything Europe has a longer history) but the Americans have a 'blanking out' point in a much clearer way. You can pin-point the 'beginning' as it were, which is the basis of the American national mythology. This will become a basis of an ideologico-spiritual crisis with American decline, as it was for the British who have yet to fully accept what happened in 1945. There are upsides in American ideology that Europe lacks. Don't forget that Jefferson wanted a revolution every 20 years including a reassessment/revision of the constitution. The idea is of a permanent renovation of 1776.

If we're going to carry out a strict comparison of the US and the Fascist states of the 1930s then there are problems with the analogy. For one thing American nationalism tends not to sever itself from the values of the Enlightenment, it at least has to maintain the pretence of standing for and defending those values. Fascism was always about the destruction of the whole Enlightenment project of rights and freedoms. This is what separates Stalinism from Fascism, can you imagine the Nazis putting Jews on trial before the Holocaust? This is the reason that there were show elections held in Tito's Yugoslavia and Stalinist Russia was officially a 'people's democracy'. Even the erosion of individual rights and liberties in the US has yet to sever the cord to the Enlightenment totally. In fact it's often the case that this encroachment on the individual is accomplished within the same framework, under the umbrella of 'security' and so on.

The promise of an alternate modernity devoid of class struggle is completely missing for one thing. You have to keep in mind that the Fascists promised a 'Third Position' beyond socialism and capitalism. There is no racialised populism rooted in notions of 'blood and soil' that displaces the class struggle into a fight to preserve an organic society from a Jewish-Masonic-Bolshevik cabal. There is definitely scapegoating, racism and red-baiting, but it's not on the same scale at all. The racial myths that the Nazis adhered to came out of England originally and were predominant in the US for a long time. Now it's only the KKK and other fringe lunatics that adhere to the myth of a master race. As for militarism and civil authoritarianism, these things are not unique to Fascism but are not new to America either. The US has possibly killed in excess of 10 million people since the end of WW2, Nazi Germany set out to exterminate about 40 to 50 million Europeans and set off a chain of events that left 60 million dead.

I'm not sure that there is a word which neatly sums up the US situation. It is a business run society devoid of any safety net with an authoritarian state and bloated military. It's clear that really existing democracy is decaying in front of our eyes, but it seems unlikely that there will be a dictatorship in America tomorrow. It's not always easy to sum up an entire political system with one word, luckily Hitler and Mussolini named their system - while in the US there is officially no ideology and no system. The widespread attitude is a suspicion of politicians, parties and the government rather than a worship of any of these things. Even the radical Right in the US seems to be in the grips of an anti-political purism, the theoconservatives and neoconservatives have been marginalised by a libertarian push that the GOP are trying to use to destroy what's left of government programmes. I'm not saying that there aren't things that we should be worried about and that there could never be an American fascism. But let's try not to use the word loosely.

"Socialism is Theft!"

When will the Libertarians learn?

At the national demonstration on Saturday I encountered a man wearing a V for Vendetta Guy Fawkes mask and was on a one-man counter-march, who was carrying a sign that read "Socialism is Theft". At first we thought it was a joke, or some kind of ingenious troll, it turned out the slogan was intended in the same sense as "Tax is Theft". In reference to himself as a libertarian, though he soon informed us that all forms of government are "socialist" because a state taxes and the tax on the income earned by free individuals is theft. The definitive means of socialism are forceful. So we might describe him as a right-wing anarchist, who are opposed to the existence of the state but not capitalism and would like to see everything privatised. After we had our talk, a member of the Socialist Workers' Party confronted this proponent of the free-market. The sign and the mask soon disappeared, and the little Rothbard moved on claiming to have been spat on. I doubt he was among the "black bloc" who passed through Trafalgar and onwards to Oxford Street for a spot of anti-establishment vandalism.

The view of the world held by the little Rothbard entails a particular interpretation of history, into which a tacit consent remains and onto which all assumptions about the actions of individuals can be made. Each individual is responsible for their own lot in life and must act accordingly, by working the individual earns a living and can become prosperous. So taxation is just a form of theft, which deprives people of a chunk of what they have earned. This sees the individual as living on an island and the tax-collector as a force from another world looking to rob him. It is absurd. Not even Bill Gates is a self-made man. At the same time, the debt of liberalism is quietly kicked under the rug. I refer to the debt owed to slavery and feudalism, without which there would be no material pre-conditions on which liberalism could be built. Prosperity under capitalism would not be possible without slavery, this is the reason that reparations are overdue. Without capitalism there could not be socialism, but the historic break with exploitation is not theft and no reparation is owed to the beneficiaries of slavery.

Rothbardian anarchism could be best summed up as a radical interpretation of classical liberal ideas going back to John Locke. The origins of this form of anarchism are pre-capitalist, which might explain why it is ignorant of authoritarianism in the marketplace whilst also opposing any form of government. The anarcho-capitalists of this world want to see all forms of government and public property torn down and handed over the market. In a essence to replace all forms of state-power with private-power and unaccountable tyrannies which are not democratic in any sense. Though to the libertarians and anarchists, of the free-market persuasion, the democratic process is flawed compared to the forces of the market, according to which the strong will rise and the weak will fall. In that sense we vote whenever we buy a product and a successful business will be elevated over failing competitors. Of course it fails to provide an account of how a business leader can be held to account and forced to give up his position in the same way that an elected official can be.

