Class Struggle #16

43 Pages·1984·3.543 MB·English

SPARK
EDITED BY
issue no.16
February 1984
contents :
Jesse Jackson: A Maverick, But in the
Democrats' Corral
The American Recovery .• . On the Back of
the Rest of the World
In Search of a Lebanese State
Starvation in Africa: Drought is not the
Problem
Brazil: After 50 Years of Economic
Deve1o_pment •• , Still Underdeveloped
CLASS
STRUGGLE
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TABLE OF CONT EN TS
JESSE JACKSON: A MAVERICK, PAGE 1
BUT JN THE DEMOCRATS' CORRAL
THE AMERICAN RECOVERY ••• ON THE BACK PAGE 7
OF THE REST OF THE WORLD
JN SEARCH OF A LEBANESE STATE PAGE 17
STARVATION IN AFRICA: DROUGHT IS PAGE 23
NOT THE PROBLEM
BRAZIL: AFTER 50 YEARS OF ECONOMIC PAGE 31
DEVELOPMENT ••• STILL UNDERDEVELOPED
JESSE JACKSON: A MAVERICK,
BUT IN THE DEMOCRATS' CORRAL
Jesse Jackson's campaign for the Democratic Presidential nomination
picked up steam with his trip to Syria and his performance in the televised
debate among Democratic candidates in New Hampshire. He soon ranked (a dis
tant) second behind Mondale in the polls, However small his chances are of
winning the nomination, his campaign has apparently found a response among
certain parts of the population, including not only many black people, but
also poor people in general, women, the unemployed, and those who fear war.
To an extent, he has aimed his campaign at those who, angry and disgusted
with the politicians, have tended not to vote in the past.
Jackson has made as his issues in the campaign: the threat of war, the
problem of jobs and the economy, the plight of the disadvantaged of all sorts.
Many no doubt feel that Jackson genuinely represents their interests.
Others believe that, even if his proposals are vague or are not clearly dif
ferentiated from those of other candidates, Jackson himself is different:
more supportive and responsive to the poor and dispossessed. Many seem to
think that if someone's finger is going to be on the nuclear trigger, it
would be better to be Jackson's rather than someone else's. Particularly in
the wake gf his trip to Syria, which gave him the image of being a politician
who can make a difference in world affairs.
Jackson frequently speaks to the widespread fear of nuclear war, as well
as to people's concern about the risk of a U.S. war in the Middle East or
Central America. He argues that it is possible to negotiate settlements of
these conflicts, if only the leaders of the nations involved will sit down
and talk to each other. The key variable, according to Jackson, is the atti
tude of national leaders toward negotiations,
In the televised New Hampshire debate, he put forth his visit with Syrian
President Assad as a model for decreasing world tensions
" ••• We make progress in foreign policy through Presidential
initiative, not through isolated rhetoric or threats. It was
Eisenhower going to Korea. The detail people followed. Kennedy
going to Geneva. Nixon going to China. Carter convening Camp
David. When it's all said and done, a group of academics can
agree that we must freeze weapons that will destroy all of us.
The leadership must take the risk for peace and make a differ
ence. If you meet with Andropov, if you meet, if you talk, you
act; if you act, you change things. So you must unthaw that rela
tionship before you can then agree to freeze, verifiably, the
weapons."
He underscored this position in another speech to an audience of New
Hampshire environmentalists: "We've got to meet with Andropov. Only two men
can prevent nuclear war. The president could meet with Andropov uncondition
ally, and agree with him conditionally,"
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In discussing international conflicts in this manner, 'Jackson manages
to forget the.respons~bility of imperialism for war. If the U.S. is engaged
in conflicts in the Middle F:a.st and Central America, it is because the people
there have been the system;>.t:i.c victims of imperialism. Jackson manages to
forget the role of the U.S. government in representing U.S. corporate inter
ests internationally. There is a danger of world war today -- and that
danger exists precisely because U.S. imperialism weighs on the whole rest of
the world, Today, it attempts to resolve the economic crisis for itself by
imposing starvation on many of the peoples in the underdeveloped countries.
