Free worlds falling under rising tides of tyranny
In the Shadow of Decline and Collapse: Part 3
The descent
Western democracy has been experiencing a tough ride lately. Western democratic nations have uncovered increasing levels of distrust. Democratic states appear to have lost their ability to function effectively and ethically. The past two years have witnessed states challenged by numerous waves of the COVID-19 pandemic. Many countries were unprepared and unable to deal with the swiftly rising cases of infection, shocked into a form of inaction. Numerous policies initiated by governments — supported by medical experts — became contentious flashpoints, inciting backlash from the public. Further and further into the pandemic, increasing distrust and impatience expressed toward lockdown procedures fomented division and polemical commentary. Opinion broadcast from media personalities, political leaders, members of the medical community, and outspoken viewpoints from the general public, increased levels of outrage. The trend over the past few decades of increasing partisanship has caused division on a number of issues: immigration, gun legislation, abortion, climate warming, restrictions and lockdowns due to COVID-19, to name a few. Divisiveness over the past two years has culminated in crisis levels of infighting, distrust, anger, and dissension.
The formation of late 20th-century Western capitalism has developed around the belief in modernist efficiency: neoliberal market policies championed by the likes of Milton Friedman and George Stigler; free market, laissez-faire mechanisms promoted by Friedrich Hayek; and trickle-down economics supported by Reagan and Thatcher — economic policies reducing government intervention for increased efficiency through privatization. The effort was made to gain autonomy for business interests by reducing government and environmental controls. Throughout the past five to six decades, publicly-subsidized institutions have experienced massive cut backs, leading to reductions in staff, funding, the hollowing out of oversight institutions and regulators, and ultimately their power. Through neoliberal strategies, many of these institutions have been redesigned in the belief that privatized models deliver greater efficiency. From waste collection to social housing development — all now privatized services immersed into the market — have become normative standards throughout Western nations. As always, these decisions are based on our obsession to solve collective action problems efficiently — often, at greater cost for the public.
Andrew Potter, Canadian authour and associate professor at the Max Bell School of Public Policy in Montreal, has studied the effectiveness of state capacity throughout democratic nations. The means by which governments, public institutions, and the policies drafted to respond to — and manage — contemporary challenges, represent the health signs of a nation’s effectiveness. Potter believes this is where the symptoms of decline are most clearly observed — in a nation’s ability to manage struggles smoothly and effectively. “The Covid-19 pandemic revealed that our states, as big as they are and as bureaucratic as they are, have become very unwieldy. And if we’re looking at our ability to respond to problems, (and in a state, capacity is ultimately what will motivate that and help resolve these troubles), you can’t be that optimistic, because states everywhere seem to be failing; not just in what they’re trying to do, but also in the faith that people have in the capacity of the states to do anything. To me, that’s the double-edged problem: struggling states losing trust and faith within the population.” [1]
The vitriol expressed at Canadian politicians, medical staff, and individuals within law enforcement over the course of the pandemic has increased. Cantankerous shouting matches have replaced reasoned debate within public discourse and the social exchange between citizens on opposing ends of the political spectrum. Conservative-leaning political figures have adopted ever increasing vitriolic language, embracing “strong man” tactical forms of communication. The increasing toxic discourse is leading to deeper retrenchment of perspectives and beliefs, and if left unchecked, will only continue increasing this unsettling trend. A growing adoption of far-right political dogma is affecting democracy and its ability to function effectively. The signs reflecting a turn towards far left or hard right ideological support are increasing. These may be early warning signs of a growing desire to enter into a new era of political discourse, political policy, and political organization. These signs are troubling within a continent upholding century upon century of liberal democratic principles. If sharing, communicating, and living peacefully side by side are in decline — all the necessary codes for cultivating community — we may be witnessing the early stages of democracy in descent. “Our long-standing faith in the virtues of liberal democracy appears to be coming to an end. The decline of trust in democracy, the rise of anti-liberal convictions, and a growing openness to authoritarian rule — especially amongst the young — are widespread in both the emerging democracies of Eastern Europe and the more entrenched democracies of the West.” [2]
“Here’s what’s happening: our entire cultural infrastructure is steadily evolving to take advantage of the weaknesses in our brains. Our attention is valuable, not just to capitalists but to marketers, politicians, and propagandists of all sorts. Reason is being elbowed off of the playing field, with the result that the gains of civilization — the proceeds of the Enlightenment — are at risk of being reversed. We’re rushing back into barbarism, and it isn’t clear that we have the wherewithal to stop it.” [3] — Andrew Potter
A decaying education system with degraded standards yields citizens less critical, observant, and competent to expose corruption. Highly sophisticated, contemporary mass media in combination with an uneducated, unwary, and uncaring populous predicts dangerous ramifications. Hitler understood the power of media. He appointed Leni Riefenstahl to film and produce propaganda aimed at the domestic German population, culminating in the Triumph des Willens. In this film, Hitler was cast within the adoring gaze of a supposedly supportive citizenry. Hitler had Riefenstahl. Other countries have powerful movie and media industries, which are funded handsomely for productions. Full-length features that celebrate war permeate visual culture. Images and scenes underscored with music psychologically engineered to activate the emotion centres of audiences tacitly seek to shape opinion. This media is designed to manipulate.
The internet, undeniably, has provided echo chambers for audiences interested only in what they want to hear, further eroding the quality of civil exchange and dialog. While social online platforms have provided tools for messaging and communicating in powerful, accessible new ways, in many circles these platforms are believed to be increasing levels of toxicity. These powerful tools are experiencing ever-increasing rates of use, not just for individuals but for industry, government, and education systems. The strains upon democracy and our ability to solve collection action problems are beginning to show.