For the right-wing anarchists and libertarians the state seems more tyrannical and oppressive than businesses, big or small. Not only is this overlooked, the efficiency of markets is a major assumption. Theoretically, a park would be better run if it was privatised because there would be invested interests in it remaining clean and safe. Of course in reality it might be more profitable to tear up the park and build a shopping centre over it. Not that the little Rothbard would disapprove of this, he might even cheer it on as providing opportunities for jobseekers and small-business owners. The market is not efficient, as supply and demand are in near constant change there can never be an equilibrium. This is the fallacious assumption underpinning the utopian idea of laissez-faire capitalism, which holds that there can be endless economic growth. It also adheres to a negative conception of freedom so limited that it is realised in the free choice of 285 varieties of cookies at a supermarket. As bourgeois democracy leaves the citizen with a limited range of political choices, bourgeois anarchism leaves the citizen with no political choices at all.

In selling off a state-owned industry, the inefficiencies and bureaucratic systems in place are merely dismantled to be replaced by a private-sector bureaucracy with it's own array of inefficiencies. The difference is a state-managed system can be changed via public policy, which can be influenced by the people, a private company can't be influenced as easily and can lie about it's inefficiencies. To end the state's monopoly over economic planning through such means would leave planning to the decentralised forces of the market. There is a great deal of planning that goes on internal to business. In both instances this transference of power, not the abolition of power, it can't be influenced by the population. A society without a government in which the capitalist system remains intact would quickly become an extreme tyranny. It would be a society in which corporations have the power to crush trade unions and eliminate unruly citizens with a privately owned police force. Effectively the government would still exist in the form of various private companies and the problems of government would be exacerbated in a world without any kind of democracy and accountability.

The argument that an enlightened self-interest among business leaders would prevent such a thing from happening. We should separate a person from the institutional role they role in society, which could range from a missionary to a slave-owner and is distinct from what makes them human. A business is not a moral agent, in that it has no consciousness or rationality, it has no long-term goal and in the short-term only profit matters. The energy industry has consistently supported candidates in US elections who are sceptical about climate change and suspicious of "Big Government". A perfect instance being George W Bush who opposed the Kyoto Protocol and then later came out as a "believer" in global warming. The rationale here is that once the ice-caps melt oil companies can have easy access to the enormous oil fields, which may or may not exist, beneath the seabed. The pursuit of short-term profit is actively opposed to the common good of the environment and humanity, though it's easier to swallow if you tell yourself climate change is just a liberal hoax.

Angry White Men of the World, Unite!

 

The English Defence League has taken a time out from the campaign of race-baiting against less than 2 million Muslims in Britain, but particularly targeting Asian Muslims, to react to the student demonstrations in their own special way. The leader of the movement is Stephen Yaxley Lennon, who goes by the name of "Tommy Robinson", who attacked the students in a speech this week. The former BNP member and football hooligan accused the students of "living off their dad's fucking bank cards" and not knowing what it means to be working-class. During the speech Mr Yaxley-Lennon issued a threat "The next time the students want to protest in our capital, the English Defence League will be there." This is a part of the EDL new approach of ruining left-wing meetings and denouncing trade unions as "communist", the movement is now engaged in the kind of red-baiting that still goes on across the pond.

The EDL seems to adhere to a vicious brand of evolutionary economics, whereby the strong rise and the weak fall, which is a departure from the traditional third-way economics of distributism. This is in line with the "permissive" aspects of post-modern nationalism, which is why they will claim to be defenders of freedom of speech against political-correctness. The kind of individualism the EDL favours is no doubt subordinate to nationhood. It may be a defence of free-speech but it's really about defending "English values", as if freedom was exclusively British. This extreme economic shift began with the BNP supporting the cuts and putting forward proposal of £200 billion in public spending cuts over a year, which would have decimated the welfare state and devastated the working-class. Though as this new strategy has accelerated the decline of the Party, the BNP have resorted to a vague list of cuts it advocates.

Not only would it appear that the EDL are now running with the stance that the BNP abandoned, but the growth of the League is now partly the cause of the decline of the BNP. The electoralist approach of Nick Griffin is perceived as a failure on the far-right and the EDL is a regression to the street level thuggery. As the EDL were originally just another force to collude with, the League have seized onto the "common cause" of stamping out the British Muslim community. From this there is a kind of unity among neo-Nazis and angry white men in general, but now the EDL is seeking to harden it's right-wing base in it's opposition to student demonstrations and trade unions. At the same time, the EDL has sought to allign itself with the Islamophobic wing of the Tea Party. The new line of the League on cuts might strengthen the link to the Tea Party and the American chickenhawks  who have been on board for taking on Islamism for a long time.