Tomorrow if the financial system collapses, as it could, that weight will
even intensify, and on the whole world,
U.S. imperialism has investments and interests all over the world. It
is not about to negotiate away its interests in the Middle East or Latin
America. And it is not about to negotiate away its overwhelming military
strength, particularly its nuclear weapons, with which it holds the whole
world hostage,
When Jackson proposes negotiating, he obscures this basic fact. Just
as did all the politicians he himself cites as examples. When Eisenhower
went to Korea three decades ago, U.S. imperialism was establishing its domina
tion of South Korea and a permanent military presence in the Far Ea.st,
Today there are still tens of thousands of U.S. troops in South Korea. In
that same period, the U.S. began to engage itself in Viet Nam. Eisenhower,
Kenned.y,and Nison were among those who set and carried out the U.S. policy
there. Kennedy's trip to Geneva gave himself the cover while he was presid
ing over an accelerated nuclear weapons program, and while he was directing
the U.S. entry into Viet Nam, If Camp David meant a new military and politi
cal. relationship among the U.S., Israel, and F.gypt, it resolved nothing about
the oppression of the Palestinian people. Just the opposite -- it brought
together those who wished to impose a control on the Palestinians. And it
gave. Israel a certain leeway for its attacks into Lebanon.
Of course, the politicians negotiate -- they always have, as a cover
·for the wars they are preparing or those they are concluding. In this,
Jackson would be no different than any of the politicians he cites. And he
is no different than the other politicians today, He may have a different
rhetoric than they do, but he proposes the same basic policy, a policy which,
in the pa.st., has never prevented war, and which cannot prevent it in the future.
Q!!
~ECONOMY
Jackson criticizes the recent cutbacks in various kinds of social wel
-fa:re spend.ing which the Reagan administration has led. He calls for more
spending on these :programs and on job tra.ining programs. He a.lso calls for
Bll-~--to import· competition. For example, he has argued:
"Workers. black and white, need some kind of international
__ a;fftnnative action to protect them from unfair competition with
unorganized or slave labor abroad.and unfair competition with
robots at home •••• "
.. And he .calls for other kinds o-f government intervention to encourage corpora
tions to 1Jr0Vide more jobs, saying, for example:
", .• Business has the technol.agica.l genills. but it has never
volunteered to share tha.t ge.nius with the :ma.xket. So now it has
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our tax dollars, our consumer dollars and our jobs. There needs
to be a kind of favored corporate status, as in favored-nation
status, for those who receive the tax investments and benefits
of the American dollar and reinvest, reindustrialize and re
educate workers in this economy •••• "
Certainly it's reprehensible for the ReagaJ1 adnlinistration to have pro
posed the cuts of the last few years. But Reagan has gotten them through a
House of Representatives controlled by the Democrats. And, in fact, the cuts
began under the Carter administration. The cuts in unemployment pay and
eligibility were made mostly in the last year Carter was in office. Jackson,
like all the other Democrats, carefully avoids mentioning these facts. The
cuts in the social programs reflect the class nature of this society; they
reflect the fact that the politicians of the bourgeoisie, both Democrats and
Republicans, have protected the capitalists throughout the crisis.
None of this is to say that the welfare programs, if they were put back,
offer a solution for the working class. Welfare would no more be a solution
today to the problems of poverty than it has ever been. The problem for the
working class is to have decent paying jobs.
To provide jobs, Jackson proposes a "favored corporate status." But if
corporations do not provide more jobs today, it is not because they don't
have money to invest. It is because they provide jobs only when the situation
of the economy allows them to sell enough more so that they need more workers
to put out increased production. Today, if they can make more profit by cut
ting back on jobs, they will. If they don't need more workers, the best we
can expect is that they will pretend to hire more in order to get "favored
corporate status." It's what they've always done with such programs when
they didn't need new workers. So Jackson's proposal is finally a way to
give tax breaks to the corporations under the guise that their investment
will provide jobs.
Jackson accepts the principle that the capitalists should be assured
their profits before the workers can have jobs. If this weren't so, he would
propose the obvious: that the corporations be forced to stop layoffs and
plant closings, to stop demanding concessions from the workers, and to give
jobs to the unemployed -- at the expense of the wealthy stockholders. But
he doesn't • All he has to offe r is a new version of Reagan's "trickle dmm"
approach, which does nothing but subsidize the corporations' profits.
As far as "international affirmative action" is concerned, it ignores a
basic fact of life today: in a period of economic crisis, less and less are
there jobs for the working people -- around the whole world. Asking the
workers to fight with each other for a shrinking number of possibilities is
a way to cover for the responsibility the capitalists have in bringing the
world to a state of economic collapse. It is a trick that politicians who
defend the capitalists use to disarm the workers, preventing them from seeing
the problem.