“If we go down the current status quo, for let’s say another twenty years, we probably destroy our civilization, and through willful ignorance, we probably fail to meet the challenge of climate change. We probably degrade the world’s democracies, so that they fall into some sort of bizarre autocratic disfunction. We probably ruin the global economy. We probably don’t survive. You know I really do view it as existential.” [4] — Jaron Lanier
The safeguarding of political party platform information over the course of elections has evolved into defensive strategies. These strategies are practiced as precautionary measures, preventing opponents from gaining insight into the content of party platforms. By generalizing party platform goals throughout election cycles, information is safeguarded, protected for use as ammunition on debate stages. Increasingly, vague and opaque talking points round out the discourse made between leaders in national debate. Rarely is clear, definitive detail ever articulated. The usual, highly generalized talking points form the bulk of candidate platforms, leaving voters to make important decisions based on little substance. Once elected into office, the plethora of platform issues are rarely — if ever — achieved throughout the course of an administration’s tenure. Many of the proposed goals and outcomes focused on during election campaigns are ignored or abandoned throughout an administration’s term. It might be reasonably argued that political leaders have nothing new or innovative to offer in the first place. Minimal substance is communicated over the duration of election cycles. Perhaps this serves as confirmation the hollowed-out ideologies embraced by leaders within these out-dated institutions function to prevent any large-scale change of any kind from gaining traction. Where then does this leave us, and where are we heading?
Timothy Snyder, Levin professor of history at Yale University and author of On Tyranny and The Road to Unfreedom, is blunt in his summation of tyrannical, authoritarian regimes. “Authoritarian capitalism is what China has under the aegis of a communist party. Authoritarian capitalism is what Russia has with no particular ideological content, and authoritarian capitalism is where the United States is heading.” [5]
Bruce Livesey, Canadian columnist, award-winning investigative journalist, and producer of the CBC Ideas documentary Money Rules: Is Capitalism Destroying Democracy?, is equally blunt in defining the core features of authoritarianism as expressed throughout the tenure of 21st century states. “Authoritarian capitalism, for me, is using the monopoly of violence that a state has in order to have people benefit personally from the capitalist forms.” [6]
When pushed by Nahlah Ayed, host of CBC Ideas, for a definition of “authoritarian capitalism”, Livesey responded with the following: “Well, I think it’s that the role of the state, the role of the government, is now basically working unfettered on behalf of what corporations and the rich want.… Breaking unions, ignoring environmental regulations, and also ensuring there’s no elections — there’s no accountability by any state agencies to hold corporations and the rich to account.” [7]
Tactics of adding friction into the processes of voting clearly have deleterious and damaging effects upon the free election process. Gerrymandering, redlining, voter suppression, intimidation, and unequal access to voting stations contribute to manipulating election results.
“The wealthy and corporations use their money to influence states, so they finance think-tanks, they finance lobbyists, they finance pressure groups which they claim are independent, when in fact they’re not. And they’re very effective at it.” [8] — Bruce Livesey
According to Merriam-Webster, fascism is defined as “a political philosophy, movement, or regime (such as that of the Fascisti) that exalts nation and often race above the individual and that stands for a centralized autocratic government headed by a dictatorial leader, severe economic and social regimentation, and forcible suppression of opposition”. A number of ‘strongman’ leaders have recently surfaced within Western nations, each with their own brand of leadership and control; each with their own reliance upon and promotion of military and state-led policing apparatus. Each have their own strategies for reducing democratic principles within their platforms, and many establish alliances with groups espousing a range of philosophies particularly deleterious to democratic functions. Bruce Livesey: “We’ve been hearing about the rise of authoritarianism for a while now. How leaders throughout the West and beyond are becoming almost fascist.” [9]
The key to this point is the “becoming almost” part. The rhetoric adopted by individuals or organizations carrying fascist intentions often signal the latent future ambitions of such groups.
This “becoming almost” largely stems from systematic failures. These can be interpreted as the state’s inability to meet the demand of current populations experiencing a continuously degraded quality of life through ever more limited access to publicly-funded medical services; through the inability to shape civic life and daily practices into meaningful, welcoming arenas in which citizens actively participate; through eroding points of access into meaningful political discourse and participation within the democratic process; and through the inability to shape public policy around the concerns of a restless population. As capitalism progresses, an ever increasingly precarious workforce is made extraneous within the process of manufacturing goods, knowledge work, medical service, transportation and logistics, and creative and cultural production. With the increasing reliance upon machines, the question arises: how does our civilization maintain cohesion after the majority of the workforce has been replaced by mechanized forms of industrial production throughout all sectors? Todd Dufresne, Canadian professor of Philosophy at Lakehead University in Thunder Bay, Ontario, studies the widening relational flaws between capitalism and democracy. “What do we want to do with the mass of people that are left over in the aftermath of capitalism? Do we just want a disaster capitalism as Naomi Klein calls it? I don’t even think it’s disaster capitalism anymore — I call it just capitalism ad absurdum. It’s a capitalism out to exploit. It really is fascism, or neofascism. You have the collapse of democracy altogether like we’ve seen in the United States. This is made possible by capitalism in decline. Now, you can say it’s not quite dead, you can say it’s dead — it doesn’t really matter. Something has happened to capitalism and it’s not functioning correctly at minimum. What comes after it? Nobody knows. That’s the problem.” [10]
Fundamentally, these failures lead to issues of inequality and suffering. Authoritarianism offers no solutions to degraded health outcomes, lessening employment opportunities, inability for political activity, or cultural production. Timothy Snyder argues that fascist leaders do not have the interests of the public in mind when enforcing their political mandates. “My view is that insofar as you make inequality of wealth worse, you’re making democracy harder… Leaders like Mr. Trump who use fascist tactics and fascist rhetoric but don’t have the full fascist package — that is they don’t invade other countries, they don’t really have a mission, they’re kind of lazy. Then you see this thing we have now, I think, is much more closely connected to a certain kind of capitalism which says it’s OK for there to be radical inequality, and Mr. Trump has certainly done that with tax cuts. He’s also done that by actively dismantling what remains of the American welfare state. The authoritarianism part, though, can also be advanced without the capitalism part, and here I would focus on his active campaign to dismantle the idea of truth, his active campaign to dismantle scientific authority, factuality, journalism, all the little wellsprings of facts and truth which citizens need to have if politics is going to be something beyond just emotions and us and them.” [11]
Within an effective, forward-thinking liberal democracy where equality and justice are inalienable standards for all, the protection of health outcomes, safety, culture, healthful environment, and vibrant biosphere become necessary essentials for life. A responsible, democratic institution upholding the principles of justice, liberty, and freedom, is tasked and upheld to expose corruption and illegal activity. The sermonizing delivered by Western politicians need be more than stage performances; the trust and therefore votes of the populations they obtain through the virtues pontificated upon require action and the upholding of charter rights and basic freedoms. However, what we’ve come to expect — election cycle after election cycle — is stalling action on climate change, continued reliance upon fossil fuel, war after interminable war, rising costs of living with ever debased health outcomes, and lower qualities of life with reduced access to quality health care. Dufresne believes that we have not held our uncreative leaders to account. “I think through media, through journalism we can become sensitized to the facts around the world. We can learn to accept the facts as facts, and we can change as soon as possible to save what we can save. My only caveat is that we’ve waited so long that the suffering is guaranteed.” [12]