In Fascist ideology the class struggle is typically displaced, the EDL are no different in this sense. The idea of an English working-class is posited against an exploitative left-wing elite who have capitulated to radical Islamists. Notice that neo-fascists have yet to replace European Jewry as a scapegoat which appeals to the upper-classes just as much as it does to the working-classes. To the rich the Jew was a communist and to the poor the Jew was a banker, the virulent anti-Semitism of the Nazis externalised the tension between classes onto a "common enemy" and we all know what happened thereafter. Instead the EDL have to stick to the same line as the BNP have been, that "Islamization" is being imposed as part of a conspiracy between a left-wing media and a liberal elite.


The "intellectual" leadership of the EDL is most certainly National Socialist in character, just as the leadership of the BNP has been since it's emergence in 1982, complete with the same old genocidal intentions. The foot soldiers are typically the standard football thug with just enough brain cells to hate everything foreign. But the base of the BNP and the EDL are not consciously fascist, which is the reason for the carefully maintained veneer of railing against a culture and not a race. Cultural chauvinism is something picked up from the New Right, which focuses on the incompatibility of the culture of a "race" and thereby targets the minority indirectly. Just as old-fashioned racism is making a return, race-related harassment and violence has increased in recent times from 13,000 in 1997 to 53,000 in 2005. 35,000 of which consistuted assault. Now we can see Bruce Forsyth and Jimmy Hill defend the use of slurs such as "Paki" and "nigger".


The base of the EDL is no different than any other far-right group, it consists mostly of working-class men who have been dispossessed over the last 30 years and have legitimate grievances. The working-class has been neglected and it's grievances have been ignored by the establishment. Unemployment and stagnant wages being a serious concern. The line of the reactionary press is that the markets are efficient and produce enough jobs for all people. From this view the only explanation for unemployment is that the jobless are lazy scum or that their jobs have been "stolen" by foreigners. It's assumed that the system is perfect and has only been disrupted by "meddlesome entities" (e.g. foreigners and scroungers). When actually the case is that the markets are inefficient and don't provide jobs for all. Enter the EDL, who take advantage of a source of untapped rage and acknowledge the grievances by offering ways of restoring order - e.g. cutting off all benefits and putting a stop to Muslim immigration.

The malicious defence of authority and the erosion of welfare liberalism for the sake of "social order" is partly about solidifying a ultra-rightist base, it appeals to the bourgeois sectors of society. Equally it is about the long-term future of the EDL, whether or not it is intended to be. The end of the welfare state does have the potential to enlarge and intensify support for far-right groups, as would a double-dip recession. As it would ensure the kind of conditions that produce and sustain groups like the EDL, e.g. high unemployment, stagnant wages and greater inequality. Though it is possible that this manoeuvre will drive away working-class support for the League, as opposition to the cuts could increase rapidly as demonstrated by the student protests. Hopefully the EDL will find itself outnumbered by going down this route.

The Groucho Marx of the Right.

Cesspool Conservatism.

Glenn Beck has gone from mediocrity as a disc jockey to a self-styled political commentator. Just like his fellow shock-jocks of the Right, Limbaugh and Savage et al, Beck deals in cesspool conservatism - a tradition spawned in the fermented juices left in Lee Atwater's wake. Afterall Beck applies the same tactics that Atwater used to save Bush I from an electoral defeat in 1988. Lee Atwater was a mentor to Karl Rove and practically wrote the GOP playbook to safeguard the GOP platform, by tapping into the South as a source of right-wing populism, and demolish the Democrats as a liberal opposition. These tactics range from distorting history and the political spectrum to vilify the opposition, provoking outrage at every turn along the way. These tactics are partly what have enabled Beck to rise from a Top 40 DJ to an icon of the right-wing commentariat that basks in controversy.

To this day Beck wallows in controversy, which functions to distract people from the issues, fuelling the widespread confusion and rage along the way. In calling Barack Obama a "racist", in the midst of the arrest of Henry Louis Gates Jr, Beck succeeded in obfuscating the issues raised by the arrest - e.g. institutionalised racism in the police force - to a ridiculous debate over the content of his comments. But this is nothing new Glenn Beck has a history of shocking displays of prejudice, typically racist and or misogynistic chauvinism. Beck once called the wife of a competing DJ in Phoenix and mocked her for having a miscarriage on live radio. He claimed that Malik Jones used to smoke crack with his own grandmother. Jones had just been shot dead after refusing to pull over for the police, Jones was black and the police officer who shot him was white.

In the aftermath of the financial implosion of 2008, it was expected by many that there would be a radical shift in politics pushed by grass-roots movements. Beck has been instrumental in taking full advantage of the recent vicissitudes of capitalism and the weaknesses of the Left to reaffirm the system. In demonstrations against universal health-care and "socialism" the Tea Parties are undermining progressive tendencies that were absent, crushing any signs of an opposition to the consistently pro-business agenda of the US government. Beck does not attack "Obama-care" for obligating even more Americans to buy into a dysfunctional and bureaucratic insurance industry. Instead Beck accuses the administration of being "communist" and feeds the Tea Parties as a movement pushing for a more regressive health-care system.

