chapter 8
war:
INTERNATIONAL CRIMES
T. R. Young
The Red Feather Institute
Jan.1989
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CRIME AND SOCIAL JUSTICE:
Theory and Policy for the 21st CenturyRED FEATHER INSTITUTE
THE PATRIOT NOT ONLY DOES NOT DISAPPROVE
OF ATROCITIES COMMITTED BY HIS OWN SIDE,
BUT HE HAS A REMARKABLE CAPACITY FOR NOT
EVEN HEARING ABOUT THEM.
...George Orwell
INTRODUCTION: In this historical epoch, most political crime between one country and another arises out of the dynamics of the world capitalist system. The forms of international crime are connected to the political economy of the capitalist world system.
A brief historical overview of several waves of warfare will be set forth. These waves all are connected to the kind of economic system being built...or dismantled.
Remember that physical force is the last resort of social control when moral, social or economic power can't be used to shape the behavior of exploited people.
While it is easy to take a critical view of other countries including England, France, The Union of South Africa and, of course, the USSR, one should be very careful believing what one is told about one's own country. Every society must get loyalty from its own citizens in order to maintain political legitimacy.
Each society teaches its children that it is the best of all possible societies.
Young people of every exploiting country are taught in school, church, media and in the political sphere that their country is morally, racially, culturally or socially superior to other countries. This is as true in the USA as it is in the USSR.
In hindsight, we can see that young men have been proud to march off to war ignorant of the ugly, hidden agenda of economic exploitation. Each generation of young people still accept the self serving ideology of nationalism.
The brutal fact is that wars are seldom fought for the reasons given in public. They are fought to over the labor, raw materials, food supply or accumulated wealth of a country or region. Sometimes wars are fought to end that exploitation as well. Slavery, feudalism, colonialism, capitalism and bureaucratic socialism are systems in which young people were persuaded by their leaders, by the press, by the church or by their teachers to fight unjust wars.
A. E. Housman wrote a series of anti-war poems which each young person should learn as an antidote to the mystifications of war:
On the idle hill of Summer
Sleepy with the flow of streams
Oh hear afar a deadly drummer
Drumming steady in your dreams.
East or West on fields forgotten
Bleach the bones of comrades slain
Lovely lads all dead and rotten
None that go return again.
Still the calling bugles bellow
Still the screaming fife replies
Still the lads in line will follow
To the drums of endless lies.
Housman, in another poem, has better advice for young men:
They mow the field of man in Season. Call it truth or call it treason, I'll not kill for any reason.
Reach my beer and leave your prattle I'll not care to fight your battle. Oh, reason's rare and love's aplenty, I'll stay home and wed my Jenny.
Several kinds of international political crime which are hidden from the public policy process. Former agents of the CIA report on the many political crimes of the USA and the secret wars it conducts in the 3rd world. The mass media are quick to cover in depth the political crimes of the USSR and its KGB...rightly so. In the U.S.A., one has to search obscure journals and tiny newspapers to learn of the underground crimes of the capitalist countries.
WAVES OF WARFARE There have been five historic waves of warfare in human history and one continuing form of hostility which has created untold suffering, injustice and when possible, revenge.
In These Days, two new waves of warfare continue to waste human life, drain national resources and embitter again a generation of men and women. First, however, let us look at the five great waves of warfare which have sweep across whole continents; which have leapt great seas; which have left great devastation in their pathways.
It is difficult to set a precise beginning of each wave but one can get an idea of when each kind of warfare was firmly established in the listing below:
1. Predatory warfare [from prehistory to the present]
2. Wars of Feudal Conquest [early Persia, China, Egypt, India; medieval Europe.]
3. Wars of Bourgeois Liberation [from 1640 in England to the American Revolution.]
4. Wars of Colonial Domination [since England invaded India and Spain invaded the Americas in the late 15th century to the conquest of Africa and Asia in the 19th century].
5. Wars Between Capitalist States [From the betrayal of the French Revolution by Napoleon to the Great Wars in 1918 and 1939].
A sixth wave of warfare started in 1917 with the Russian revolution. These are called wars of socialist liberation. Such wars continued in China, Cuba and Kerala. Many wars of Socialist liberation were aborted by the efforts of the USA and many were aborted by the corrupt leadership who thought that social justice began with their own families and friends.
It is too early to know how liberating this wave will be to the human project.
Wars of Capitalist Consolidation. With the C.I.A., the US Military and various wealthy European support, The USA has engineered a vast wave of little wars against any group, country or people who interfere with the free flow of goods, profits and raw materials in every part of the world. The subversions of liberation movements in Vietnam, Africa, South America, the intervention in Haiti and now in Bosnia all have the same end in view; safe passage for capital and capitalist workers.