Perhaps the temptation to weigh the pros and cons of a political and economic system so capable of raising quality of life for so many people is expressed. Undeniably, living standards in the West abruptly increased during the post war years throughout the 1940’s and 50’s. Western living standards certainly rose once effort was made ensuring the U.S. dollar was made the centre of world-wide trade. Ordained as the global currency denomination under which nearly all financial transactions, international debt, oil and global trade invoices were conducted, the U.S. dollar (USD) reinforced the expanding power of a post-war nation. Oil is traded under the USD. Many nations have failed to remove the USD from oil extraction and trading practices. The dollar has become the world’s reserve currency. In Bretton Woods, New Hampshire, the world’s economic representatives met to organize trading policies, and to repair currency stability issues due to the removal of the gold standard from the monetary systems of international nations. The Planet Money podcast delightfully describes how Harry Dexter White, an American economist, convinced the conference delegates to accept international trading made through the U.S. dollar, out-witting John Maynard Keynes who was promoting the bancor, a World Currency Unit. [13]
The reality of capitalism, increasingly linked to planetary diminishment, reveals its destructive ideology of infinite growth. The aftermath of a dogma mandating perpetual growth within a finite system has produced rampant deforestation and pollution of water, air, and of soil. It has increased inequality, augmented climate change, and increased the rate of species extinction. It has emphatically encouraged practices of organized hoarding and over-consumption for those living in the West, while it has dangerously increased the gap between the rich and the poor. The standard of living for billions the world over remains far lower in quality, health outcomes, and life expectancy. All the while, these have become the territories serving as sites of extraction in service to the Western world. “I grew up under capitalism, and I was willing to say that there was bad and good kinds of capitalism. What I’ve come to realize over time — maybe I’m a slow learner — is that capitalism is about growth, and is a dogma of growth. As a journalist from The Guardian,George Monbiot, points out something like two or three percent growth over twenty or twenty-five years is effectively doubling our economy. We can’t afford to double our economy, which means we can’t afford growth, which means we can’t afford capitalism. OK, the simplest take-away message is that capitalism is what’s causing climate change. From this position it’s hard to say, ‘Well I like this form of capitalism or that form of capitalism’. The problem is capitalism, full stop.” [14]
The forces of capitalism have developed beyond the notion of the export processing zone, what Canadian authour, social activist, and filmmaker Naomi Klein has called the ‘de-nationalized, tax-free pockets in which massive corporations set up shop’. Maude Barlow, legendary Canadian author and activist, and founding member of the Council of Canadians, (a citizens’ advocacy organization), discusses in the film The Corporation how the powerful are seeking to legislate ownership towards everything on the planet. Beyond goods and services, they anticipate that this notion of ownership will include human rights, essential services for life, education, public health, social assistance, pensions, housing, water, and air. [15]
Ever expanding the divide between the ultra rich and the poor, the flows of capital have been designed to predominantly function in the service of billionaire-status companies and tycoons. Neoliberalism ensures that capital flows unimpeded across borders, while doing everything it can to prevent human bodies from similar kinds of crossing. Capitalism — mutated through neoliberal ideology, limping forward under the inertia of the past century, and unable to imagine any alternative — continues to stagger onward while deteriorating due to increasing inequality. For Todd Dufresne, the status of contemporary capitalism is functional only through depriving future generations.
“I can’t see capitalism surviving the way it is. What is the state of capitalism, what’s going to happen? I’m one of these people that think that capitalism basically died in 2007–2008 with the big global recession, housing crisis and so on. And you say, ‘Well there’s something that still exists, obviously there’s something there.’ Well I say, ‘Well that’s kind of like a zombie capitalism made possible by deficit spending, which is spending money of future generations, spending money that you don’t have, indebting the future.” [16]
Rapacious, promoting competition and ruthlessness, it acts as a springboard for increased inequality through privatization and wealth funnelled toward the rich, ever expanding the gap between the haves and the have-nots.
“Thirty or forty people own half of all wealth in the world. These kind of stats are insane. Capitalism has done this to itself. It’s hurt its own cause by not looking after the poor and increasingly not even looking after what was formerly the middle class by making life very difficult for regular people through austerity measures. It is simply incompatible with the principles of life.” [17] — Todd Dufresne
Historical baggage (or guilt through association)
A quick reading of Dickens or Dostoevsky will explicitly paint a picture of early, unregulated forms of capitalist industrial manufacturing. Large-scale suffering, environmental destruction, unhealthy living conditions both within urban and rural spaces, unfettered pollution, and biosphere despoliation. The encroaching involvement of industrial and corporate lobbyists into the domain of politics has hastened the increasingly dismal conditions within which our lives have been influenced. The conditions of rampant air, water, and soil degradation eventually led to the formation of institutions advocating and overseeing issues of environmental health. Industry, and the governments issuing charters for development projects, became closely monitored and held to account through oversight commissions. The granting of charters were originally passed down by the state for precisely defined contracts. As Noam Chomsky explains, “Corporations were originally associations of people who were chartered by a state to perform some particular function, like a group of people want to build a bridge over the Charles River, or something like that.” [18]
“In both law and the culture, the corporation was considered a subordinate entity that was a gift from the people in order to serve the public good. So, you have that history and we shouldn’t be misled by it. It’s not as if those were the halcyon days when all corporations served the public trust, but there’s a lot to learn from that.” [19] — Richard Grossman, Authour and former Co-founder of the Program on Corporations, Law and Democracy
Jacques Pauwels, Canadian historian and political scientist, investigates how discourse has shaped our understanding of the contentious relationship between forms of democracy and forms of capitalist production. He has written about the political mobilization supporting the myth that the only road back to democracy, (such as in the case of both Western and Eastern Europe), was through democracy and free markets. He contests that democratic systems are the ideal contexts within which corporations prefer to operate. “So we’re asked to believe that capitalism likes democracy, and democracy wants capitalism, and as an historian, I must say, it hasn’t been like that at all. Capitalism was not born in the context of democracy. In fact I would argue that more often than not it has not done so well in the context of democracy. And conversely, capitalism has done very very well in the context of authoritarian systems, including the most awful of all authoritarian systems, namely Hitler’s nazism.” [20]
Noam Chomsky has written extensively on the degree to which Hitler’s regime relied upon increasing amounts of investment that came pouring into Germany over the period in which the country was preparing for World War 2 (WW2). As both domestic German companies and foreign industrial interests were retooling operations in order to supply the necessary weapons and munitions that would power the large-scale atrocities inflicted throughout the course of the War, investment from around the world increased. Companies that had formed around the manufacture of sewing machines soon began manufacturing machine guns; automobile manufacturers adapted production lines for manufacturing armoured heavy military troop carriers and tanks; typewriter manufacturers retooled for supplying the punch card systems tallying death rates employed at extermination camps. As Jacques Pauwels notes, “Every single big German company — and I should say — every single big company active in Germany, which means not necessarily German companies but foreign companies which were mostly American companies, like IBM, ITT, Singer (famous for sowing machines) which made machine guns during the war in Germany, Ford Motor Company, General Motors, and so on.” [21] Banking institutions were also involved in financing the war. A fellow by the name of Prescott Bush, who was the father of George Bush and grandfather of George W Bush, owned a small bank in New York. That small bank specialized in administering German Reich bonds in the United States, which would ultimately help to finance the nazi party and its planning and preparation for the War.