Lee Atwater Populism.

It was 20 years before Beck when Lee Atwater obfuscated the real issues to smash the Democrats and keep the White House Republican for 4 more years. In 1986 the Reagan administration had been exposed as supporting the Contras, and their campaign of terrorism in Nicaragua, funding them through a state-sponsored trafficking in arms and drugs. The major issue of the election of 1988 should have been Bush's involvement in funding the terrorism. Lee Atwater resorted to the Southern Strategy and turned the discourse away from the Iran-Contra affair through a campaign of race-baiting. A campaign which Roger Ailes, who now runs Fox News, was deeply involved in from day one. This extreme-rightist brand of populism is designed to appeal to the Southern working-class, who have been marginalised by the bicoastal elites historically.

Today Beck is part of a similar mud-slinging campaign to excuse the crimes of the Bushites and undermine the Obama administration, by leading people to flock to the Right and elect a Republican President just as bad if not worse than Bush. This time the race-baiting is focused mostly on Muslims, as Islamophobia has become a major tool of mobilising angry white men. The "Ground Zero Mosque" being the newest tool, even though it is actually an Islamic Cultural Centre featuring a swimming pool, basketball court; a restaurant and prayer rooms for Muslims, Christians and Jews. The Centre isn't even at Ground Zero, but the desired effect has been accomplished. On the part of the Right this is a conscious way of undermining any progressive tendencies that might emerge, either in the state or from the grass-roots. Glenn Beck is deserving of his reputation for inducing laughter, but not in the intended way.

The Beck routine typically begins with a satirical attack on his opponents and their arguments, rounded off with a "serious" message of sentimental moral proportions. The first part is supposed to be the source of hilarity, though Beck's brand of satire would embarrass any decent human being. As Žižek pointed out, it is the ridiculous "serious" conclusion that is laughable. Beck is avidly reducing the political discourse to entertainment and comedy, the realm in which the conspiracy theories of ultra-conservative Mormons can be passed off as "serious" content. He consciously distorts the political spectrum to the extent that Barack Obama is both a "socialist", a "racist" and a "fascist" surrounded by loony lefties, whilst Roger Ailes is a "hero" of the Civil Rights Movement. The aim being to exploit the crisis of the American working-class for reactionary ends, against what little progress is being pursued in Washington.

Brand Obama - A lack of Audacity.

Hurray for Hope.

Barack Obama has had a busy year, to say the least, and has faced many obstacles in his path as President. Whether or not he has passed those obstacles is another matter... His economic strategy has been deemed "socialist" by the Republican Party and their friends in the media. He has faced hostility, from "Corporate America", over his proposed health-care reform. But there is no doubt that he has many more obstacles to face over the next 3 years. When Obama took office this day one year ago, there was an atmosphere of optimism and anxiety that he would be gunned down before he could live up to his rhetoric. Though, the rhetoric Obama used in his campaign was deliberately vague and lacked substantive content, in fact it consisted mostly of "hurray words" like hope, change and unity. Noam Chomsky predicted that the Obama administration would recycle the policies of the last half of the Bush years, which were considerably moderate when compared to the first term. Unfortunately, it appears that has come true, despite the rampant red-baiting at Fox News, Obama has not deviated greatly from the platform set by Bush. As Gore Vidal pointed out "The shock of this administration will reverberate for a long, long time."


It should be noted that Obama's victory was not a landslide, which is frankly shocking after two disastrous terms with the Bush Administration. Despite the fact that Obama's campaign outspent the McCain-Palin campaign by about $300 million. Arguably, this is part of a consistent pattern in American politics in which the candidates who spend the most win the elections. On an interesting side-note, Obama's campaign was awarded for being the most successful marketing campaign of 2008. It is true that Obama received a large amount of small contributions from people, but the majority of funding came from the same corporate entities and lobbyists, some of which had also backed McCain. Citigroup Inc, JP Morgan Chase & Co, Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley funded McCain and Obama. Clearly, as the campaign progressed, more of them increased their contributions to the Obama-Biden campaign. Though, between John McCain and Barack Obama, it was obvious, as it is now, that Obama was the lesser evil out of the two. But John McCain and Sarah Palin probably would not have dared to pursue the extreme policies as the Bushites had pursued since 9/11.

During the year since Obama entered office, the US government has sent numerous drones over Pakistan, killing hundreds of civilians and bringing the "War on Terror" to another country. Over the same period of time, Obama has continued a steady flow of military aid to Israel and has condemned a coup d'état in Honduras while covertly supporting it. For which Obama has been rewarded the Nobel Peace Prize, though time has yet to tell if he is destined to join the ignoble likes of Jimmy Carter, who supported Suharto's genocide in East Timor, and Henry Kissinger, who backed bombing campaigns that killed millions across Indochina. Hopefully, as Cornel West emphasised, the Nobel Peace Prize could function as a form of pressure on the Obama administration, as it is difficult to commit mass-murder with such an award on your shelf. At the same time, the Obama administration has furthered the series of bailouts, which the Bushites initiated, and have poured over $3 trillion dollars into private companies considered "too big to fail". The administration has recently taken advantage of the situation in Haiti, putting the country through "shock therapy" and making sure that debt will keep Haiti paralysed for future decades.