-ON T-H-E PLIGJIT -O-F -TH-E -DIS-PO-SS-ES-SE-D
Jackson has presented his campaign as a way to empower all the dispos
sessed of society, the poor, the victims of discrimination. He emphasizes
a range of consequences of social inequality, such as the denial of legal
abortions to poor women, while the well-to-do have the option available. He
says that there is a link between their victimization and their lack of
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political power. But Jackson argues that there is a way out for the dis
possessed: that is, to vote.
In fact, there have been times when the dispossessed wielded some of
their :potential :power to change the condition of their lives. During the de
pression of the 1930s, the working class began to fight back against the
misery the capitalists had enforced on them. The workers demonstrated in
the streets and took over the factories. The workers won union recognition
and some economic gains directly from many of their bosses and a range of
social legislation from the government. If the workers won gains in that
period, it was not because they voted for the Democrat, Roosevelt, but be
cause they broke the rules of bourgeois society and fought in their own
interests.
Likewise, black people in this country won a series of gains in the
1950s and 1960s because they refused to continue to live under the rules of
a racist society. Neither Kennedy nor any other Democratic or Republican
:politician handed rights to anybody. They were won in struggles ranging from
the Montgomery bus boycott to the rebellions in hundreds of cities. Thousands
of people risked their lives, and many died, in the struggle.
In both of these cases, the dispossessed imposed on the rulers of this
society the changes that were made. Nothing comparable has come through the
ballot box.
Jackson, himself, refers to the militancy of the black movement. When
he calls for stronger enforcement of the Voting Rights Act, he tries to link
himself to the victories of that movement:
" ••• it's not just enough for us to offer aid and programs to
poor people. We must empower :poor people to aid themselves. Now
to that extent, so long as the Voting Rights Act of '65 is not
enforced across the South, it means you'll not get equity amongst
blacks, Hispanics, women and poor people in the Congress, in the
Legislature, in the judiciary where these decisions are made -- in
fact, unless that Voting Rights Act is enforced, you'll never get
the E.R.A. passed, and that's critical because 70 :per cent of all
:poor children live in a house headed by a woman. And unless that
passes, you'll not end right-to-work laws so people get paid for
the work that they do. See, I want some focus here on lifting the
boat at the bottom. The blacks, the Hispanics, the women, the
Asians, the locked-out must be empowered and not just embellished."
But finally what he proposes is: to vote. In this, he is no different
than all the other politicians, who propose nothing to ordinary people other
than to put their hopes in the ballot.
Jackson argues that, even if a black :president is not about to be
elected, there could be important changes in local government ad.ministration
if black people and poor people register and vote in sufficient numbers. He
said, "If you can get your share of legislators, mayors, sheriffs, school
board members, tax assessors and dogcatchers, you can live with whoever is
in the White House,"
Jackson is certainly right that key government positions have been dom
inated by rich white men. Candidates for national office are always rich or
tied to the rich. It takes large sums of money to run, and the politicians
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are overwhelmingly closely tied to big business. But,if the poor would vote
for either the Democratic or Republican candidates in bigger numbers, it
would not mean that these candidates themselves would be less tied to the
capitalists; nor if the poor vote for black candidates, that the black candi
dates were less tied to the capitalists.
For the poor people to have their "share of legislators, mayors, sher
iffs," etc., they would at least have to have their own political party. But
this is not what Jackson is proposing.
JACKSON -AN-D- -TH-E- DEMOCRATIC PARTY
~----- -~
Of course, Jackson says that it is not the Democratic Party as it is
today that the dispossessed should trust, but the Democratic Party as it
could become under the pressure of their votes. But there is nothing that
lets us think that the Democratic Party will change.
Not its past. It is a very old party, and the only times it has given
reforms to working people were during those periods such as the 1930s or
1960s when people imposed those reforms through struggle.
And certainly not its present. If the Democrats in Congress criticize
Reagan for being too militaristic, they still vote for practically the same
budgets he proposes. They provided the votes needed to cut the social
programs.
In fact, or course, the Democratic Party has always defended corporate
interests both domestically and internationally against the workers and poor.
Jackson can see this. And he admits that it is still true today when he says
that the party has to be changed if it is to represent poor people. He
acknowledges that internally it is an undemocratic, closed structure when he
calls for changes in the convention delegate selection.
Jackson knows all this. So, why bother to make a fight inside the party
at all? He could make his campaign as an independent candidate. Running as
an independent candidate could provide the poor with a choice to express
themselves politically. They could make a demonstration in November, if
there were a truly independent candidate to vote for; they could demonstrate
that they represent a force in the country.