“All the evidence shows that capitalism liked nazism and extremely authoritarian systems.” [22] — Jacques Pauwels
Hitler detested socialism. His use of the name “National Socialist German Workers’ Party” was a fraud, as socialism, (at that time experienced in the Soviet Union), began to accrue collective gains for workers throughout the movement. As growing interest for communist and socialist parties throughout Germany, in conjunction with the burgeoning power of trade unions, began to unsettle wealthy industrial interests, Hitler sought to divert this growing domestic power to help fund and develop his own ambitions. By attracting some of this attention through the use of socialist terminology, he was able to secure both loyalty and capital. “Nazism was not socialist at all, in spite of the name. The idea that the whole name of the party was a fraud. Hitler called his party National Socialist Chairman Workers’ Party. Well, it was German all right, but it was not socialist at all. Hitler was not a socialist — he hated socialism with a vengeance. And, he was not a worker. And actually there were very few workers in his party. The reason why Hitler chose to call his party socialist when it was not has to do with the fact that socialism in the context of the end of the First World War, in the early 20’s, was a very powerful word — it had a lot of appeal to ordinary Germans.” [23]
Earlier, the crash of 1929 had applied pressure to German business and industrial magnates, forcing wealthy business owners to pay attention to what the nazi party was offering. The communists were accusing the capitalists as being the source of misery brought on by the Great Depression. Hitler simply countered this argument by saying that it was not the fault of an economic system, (one that would ultimately bring unaccountable wealth to finance his future plans), but that it was the fault of the Jewish community. “Capitalism was in trouble. Capitalism was in deep trouble. There was huge unemployment, therefore unhappy people. And, at the same time, the Soviet Union was doing fairly well. Factory workers were looking towards the Soviet Union, and therefore more and more voting socialists — or God forbid communists — and the only party that could gather popular votes, as the socialists and communists did, was the nazi party. Because nobody voted anymore for the traditional parties which had been the favourites of the industrialists and bankers until that time. And that then really forced the industrialists into a situation where they saw it — either they would support Hitler or the communists may come to power.” [24]
Within the course of half a year Hitler had managed to crush the labour movement in Germany, which was the leading labour and working class movement throughout Europe for the past century and a half. What was once a source of alarm for the wealthy, industrialists, and elites, soon became a force of control and dominance through forms of authoritarian and corporate rule. “So you might say that Hitler manages to do what industrialists could only have dreamt of through themselves, namely, basically role back all the gains made by the labour movement in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.” [25]
And so, the path leading to not only war, but to the means of slave labour for wealthy international companies, is opened. As Jacques Pauwels has documented through his research and writing, large-scale reliance upon the labour camps was made across all sectors of industry operating throughout Germany. “Every one of them used slave labour. I had never come across one company that didn’t during the war. In this context, many German companies — especially the big boys — set up factories near concentration camps, which of course were where most of the slave labour congregated, so to speak. So, for example, BMW, famous car manufacturer (the Bavarian Motor Works), they actually relied a lot on labour supplied by the first concentration camp that was set up by the nazis in 1933 already. And that was in the town of Dachau, which is not even ten kilometres from Munich. Siemens relied on slave labour I believe from Ravensbrück, which is a concentration camp not too far from where Berlin is.” [26]
We all know where these horrifying events led to from here.
Reshaping the new world
So where do we go from here when our system of democratically-derived economic leaders and titans of industry are historically documented in collaboration with totalitarian dictators and brutal authoritarian regimes? How does capitalism inspire hope for the future when manufacturing agreements between consumer electronics companies decide to retool operations in order to produce weapons, munitions, and military hardware for fascist dictators? When the family lineages of contemporary political figures have been active participants funding historical authoritarian war measures, how does capitalism and democracy inspire hope into the future?
As the United States exited the war after obtaining victory alongside its allies, America found itself in an advantageous position. The postwar years were good to the USA. Beyond Pearl Harbour, it hadn’t experienced the devastation that European countries had suffered. Where most European states required large-scale rebuilding efforts, America advanced into the middle period of the 20th Century relatively unfettered. As a means for ensuring this newly-found autonomy and the desire for continued unbound development for Americans and their economy, agencies were designed and implemented with an operating principle to preserve this burgeoning way of life. That, and the economic interests flourishing within it. As Bruce Livesey explains in his documentary, “The United States emerged from the war not only as an economic and military juggernaut, but with Imperial ambitions. In 1947, the Truman Administration created the Central Intelligence Agency.” [27]
For insight into the many CIA operations, John Perkins’ Confessions Of An Economic Hit Man clearly articulates the means by which imperialist American aspirations began operating in foreign countries. The purpose behind many of these operations was to interfere in foreign elections in order to gain profitable outcomes for its own benefit. Offering insight into the coercive strategies employed by the CIA, the American administration, and the US military into pressuring foreign states, John Perkins, former Chief Economist for Chas. T. Main inc. intriguingly articulates these deleterious foreign policy measures in Peter Joseph’s film Zeitgeist Addendum. [28] The strategies employed to subjugate foreign economies, influence elections, and obtain control over industries and resources, all came from CIA operations. As Perkins articulates, IMF loans — the means of paralyzing foreign markets under crushing interest rates on debt accumulation — exposed social programs, education systems, power utilities and infrastructure projects to American and IMF re-structuring policies for privatization.