But should we have even expected any "change" from him? The answer to that question is unfortunately, "No". In his brief time as a senator, Barack Obama did not rock the boat, he voted to extend the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, opposed universal health-care, supported the death penalty and the USA Patriot Act. Guantanamo Bay has yet to be closed and no member of the Bush administration is likely to face trial for war crimes any time soon. The National Security Agency, strengthened under Bush, is currently constructing a vast database, the size of Salt Lake City, which will hold as much information as possible on every American citizen. The information has been gathered from some very cooperative corporations. From such information as credit card details, internet searches, phone calls, emails, text messages and so on, the NSA are going to decide who is and who is not a "terrorist". If this isn't bad enough, there are rumours of a second Patriot Act, even more extreme than the last, in waiting for America's next disaster to provide justification to clamp down on civil liberties.

It's a Free County...

Prior to Obama's victory in late 2008, many attempts at vilifying him were made in the media. Typically, vilification came in the form of labelling him as a Muslim, a terrorist, a foreigner, an anti-American and eventually a socialist. The Right has stuck with the "socialist" label, since it is the most politically acceptable and one of the most misunderstood words in America. The label also lacks the potentially racist connotations of "foreigner", "terrorist" and "Muslim". Though, some on the Right, who are less concerned about provoking a negative reaction, are still sticking with the more controversial labels. The term "socialist" needs no detailed explanation, since 70-odd-years of anti-communist propaganda has already done all the explaining needed in America. Unlike the term "anti-American", which requires an explanation, because Americanism lacks a clear definition that could be used against Obama. Whereas, the term "socialist" carries the connotations of anti-Americanism and of having foreign origins, without being explicitly racial. Though, racism still lurks in the background of the populist critique of the Obama White House.

The financial crisis of 2008 has been viewed by some as an opportunity for the Left and has even been referred to as the "Death of Capitalism". But as Slavoj Žižek stressed in First as Tragedy, then as Farce, it is short sighted to look upon the recession as an opportunity for the Left to reassert itself. Unfortunately, in financial crises it is the Left that is usually hit hard and the Right that propels itself onwards with a mighty shield of populism. There will be no political liberation due to this recession, though there will be a rise of reactionary ideology. Racist populism, war and a rise in inequality may lie ahead. The reaction to those, hundreds of millions, currently in need of food aid has been one of protectionism. This was made clear by the cuts made to foreign aid, that would feed those in need in the Third World, to help pay for the bailouts. It was further demonstrated when the anti-protectionist aspects of Prime Minister Brown's speech were not applauded by American politicians. Though, this is not a surprising reaction from the governing class of the most protectionist country in the world.

It is Obama, not Bush, who is being vilified as a socialist for bailing out needy corporations. As a consequence, he will be remembered for the bailouts and for his socialist label. Though, the Democrats and the Republicans don't even represent Left and Right. The latter represents the far-Right and the former represents what could be referred to as the centre-Right (at best). This is what the Right is currently doing in America, working towards establishing another reactionary President, like Bush or Reagan, who will be succeeded by a President posing as a progressive or a moderate. It's almost like a cycle. The Left will inevitably lose out, since it is only represented in the US by politicians like Ralph Nader and Dennis Kucinich. The Left has already been harmed by the Right's claims that giving the rich more money is a socialistic action. The fact that Americans can actually fall for this is a testament to the success of massive corporate propaganda since the days of Edward Bernays and Walter Lippmann. The Tea Party Movement only further confirms this success.

This methodical vilification of the Obama administration and their policies could potentially lay the foundation for a much more extreme administration to succeed Obama. These tactics are no different than those which were used against Clinton in the 1990s, which led to the anointment of one of the worst Presidents in American history. This would appear to be the only logic behind the populist, and borderline racist, attacks launched by the likes of Rush Limbaugh, Michael Savage and Rupert Murdoch's pundits at Fox News. Perhaps, these individuals have an administration in mind that is even more extreme than the Bush administration. Unfortunately, I think we all know the answer to that just from examining their rhetoric. The Democrats have to be turned into a party of elitist liberals, secular progressives, socialists and generic anti-Americans, so that the Republicans can be turned into a populist reaction against that. Which could lead to the election of such an administration in the future.

Elephants in the Room.

As Bill Maher once said on his show "The Democrats have moved to the Right, and the Right has moved into a mental hospital." Sadly, it is true that the Democrats are now as thoroughly right-wing and capitalist as the Republicans, though they were never that left-wing in the 20th Century. But at least, it produced politicians like the progressive George McGovern and Franklin D Roosevelt, who took the US towards social democracy, but the party also produced the likes of Bill Clinton, who killed 1 million Iraqis with his economic sanctions, and Harry Truman, who turned the US into a fully militarised republic and nuked Japan. The problem with the Obamaites is that they are not radical enough, they are still the subject of the corporate stranglehold on American politics and a conservative wing in their own party. It is as though Obama could do with taking a page out of Bush's book and ram his policies through, no matter what anyone thinks or says. The bipartisan approach, between two predominantly right-wing political parties, is doomed to fail when trying to resolve problems in the American health-care system. But this is just one elephant in the room.