Certainly no election campaign by itself can be the cause of a social
movement, but if the poor were to demonstrate their numbers today, in the
current situation, when they seem paralyzed by their isolation, this demon
stration could help them to mobilize themselves.
Obviously this is what Jackson doesn't want. If he doesn't run as an
independent, it's not because it could cost him the presidency. He has no
chance to win even the Democratic Party If he doesn't run as an
nomin~tion.
independent, it must be because he doesn't want to risk the chance that his
candidacy could spark a mobilization. It's the reason he doesn't break with
the Democratic Party today, when it might make a difference; the reason, in
fact, he takes pains to demonstrate he is part of this party.
Finally, what Jackson's candidacy represents is a way to pull sections
of the poor population back into the Democratic Party. He trades on the
illusions he has been able to create among the poor to reinforce a party
which represents only the wealthy.
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Tomorrow he could go further. When a movement of some kind develops
among the dispossessed of this society, he could use his reputation as a
civil rights leader and representative of the poor to try to place himself
at the head of it and channel it out of the streets and back into the
Democratic Party, away from any activity which could make a challenge to
the system.
Someone like Jackson could even, in the event that the imperialists
see a necessity to go to war, be the politician to argue to the population
that war is in their interests and unavoidable. In the Goodman case, Jackson
made a dramatic negotiation with the Syrian state. While Jackson presented
his negotiation as the key to peace, he also played up the theme of the
plight of the downed American flier, the kind of patriotic stuff which can
be a part of a pre para tio n for war. Tomorrow, Jackson, the peace-·seeker, nn
could argue effectively that he had tried to travel the road of negotiation,
had been frustated by the enemy, and could see no recourse but war.
Jackson is exactly the kind of politician who can play a big role to
sidetrack and contain a social movement. His present campaign is being used
to promote a politician who can stand in the way of people when they are
ready to fight. It's why Jackson represents a danger, a trap for those who
support him in the hope to do something against poverty, discrimination,
and war.
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THE AMERICAN RECOVERY
•
• •
ON THE BACK
OF THE REST OF THE WORLD
Starting at the end of 1979, the world economic crisis expressed itself
in a real reduction in production as well as a drop in world trade. This is
the second such reduction since the beginning of the crisis. The first one
lasted nearly 2 years, in 1974-75. Has the current recession reached its end?
The most optimistic predictions respond affirmatively, given the signs of
recovery which are seen in the United States since about the beginning of the
year. Of course, the most optimistic, themselves, dare talk only of the end
of the recession and not the end of the crisis since this recovery in produc
tion doesn't signify a recovery in investments, since the monetary crisis
continues and since the major crisis of the world monetary system becomes
every more menacing.
THE RECESSION IN 1982
Assuming that the timid signs of economic recovery are confirmed in 1983
or 1984, the second recession of the decade will have attained its lowest point
at the end of 1982. For the second time since the war, production in the
industrialised countries went down (-0.2% in 1982; -0.7% in 1975). Utilization
of productive capacity also went down; for example, in the United States from
85% in 1980 to less than 70% in 1982.
Along with the decrease in production, the volume of world trade also
decreased for the second time (-2.5% in 1982; -3·5% in 1975). This recession,
lasting a longer time than the preceding one and making the limits of the
world market even more sensitive, has moreover brought with it a rebirth of
protectionism: the bilateral commercial agreements between states, which are
only disguised barter, have considerably augmented and represent at the present
time barely 30% of world commerce. The Third World countries which export
manufactured products are the first to be hit by protectionist measures. The
industrial countries put "import quotas" on them or impose on them "voluntary
restrictions" agreements or multiply standards like sanitary regulations,
which penalize agri-business in the underdeveloped countries. Another form
of aggressive protectionism consists of generalized subsidy by the Western
governments for exports of capital goods.
The global incidence of mounting protectionism is difficult to evaluate
because it takes multiple hypocritical forms; but the period, where internation
al trade grew more quickly than production itself, and contributed to accelera
ting still more the growth of production, is finished. The economic war has
definitively begun with new standards, cartelizations, protected markets,
dumping and fluctuations in exchange rates against the background of a
shrinking market.
The unemployment has increased brutally in Europe; since 1980 its growth
has been incessant. In the U.S., during the recovery of 1976-79, the unemploy
ment fell from 8% to 6% in 4 years. But from 1979 to 1982, it practically
do11h1.ed, g0i.ne; from 6% to 11%. Since the beginning of 1983, unemployment has
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