“We will identify a country that has resources our corporations covet, like oil, and then arrange a huge loan to that country from the World Bank or one of its sister organizations. But the money never actually goes to the country. Instead, it goes to our big corporations to build infrastructure projects in that country: power plants, industrial parks, ports — things that benefit a few rich people in that country, in addition to our corporations, but really don’t help the majority of the people at all. However those people, the whole country, is left holding a huge debt — it’s such a big debt they can’t repay it, and that’s part of the plan, that they can’t repay it. So, at some point, we economic hitmen go back to them and say, ‘Listen, you owe us a lot of money, can’t pay your debt, so sell your oil real cheap to our oil companies; allow us to build a military base in your country; or send troops in support of ours to some place in the world like Iraq; or vote with us on the next UN vote; to have their electric utility company privatized, and their water and sewage system privatized, and sold to US corporations or other multi-national corporations.’ So there is that whole mushrooming thing, and it’s so typical of the way the IMF and the World Bank work. They put a country in debt, it’s such a big debt it can’t pay it, and then you often refinance that debt and pay even more interest. And you demand this quid pro quo, which you call a ‘conditionality’ or ‘good governance’, which means basically that they’ve got to sell off their resources, including many of their social services, their utility companies, their school systems sometimes, their penal systems, their insurance systems, to foreign corporations. So it’s a double, triple, quadruple whammy.” [29] — John Perkins
Stephen Kinzer, Professor of International Relations at Brown University, writes about the overriding mood of terror felt in the United States regarding the possibility of international communist governments obtaining power through democratic means. As a result, many democratic elections held internationally were influenced through a number of major CIA operations, beginning in Italy in 1948. It was widely agreed, in American political and economic circles, that the efforts conducted in Italy to influence the electoral process prevented a communist victory. Operations of this nature would increase throughout the century.
“From 1945 until the early 2000’s, the United States intervened into approximately 80 significant elections around the world. It also invaded or organized coups in dozens of countries. About a quarter of nations within the capitalist world changed government as a result of US interventions between the mid 1950’s and 70’s.” [30] — Bruce Livesey
Through propaganda, media, the instilling of fear and strategic alarm, the two superpowers emerging from WW2 began to foment distrust and suspicion onto each opposing political regime. The one, a nation of massive territory which had suffered devastating losses of both troops in combat and citizens through massive bombing campaigns, but whose effort greatly influenced the outcome of the War; the other, a nation suffering sizeable troop casualties, virtually no domestic population deaths, which bypassed the crushing economic expenditures of national rebuilding efforts. These two nations would soon collide, not in physical combat, but through the newly emerging Cold War confrontation. This confrontation would provoke the largest buildup of armaments the world has ever witnessed.
As Stephen Kinzer comments, “The US saw the world — and I’m speaking not just about the government of the US but American people — as being caught up in a great battle between two tremendous forces: one was the world of communism led by the forces from Moscow, the other was (as we called it) the free world led from Washington.” [31]
The Cold War would produce its own highly pernicious outcomes by way of large-scale weapons of mass destruction and nuclear arsenal manufacture. The outcomes of the Cold War continue to haunt us and all life on the planet. This arms race would persist to such irrational extents that the Soviet Union would eventually bankrupt itself in pursuit of out-arming its foe.
Within the business realm, other strategies were being designed and implemented with great effect. Stephen Kinzer researches the processes in which Western corporations were striving to obtain complete control over resources, practices, and market dominance for economic gain. Unrestrained within the realms of foreign countries, US corporations were recording massive profits. However, when these strategically foreign-located American corporations began to experience conflict or friction due to environmental oversight or regulation, they simply consulted Washington. These companies understood that policies and strategies were in place, designed and tested, to initiate regime change. Kinzer found that the majority of cases were conducted in foreign states where democratic policies were inhibiting unobstructed laissez-faire business practices. “So, the US has always preferred authoritarian governments to ones that are democratic and open. In fact, when you look at the governments we’ve overthrown, in many cases, they’re more democratic than the governments we support. And we often replace them with governments that are harsher and more authoritarian. And the reason is very simple: we carry out these operations so that the leaders of these countries will follow American dictates, and that’s the whole point of the exercise.” [32]
Mohammad Mosaddegh, democratically elected in Iran, was focussed on nationalizing the country’s oil resources and its production. The CIA in collaboration with the British Secret Service, in 1953, initiated operations to remove Mosaddegh in order to impose the Shah — a leader friendly to foreign Western interests — who would be more compliant to US and UK aspirations.