There is, of course, the military industrial complex which has been out of control since the days of Harry Truman. But the biggest elephant of all in the room, is the notion that the political ideals - negative freedom and business-orientated individualism - of America may not be enough to deal with the problems the country now faces. Privatisation and liberalisation of the health-care system will only function to further strengthen the position of insurance companies and pharmaceutical corporations, who are already very powerful and rich. Especially, as the US Supreme Court has passed a ruling on corporate funding of political campaigns - Citizen United v the Federal Election Commission. This isn't surprising as the Supreme Court is effectively a conservative institution, though reactionary is a much more appropriate term to describe the Court today. It is hardly conservative to further the transition from politician to prostitute. So it seems, the record breaking $700 million the Obamaites received will be broken at the election of 2012. It may even top $1 billion and then we can see the winning campaign team receive another marketing award.


Though, it is tragic that another politician of hope may fail to deliver on his rhetoric. Just as the war "Corporate America" has launched against universal health-care is hard to stomach, Obama's failures will to be hard to handle for many. It will be the young people who voted for him and participated in his campaign, who believed his rhetoric about "hope" and "change", who will be most affected by these failures. Not to mention, the 50 million uninsured Americans, the 1 out of every 4 insured Americans who will be denied care, that he has already failed. The Obama administration have had a year, they have accomplished little, and if they don't turn things around over the next year Obama could become another Jimmy Carter or worse, another Bill Clinton. It's unlikely the administration can fail and Obama will come out of it being idealised like John F Kennedy. It is true that the Obamaites have a lot to deal with, but they should act swiftly if they aim to resolve these very serious issues. But instead we find them bombing women and children in Pakistan and loaning money to Haiti, which probably won't be paid back for decades.

The "Debate" on Obama-care.

There is an ongoing "debate" in the United States regarding the health care reforms proposed by the Obama Administration. Now I say "debate" because it is more like a series of rants for and against the reforms, these rants come from opposing parts of the power concentrated in "Corporate America". For decades health care has been the leading issue for the American population, but it's only recently that this "debate" has become so lively. The health insurance companies, as well as the pharmaceutical industry, are the dominant force behind the opposition to the reforms. The pharmaceutical industry spent around $400 million on advertising and lobbying Congress in recent months, this was done to protect their interests and for years it worked in their favour. Whereas, the major corporate support for reform comes from the manufacturing industry. Companies like General Motors seem to want reform in order to cut costs and increase profits. Because of the inefficient health care system in America, it costs General Motors over $1,000 more to produce a car in America than it does in Canada. When a major sector of private power contradicts a rival power, the end result is this "debate" we see in the media.

Many conservatives and libertarians in America have been extremely vocal in their opposition to the reforms. A notable incident involved Republican politician Sarah Palin, who made the following comment "The America I love is not one where my parents or baby with Down Syndrome will have to stand in front of Obama's death panel." Most individuals seem to have made up their minds already, by speculating on what the consequences of Obama's reforms will be. A large number of American citizens were seen confronting politicians at town halls across the US. Though, there were rumours that many of these crowds represented lobbying groups that favoured private health care. The advocates of universal health care in America claim that objections to the reforms are largely based on misunderstanding. Misunderstanding fuelled by right-wing propaganda designed to feed into the culture of fear that is prevalent in American society. This kind of propaganda is easy to spot, it's marked out by talk of death panels, tax-payer-funded abortions and free health care for illegal immigrants.

But it wasn't until Conservative MEP Daniel Hannan appeared on Fox News and discussed the NHS with Sean Hannity and Glenn Beck, that this so-called debate became a transatlantic one. While discussing health with the consummate angry white men of Fox, Daniel Hannan criticised the National Health Service and even went as far as to say that he wouldn't wish the NHS on anyone. Hannan is no stranger to controversy, he was condemned for referring to the NHS as a "60 year mistake". And Fox News doesn't have the best reputation in the world when it comes to presenting a "Fair and Balanced" perspective on world events. In fact, Fox News is viewed by many as the propaganda wing of the Republican Party, others view the media outlet as a source of comedy. Hannan has been a darling of Fox News and many right-wingers since he appeared on YouTube, criticising Gordon Brown for his "juggernaut-like" spending. In his talks with Sean Hannity, he claimed that Britain had experienced "ten years of socialism" which is a laughable claim, even for an admirer of Enoch Powell.

Investors Business Daily claimed with confidence that "Stephen Hawking wouldn't have a chance in the UK where the NHS would say his life is essentially worthless." To which Stephen Hawking responded "I wouldn't be here today if it were not for the NHS." This kind of glib critique is what mostly emerged from the political right during the transatlantic phase of the ongoing debate. Such criticism has been met with outrage around the United Kingdom, Twitter crashed on the day that Daniel Hannan made his appearance on Fox News. It does seem plausible to conclude that the opposition, let alone the American people, are more than a little misinformed about reform.

The proposed reforms should be a move towards a single-payer health care system, in which all health care is funded by the government but hospitals and doctors may remain private. This is not a system in which the government "runs" health care, as claimed by conservatives. This system has been accused of increasing costs as opposed to decreasing them. It should be noted that the current health care system itself has about twice the costs per head than any many other systems in the world. While the "socialised" aspect of the American system costs a fraction of what the privatised aspect actually costs. Regardless of whether or not such a system would cost more, the massive budget deficit will probably sway the effectiveness of instituting such social programs.

The facts are that the health care system in the United States is far from the best possible health care in the world. According to the latest data provided by the World Health Organisation, the United States health care system is number 37 in the world's health care systems. The United Kingdom is ranked at number 18 . There are around 50 million Americans who don't have insurance and 1 in every 4 insured Americans go without treatment due to the high cost of health care, which is the fault of health insurance companies. These are the reasons that health care has been a major political issue in America for decades. Not because corporations have been preoccupied with the issue, but because health care has remained a major issue for the American people. "Corporate America" has been more than happy to avoid the issue, stifle debate and maintain silence for decades.

Red Fear: Rhetoric and Reality.

"A spectre is haunting Europe - the spectre of communism." - Karl Marx

The words of Marx and Engels changed the course of history. Hopefully, their vision will one day come into being. However, the political philosophy they espoused has fallen victim to over 70 years of anti-communist propaganda, let alone the perversity of American culture which has reconstructed the English language. Which is why libertarian socialism is considered an oxymoron by Americans, due to the "different" connotations the word "libertarian" and "socialism" have in the US. In this post-Leninist world, Marxism and it's many variants are commonly associated with totalitarianism and oppression, whilst capitalism is associated with freedom and prosperity in a world owned by free market fundamentalists. The very word communism, conjures up images of uniformity, marching, singing, dictators applauding themselves and personality cults. The truth is that the accepted notions of communism have been engineered by it's enemies, most notably the United States. Though, some would argue that men like Kim Jong-il of North Korea and Hu Jintao of China are the biggest enemies of communism.

"Democracy is the road to socialism." - Karl Marx

Communism is defined as "a political or economic system in which all property and wealth is owned in a classless society by all the members of that society." Capitalism is defined as "an economic system based on the private ownership of the means of production and distribution of goods, characterized by a free competitive market and motivation by profit." Interestingly and perhaps ironically, the common ground that both communism and capitalism share, is that, neither system has ever really existed and many of their advocates are promoting a false version. Well, actually I exaggerate, in the Third World capitalism does exist, which is why it's the Third World. The First World has developed due to the constant violation of free market principles, through state intervention of the market.

The rich and powerful are the primary beneficiaries of such intervention we have only to look at the recent economic crisis - which Boris Johnson labelled as a "function of capitalism" - to see how. In Great Britain, we have only to look at Fred Goodwin to see how "failure" and "irresponsibility" is treated by the polyarchs who govern us, £700,000 a year until he dies and this man is in his fifties, and that's just from RBS, he'll also receive a yearly pension of over £30,000 from other companies he has "worked" for. But the political right doesn't want us to be concerned with the fact that they are, and have been for decades, pissing away our money on walking fuck ups like Fred Goodwin. They're more concerned with the "cost" of welfare and the "cost" of the National Health Service.

America is no better, where the rich have received even more help than the wealthiest 10% of the British population, for practically causing this recession they have received over $3 trillion to save their companies from financial destruction. Not much has changed since Adam Smith's day, when the "merchants and manufacturers" were the principle architects of state policy and they made sure their interests were "most peculiarly attended to" regardless of the interests of others. Look at the health insurance companies, in the "Land of the Free", who put millions toward the Presidential campaigns of Republican candidates to oppose universal health care.

"A lie told often enough becomes the truth." - Vladimir Lenin

Debatably, Vladimir Lenin holds most of the responsibility, for the public perception of Marxism, as the progenitor of authoritarian models of "socialism" and later forms of totalitarianism. Though, some have argued over the decades that Leninism was "corrupted" by Joseph Stalin and other vile dictators. But after looking at how Lenin established a one-party state, it is easier to conclude that Stalin exploited the environment and abused the power he inherited. Leninism was regarded as a deviation of Marxism, by mainstream Marxists such as Rosa Luxemburg, Anton Pannekoek and Leon Trotsky until April 1917, because of the opportunistic "vanguardism" Lenin advocated. Lenin's writing shifted character in 1917 and became more libertarian, in order to attract support from the left-wing movements that had developed, than his previous work.