In 1951, democratically-elected Jacabo Arbenz was seeking to nationalize the United Fruit Company, the nation’s most powerful institution — in many cases more powerful than the Guatemalan government — as it operated the electricity grid and all accessible shipping ports. Upon land reform measures which were approved through the Guatemalan courts, the CIA in 1954 organized a major operation, designed specifically to overthrow Arbenz. As Stephen Kinzer relates, “We then imposed a military ruler that led to a civil war in Guatemala that lasted 30 years, and cost the lives of about 200,000 people, most of them poor, unarmed Mayan peasants, more people who were killed in political violence in all the rest of Latin America combined during the 60’s and 70’s and 80’s. And all the roots of that can be traced back to the American refusal to allow a democratic government, in the Cold War context of that time, to take root in the 1950’s.” [33]
The French have evacuated Vietnam, relinquishing their occupation of South East Asia. Pro-US Ngô Dình Diêm is installed as leader of South Vietnam. In 1964, one of two American naval vessels lying close to Vietnamese coastlines claimed to have been fired upon by Vietnamese forces. The steady buildup of American troops into South Vietnam escalated after this supposed deliberate attack upon the USS Maddox and Turner Joy on routine patrol duty through international waters in the Gulf of Tonkin. As Senator Wayne Morse, Dem. Oregon, expressed in Emile de Antonio’s In the Year of the Pig: “They put out that propaganda but they got caught. Because we were able to disclose within two days that if they would check on the log of the Maddox for example, they would find that she was only eleven to thirteen miles from the bombing of those islands. And, of course, that’s coverage. And the North Vietnamese knew it was coverage. […] Now the sad fact is that history will record that the United States was an aggressor in Tonkin Bay. We were violating the rights of North Vietnam — we had no right to proceed on the second day to ourselves bomb North Vietnam, the areas where the torpedo boats were kept — but we had to do it! That wasn’t self defence. Bombing North Vietnam was not within the right of the president to act in self defence of the Republic.” [34]
This all goes to reveal how expertly spun lies of enemy aggression can lead to military invasion, the crushing of an economy, the massacre of a population, the overt destruction of a country, and the undermining of democratic and ethical principles in favour of political dogma and militaristic propaganda. Idiotic concepts of a communist “Domino Effect” ultimately led to the invasion of Vietnam, sparking a 20-year war from November 1955 to the fall of Saigon in 1975. The results of this sickening illegal invasion estimates death tolls in the millions. More bombs were dropped on Vietnam than throughout all of WW2. [35]
Ecuador is an example of a country that had been ruled for many years by brutal pro-US dictators. When Jaime Roldós Aguilera was overwhelmingly voted into office through democratically-held elections, he publicly stated his goal to ensure that oil profits remained in the hands of the Ecuadorian people. He remained loyal to his promise, even after several attempts to corrupt him by numerous economic hitmen. John Perkins had documented the entire debacle, culminating in Aguilera’s eventual death in 1981. “He wouldn’t listen. He was assassinated.” [36] Of note, after the plane carrying Roldós crashed, the entire area was cordoned off, permitting only US military personnel from a nearby base onto the crash site.
In 1981, Panama also experienced CIA sponsored jackal activity towards its president Omar Torrijos. Torrijos was highly driven to help the people of Panama, and fought to gain control of the Panama Canal back into the hands of Panamanians. “In May, Jaime Roldós was assassinated, and Omar was very aware of this. Torrijos got his family together and he said, ‘I’m probably next. But it’s OK because I’ve done what I came here to do. I’ve renegotiated the canal. The canal will now be in our hands.’ He just finished renegotiating the treaty with Jimmy Carter. In June of that same year, just a couple of months later, he also went down in a plane crash, which there’s no question was executed by CIA sponsored jackals.” [37]
In 2002, a coup was staged in Venezuela as a means of preventing Hugo Chavez from nationalizing oil producing operations within the country. This also, stated Chavez, was a means to help Venezuelan people to raise their standards of living instead of seeing profits syphoned out of the country to foreign interests. John Perkins believes the coup here as well was designed and implemented by the CIA. “Well, we didn’t like that in the United States. So, in 2002 a coup was staged — which no question in my mind, and most other people’s mind, that the CIA was behind that coup.” [38]
In the case of Iraq in 2003, the CIA was unable to reach Saddam Hussein due to his exceptional security and intel. The attempt was made on Hussein because he refused to accept a deal, presented by the United States, echoing many terms from a similar deal presented to (and accepted by) the House of Saud in Saudi Arabia. Saddam Hussein had, at one time, been contracted by the CIA to assassinate a former president of Iraq. The attempt failed, but it provided Saddam insight into CIA operations, and therefore aided him in avoiding similar attempts on his own life. “The jackals couldn’t take him out. So, we sent the military in once again, and this time we did the complete job and took him out, and in the process created for ourselves some very very lucrative construction deals. Had to reconstruct a country that we’d essentially destroyed, which is a pretty good deal if you own a construction company, big ones. So, Iraq shows the three stages: the economic hitmen failed there; the jackals failed there; and as a final measure, the military goes in. And in that way we’ve really created an empire, but we’ve done it very very subtly. It’s clandestine.” [39]
“The majority of the people in the United States have no idea that we are living off the benefits of a clandestine empire; that today there’s more slavery in the world than ever before. And then you have to ask yourself, well, if it’s an empire then who’s the emperor? Obviously, our presidents of the United States are not emperors. An emperor is someone who is not elected, doesn’t serve a limited term, and doesn’t report to anyone, essentially. So, you can’t classify a president that way. But we do have what I consider to be the equivalent to the emperor, and it’s what I call the corporatocracy.” [40] — John Perkins
Immersing care ethics into the market
Living with dignity, in a safe environment, and with optimum health aught to be the fundamental standard for all citizens. The value of living a life of freedom, absent of violence, protected from the environmental elements within a space of one’s own exponentially increases health outcomes. The notion that housing has become an investment rather than a fundamental human right will have dramatic effects on life expectations for generations. It is required that housing be perceived as a necessary ingredient towards the fulfillment of a life well-lived. The recent shift towards leveraging housing as a means to acquire wealth has greatly reduced access into home ownership for very large segments of populations worldwide. For those with capital, the acquisition of territory has increased opportunities for further wealth acquisition while depriving young, economically stressed, and homeless people the possibility of living with equal dignity and standard of life.