As soon as Lenin seized power in the "October Revolution", which could also be viewed as a coup, he reverted to the former "vanguardism" set out to destroy socialist instruments of worker control such as councils, unions and ironically soviets. Lenin reconstructed the Tsarist forms of oppression, such as Cheka, into organisations which were more effective than under the Tsars, to crush all political opposition. And with Cheka he succeeded in doing so, by torturing and killing thousands. Lenin maintained the Orthodox Marxist belief that it wasn't possible to have socialism in Russia, because it was an undeveloped society and that the Revolution would occur in a developed capitalist society. Therefore, the October Revolution was a "holding action" to maintain a society in preparation for the Revolution which would take place in the most advanced capitalist society. This was Lenin's "justification" for the destruction of socialist institutions and all opposition within the Soviet Union.

The Soviet Union proclaimed such actions (and worse under Stalin) as "socialist" to exploit the progressive moral force of socialism, which was more real at that time than it is today, and to gain support from progressive sectors of society. Whereas, Western states labelled the Soviet Union as an example of communism to instigate the common association - of communism with totalitarianism and capitalism with democracy - and to ultimately crush socialism. The propaganda of the Soviet Union intensified over the decades and America became the main proponent of anti-communist propaganda, after it replaced Britain as the dominant superpower in the world. The threat of US aggression posed to the Soviet Union, that tyrannical regimes emulated throughout the world, encouraged totalitarianism to counteract bourgeois interference with the "progression of socialism".

The collapse of the Soviet Union and the Eastern Bloc is more of a blessing to the struggle of socialists. Though, it does appear that the Financial Meltdown of 2009 has rejuvenated popular interest in dialectical materialism, 20 years after the "death" of most of it's imitators. The biggest stains on Marxism are gone and the biggest stains of corporatism, parading as laissez faire capitalism, remain for all to view, and no amount free-market fundamentalism will wash them away. And as for the so called communist states of China, North Korea and Cuba, they are as fake as the Soviet Union. China being a totalitarian corporatist state and North Korea being the most extreme example of a "postmodern" state in the world.

"Long live the Unity of Latin America." - Hugo Chavez
 

In recent years, the rise of the left has been seen in Latin America, a region which has traditionally been the target of US aggression and imperialism, in fact South America was the first target of US aggression, probably because the continent is so close to the US. Which is probably the reason why some historians trace the origins of "anti-Americanism" to Latin America. On an interesting side note, the only other countries to utilise such a concept are totalitarian states, notably the Soviet Union in which a concept of "anti-Sovietism" was used to crush all political opposition.

The American government became dominant in the region soon after the British left Venezuela, which led to the US gaining control of several colonies in the Caribbean. It was John Quincey Adams who theorised, in the 1820s around the time that the Monroe Doctrine was formulated, that the American government should wait until the imperial powers were weak enough to drive out of colonies like Cuba and Venezuela. The Monroe Doctrine had been successfully implemented by the mid 20th Century, then major American fortunes could be made by extracting resources from Latin American countries.

Latin America has been the subject of several socio-economic experiments all of which have been disastrous. This is particularly true of the period in which neoliberalism came into dominance. If you compare the first 25 years after World War Two with the following 25 years, the neoliberal years, a very sharp decline in the rate of growth and productivity can be found. Latin America, among other regions, are a typical example of failure by sticking to the free-market principles. Principles which, when violated repeatedly, have brought prosperity to countries like China, South Korea and Taiwan.

The neoliberal policies are so unpopular with the population of South America that in many cases the policies required a dictatorial government to be enforced. Several of these dictators were backed by the US and other Western states, most notably Augusto Pinochet who actually seized power with assistance from the CIA, to prevent democracy and crush socialist political movements. Pinochet's coup against Salvador Allende was backed by the Nixon Administration and monetarist Milton Friedman entered Chile to give the new regime advice on economics. Pinochet is merely one example of a neofascist dictator who was backed by the US in South America. 

In the 1980s, the Reagan Administration poured money into the Contras, a right-wing terrorist group, Nicaragua to "punish" the Nicaraguan people for electing the Sandinistas, a socialist political party. The Reagan Administration even resorted to sanctioning illegal activities by the CIA, such activities included trafficking in drugs and weapons. Around $50 million worth of weapons were sold to the Iranian government, official enemies of the US, and the money was placed in an offshore bank account which the Contras could access. The Reagan Administration succeeding in punishing the Nicaraguan people, the terror atrocities left around 80,000 people dead. This doesn't count the amount of American people who died during the crack epidemic, because of the CIA's use of cocaine trafficking to acquire funds.

Venezuela and Bolivia are two notable examples of Latin American countries which have been the setting of two democratic revolutions. Hugo Chavez and Evo Morales were elected in landslide victories, their success being down to the involvement of the masses in their campaigns and the success of grass roots democracy. Chavez in particular, has been reelected repeatedly since he came to power 1999 and is extremely popular with the poor of Venezuela. Despite the slurs spread about him in the media, which is known for representing the elites of Venezuela, who're more in touch with upper class American society than the impoverished slums of their own country. This new form of socialism, taking place in exploited countries and predicated on grass roots democracy, may be the future of the lost cause.