In an episode of ABC’s Philosopher’s Zone, housing is critically discussed through the lens of feminist care ethics. Kathy Mee, Associate Professor of Cultural Geography at University of Newcastle NSW, and Emma Power, Associate Professor of Geography and Urban Studies at Western Sydney University, articulate their vision around what — in democratic and free societies — aught to be standards for human health. They discuss the role that housing plays today, interpreted ever more frequently as the locus of care. “Many people also value their home as an investment, though, as a place that makes money. And in fact, in Australia we’ve seen that housing prices have actually risen much faster than incomes in the last few decades. And for many people in Australia, their home is actually the largest asset that they’ve got, and we really see that playing out at a national level. Property prices rise; people tend to think that they’ve got more money, and they’re more happy to go out and spend their money at the shops and on other goods and services, which in turn stimulates the economy. But of course these different ways of valuing housing also often overlaps, so many people think about their house as being both a home and an investment. And often that investment is seen as a legacy that can actually be passed on to their kids. So, it’s a way of securing and caring for family across a series of generations.” [41]
In the realms of both home ownership and home rental, escalating housing prices are adversely affecting wider and wider swaths of the population. Increasing housing prices affect the ability for many to meet their everyday basic needs, with ever increasing proportions of one’s pay check allocated for housing. This forces many to forego quality living resources, healthful food, medication, and medical care. When asked if this is a “productive or unproductive manifestation of care”, Kathy Mee responds: “What really concerns us is that although the more practical, or everyday connections between housing and care are really critical to everyone in society, no matter what their wealth is, what we’re seeing in Australia and in other parts of the world is that it’s actually the economic values of housing that are the focus of government policy. And we see that sole focus as being incredibly problematic. What it’s doing is seeing governments acting to secure housing prices, which really only benefits people who are homeowners. On the other hand, what it’s doing, is shutting a whole lot of other people out of home ownership. It also is ignoring the much more practical and everyday needs of people who aren’t homeowners, and particularly lower income households who are increasingly living in poverty, and they’re struggling to meet their everyday needs because of the escalating cost of housing. So if we look at Australia right now, over 40 percent of Australian households, including renters and home buyers, are actually believed to be in housing stress. And in some parts of the country, it goes up as much as 70 percent, particularly around places in west and south-western Sydney, where you’ve got households who are struggling with housing affordability and living costs. And that’s only likely to increase as interest rates go up.” [42]
Care ethics encourage us to reflect on how care networks are essential for maintaining and reproducing society. Care ethics encourage reflection upon our relations of care, and that we need to take these care networks seriously. Emma Power points out that with increasingly neoliberal policies trending towards immersing healthcare into market-driven solutions, the individual is forced to solve their own health issues through purchasing power. This market-based approach dictates that individuals are solely responsible for their own outcomes; that the care capable of aiding the individual is available only through market offerings. How does housing fit inside this notion of care relations in society? “In big picture terms, our argument is that we’re seeing this shift in Australia and around the world from liberal philosophies of care, which are increasingly being inflicted into these neoliberal philosophies of care. What that means is that care has long been seen as being an individual responsibility, but there’s this growing sense that the way you should meet your care needs is by going out into the market and buying goods that suit you, that will meet your care needs and those of your family’s. And we can trace this through this political evolution of welfare, and housing’s a really important part of that in Australia. So if we go back to the welfare state in the 1970’s, for instance, we see that social housing government provisioned to the most disadvantaged households, was a really important way that we ensured the equity, the equality of all households, regardless of income. But as we move forward into the 90’s we really start to see the erosion of that — the idea that we should meet our care needs through the market, including our housing needs, starts to become more and more important in the political conversation.” [43]
These market based solutions, she argues, only flows money in one direction: towards property owners already established within the market, thereby funding private landlords.
“We see government starting to reduce funding of social housing; we see growing rates of disrepair in the social housing system; and we also start to see all of these new ways of providing social housing. So instead of directly providing social housing, we see things like Commonwealth Rent Assistance that basically are subsidies to private landlords. Sure they help low-income households to access the market, but they’re also paying the mortgages of private landlords, so it’s really about propping up the private market.” [44] — Emma Power
Emma Power also digs into the manner in which care ethics are exercised within liberal democracies. Care, she notes, is a relational practice — we have a much more difficult experience attempting to survive on our own. Our societies are collectively organized and structured to a greater or lesser extent. Care ethics provoke us to reflect on the ways in which we live, the manner in which we care, how care is exercised, and opportunities for how we may increase the quality of care that is so vital — essentially how it is that we might care better. For Power, she interprets the housing system as a kind of arbiter which establishes how it’s possible for societies to live, and to live well. “If we’re all living in private dwellings then we’re going to be more likely to practice care within our individual households. If we lived in more communal dwellings, we might be able to share care across households. So that’s just one example. And it starts to raise questions for us about what a caring housing system might look like; or how might a housing system be organized if we wanted to make sure that everybody in society, regardless of their income, was able to meet their essential care needs; was able to afford food; was able to be comfortably warm in winter; be able to be comfortably cool in summer; was able to take care of family members that they needed to. A housing system, actually, makes this more or less possible for different groups of people, and so care ethics prompts us to raise these questions and to think about the alternatives.” [45]
Feminist thinker Joan Tronto has served as a source of inspiration for the work that Kathy Mee and Emma Power have been focused on. Tronto was strongly convinced that care, in all of its forms as a relational practice, operated as a universal need for survival. Care is the theory of how needs are met. This care, particular to Western liberal philosophies, in a mainstream articulation is perceived as an individual responsibility. It is perceived as being accessed through private practice — interpreted less and less as a public concern. For those who require care, say welfare recipients, are often categorized by politicians as people who have failed to meet their needs in losing their autonomy. “So what that means is that care is about how people interact with each other, and that we all need care. Now often when we’re talking about care, it’s just the care needs of the vulnerable that people focus on, but actually, everyone needs care. It’s just that more affluent people are able to pay for that themselves. So, care researchers like Joan Tronto have talked about the ways that we need to think about how care is essential to life. And working with her colleague Berenice Fisher, Joan Tronto came out with a definition […] that care is an activity that includes everything that we do to maintain, continue, and repair our world so that we can live in it as well as possible. That world includes our bodies, ourselves, and our environment — all of which we seek to interweave in a complex life-sustaining web. And for us, housing is critical to how we care for that world.” [46]
“Neoliberal philosophies hold onto the idea that care is an individual responsibility, but they see it as a need that we should properly mete through the market. And so care is not seen as this interpersonal practice where we take care of one another in practical ways, but instead it’s seen as being a good that we can actually buy and sell as we need it. And so in this theory of care we see this really huge emphasis placed on having a job, because it’s through having a job that you can earn the money to buy the care that you require. And again, those who are seen to need help from others, whether it’s welfare or some other form of help, are seen as having failed in their essential responsibility to care for themselves.” [47] — Emma Power
A trend that has lately been gaining momentum is the desire to immerse services back into the market. The reasoning made for these decisions is often the attempt to increase the efficiency of a service and / or an effort to reduce cost. Privatization does not ensure either of these results, as the profit motivation now attached to said services will affect the degree to which these services are executed. Increased cost may very well result from privatization. The pursuit of profit is an old story, but there was a time when many things were regarded as too sacred, or too essential for the public good, to be considered business opportunities. They were protected by tradition, and public regulation. As articulated by Noam Chomsky, privatization may come with darker strings attached. “Privatization does not mean that you take a public institution and give it to some nice person. It means you take a public institution and give it to an unaccountable tyranny.” [48]
Mark Kingwell, Canadian professor of philosophy and associate chair at the University of Toronto’s Department of Philosophy, argues for why a public trust are essential for the safety, health, and well-being of contemporary societies. The concept of a public trust has a long history in Western democracies, evolved through the participation of trade unions, civic volunteer organizations, and the involvement of community groups composed of everyday citizens. “Firefighters started as private companies. And if you didn’t have the medallion of a given firefighter brigade on your house and it was on fire, those firefighters would just ride on by because you didn’t have a deal. Well, we gradually evolved a public trust for the provision of safety on that very specific level. This is important. We should not go back from that, and start saying, you know, why don’t we put that back in the market and see what that does. Maybe it’ll make it more efficient.” [49]
Expectations
Democracy — and certainly capitalism — throughout the period of modernity has caused great amounts of suffering for the many in order to benefit the few. As Noam Chomsky has demonstrated, the meaning of terrorism differs greatly between the perspectives of the aggressor than from that of the recipient; so too with democracy and capitalism. The haves and the have-nots inhabit two very different worlds. Democracy and capitalism have often been accused of hiding their implicit agendas, while explicitly enacting measures designed to limit democracy for those living beyond the borders of free states. The adoption of neoliberal policies designed to limit access to capital, housing, and basic health standards for those living within democratic states have become more widespread. Capitalism, under the scathing critique of Todd Dufresne, has damaged its own reputation, reducing its ability to function rationally. Plans designed for increased wealth stratification ever expands the gulf between the super rich and the poor. Through clandestine political maneuvering, leaders throughout the modernist experiment have consistently designed policies favouring the rich and powerful, controlling the movement of capital. After close to a century of engineered economic policies, state-led invasion, privatization, and the imposition of economy-crippling World Bank loans, stress cracks are beginning to show — hints towards what the shaping of the new world will bring.
See full work here.
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Jayson designs, draws, writes, and documents his world at jaysonzaleski.com. He can be reached at jaysonzaleski@me.com.
References
1. Ayed, Nahlah (Host). (2022, June 7). On Decline: Revisiting Andrew Potter’s Prognosis [Audio podcast episode]. In Ideas. CBC Radio. https://www.cbc.ca/listen/live-radio/1-23-ideas/clip/15917533-on-decline-revisiting-andrew-potters-prognosis
2. Ibid.
3. Ibid.
4. Orlowski-Yang, Jeff. The Social Dilemma. (Exposure Labs, 2020), DVD.
5. Ayed, Nahlah & Livesey, Bruce (Host). (2020, November 2). Money Rules: Is Capitalism Destroying Democracy? [Audio podcast episode]. In Ideas. CBC Radio. https://www.cbc.ca/listen/live-radio/1-23-ideas/clip/15806543-money-rules-is-capitalism-destroying-democracy
6. Ibid.
7. Ibid.
8. Ibid.
9. Ibid.
10. Ayed, Nahlah (Host). (2020, October 9). The Democracy of Suffering: Todd Dufresne [Audio podcast episode]. In Ideas. CBC Radio.
11. Ayed, Nahlah & Livesey, Bruce (Host). (2020, November 2). Money Rules: Is Capitalism Destroying Democracy? [Audio podcast episode]. In Ideas. CBC Radio. https://www.cbc.ca/listen/live-radio/1-23-ideas/clip/15806543-money-rules-is-capitalism-destroying-democracy
12. Ayed, Nahlah (Host). (2020, October 9). The Democracy of Suffering: Todd Dufresne [Audio podcast episode]. In Ideas. CBC Radio.
13. Chace, Zoe and Smith, Robert (Hosts). (2014, July 16). Episode 553: The Dollar At The Center Of The World [Audio podcast episode]. In Planet Money. NPR. https://www.npr.org/sections/money/2014/07/16/331743569/episode-552-the-dollar-at-the-center-of-the-world
14. Ayed, Nahlah (Host). (2020, October 9). The Democracy of Suffering: Todd Dufresne [Audio podcast episode]. In Ideas. CBC Radio.
15. Achbar, Mark & Abbott, Jennifer. The Corporation, (Big Picture Media Corporation, 2004), DVD.
16. Ayed, Nahlah (Host). (2020, October 9). The Democracy of Suffering: Todd Dufresne [Audio podcast episode]. In Ideas. CBC Radio.
17. Ibid.
18. Achbar, Mark & Abbott, Jennifer. The Corporation, (Big Picture Media Corporation, 2004), DVD.
19. Ibid.
20. Ayed, Nahlah (Host). (2020, November 2). Money Rules: Is Capitalism Destroying Democracy? [Audio podcast episode]. In Ideas. CBC Radio. https://www.cbc.ca/listen/live-radio/1-23-ideas/clip/15806543-money-rules-is-capitalism-destroying-democracy
21. Ibid.
22. Ibid.
23. Ibid.
24. Ibid.
25. Ibid.
26. Ibid.
27. Ibid.
28. Joseph, Peter. 2008. Zeitgeist: Addendum. Gentle Machine Productions.
29. Ibid.
30. Ayed, Nahlah (Host). (2020, November 2). Money Rules: Is Capitalism Destroying Democracy? [Audio podcast episode]. In Ideas. CBC Radio. https://www.cbc.ca/listen/live-radio/1-23-ideas/clip/15806543-money-rules-is-capitalism-destroying-democracy
31. Ibid.
32. Ibid.
33. Ibid.
34. de Antonio, Emile. 1968. In the Year of the Pig. Turin Film Productions.
35. Ibid.
36. Joseph, Peter. 2008. Zeitgeist: Addendum. Gentle Machine Productions.
37. Ibid.
38. Ibid.
39. Ibid.
40. Ibid.
41. David Rutledge (Host). 2022, September 4). Housing pt 1 — care ethics [Audio podcast episode]. In Philosopher’s Zone. ABC RN. https://www.abc.net.au/radionational/programs/philosopherszone/housing-pt-1-care-ethics/14035870
42. Ibid.
43. Ibid.
44. Ibid.
45. Ibid.
46. Ibid.
47. Ibid.
48. Achbar, Mark & Abbott, Jennifer. The Corporation, (Big Picture Media Corporation, 2004), DVD.
49. Ibid.