Covered with a gloss of righteous rhetoric about democracy, about ethnic cleansing, about 'terrorism,' the USA, Canada, Britain, Germany and sometimes France use the United Nations as cover for the interests of multi-national corporations based in Europe and North America. Claiming the banner of democracy, the USA has armed and trained and supported Right-Wing dictatorships from Batista to Somoza to the rulers of Saudi Arabia, Guatemala, Honduras and Indonesia.
History will be a cruel judge of these mini-wars of capitalist consolidation. Criminologists can lead the way by calling such wars what they are: state crime against the human project.
Waves of War in History In order to have a good sense of the connection between warfare, profits and mode of production, a quick overview of each of the major forms of warfare is useful. For most of human history unto this very day, predatory warfare has beleaguered societies and interfered with the human process. We will begin with it.
Predatory warfare. The basic dynamic in the predatory crimes of warfare is the extraction of wealth by force by one group from another group of people. This occurs when the means of production are inadequate to the real or perceived needs of a people. War and raiding becomes an alternate means of production.
In predatory warfare, the men of a tribe or a village will be assembled, invoke their gods, set out on an expedition and raid neighboring tribes or villages. If the raid is successful, the men will return with food, household utensils, weapons and slaves. After a successful raid, the men who return will be honored, praised and rewarded by high status. Ordinarily, the loot is redistributed on the basis of need first and then on the basis of merit in battle.
Most of us are familiar with the raids of the Norsemen of villages along the coasts of England, France, and deep into the Russian steppes. We have heard of the brave exploits of English pirates such as Sir Francis Drake. We have been entertained by the stories of the ancient Greeks as they raided the coasts of Turkey, Yugoslavia, and North Africa. We learned about the slave raids of Muslims in East Africa and about the pirates of the China seas.
All of these glorious stories were, objectively, little more than predatory warfare in which one tribe or village would solve its economic problems by extracting wealth and labor from other societies ...which would then have to rebuild after the ravages of war.
Predatory warfare continues to this day. In the hinterland of Brazil, in the mountains of New Guinea, in the forests of Africa, one still hears of raiding parties composed of 20 or 30 young men who steal cattle, pigs, blankets, tools, and weapons from another village.
Predatory crime involves the use of physical power to obtain wealth. Since there are no social relations between the two groups...there is no social power or moral power to deter the crimes. However, stolen goods are redistributed on the basis of social relations.
Wars of Feudal Conquest. Throughout human history, one tribe has raided other tribes. At some point in history, members of the successful raiding tribe stayed to rule over and to extract tribute from another tribe. The beginnings of feudalism grew out of this form of warfare.
In feudalism, physical power is joined with moral power to legitimate the flow of wealth from the producers to the consumers of wealth. Churches, scholars, philosophers all legitimate this social arrangement. The idea of a king and a subject arise to join social power to the perpetuation of feudal relations and to this form of economic redistribution of wealth from the poor to the rich.
In ancient China at the dawn of written history, feudal lords used violence to conquer and to exploit other tribes. In eastern Mesopotamia along the Tigris and Euphrates rivers, feudal lords arose. In ancient Egypt, dynasty after dynasty consolidate feudal holdings which reached south, east and west of the Nile. In Central and South America, the Aztec, Mayan and Inca empires are well known to us as examples of feudal systems. But the most familiar to American students are the feudalities of Europe.
The huge 'Holy Roman Empire' rose in the first Century A.D. and fell. Charlemagne reintroduced feudalism into Europe in the 10th century. From that time until the 1700th century, the history of Europe was a history of contending feudal lords who called themselves Kings and Emperors. The Scandinavian tribes were brought into feudalism in the 1300th century by German princes.
Wars of Bourgeois Liberation. These wars saw the political and economic hegemony of the feudal lords replaced by the political and economic hegemony of the wealthy trading, commercial, banking, and, later, industrial capitalists. Of all the wars to that date, wars of bourgeois liberation were by far, the most emancipatory.
Capitalism required and produced several conditions which were most helpful to the human condition. Freedom of movement, of new ideas, of investment, of new social relations and of new technologies required the overthrow of feudalism...and made capitalism the most progressive social invention of the 18th century.
Beginning with the British Revolution of 1640 through to the French revolution and the German revolution in the 19th century, there were a series of wars of bourgeois liberation. The landed Lords who were also producers of export crops: wool, meat, and wheat in Europe and England joined with bankers, merchants, small shop keepers and workers to reduce kings and Queens to mere figureheads.
Wars of Colonial Domination. In order for capitalism to thrive, it needs access to foreign markets; access to foreign resources, and access to cheaper labor. In order to assure access to markets, England, France, Germany, Italy, Spain, and Portugal embarked on a grand series of wars of colonial domination.
Perhaps the first important capitalist colony to come and one of the last to go was India. India became a colony in which British merchants claimed the exclusive right to sell; to get raw materials; and to profit from cheap labor. The English textile industry which was part of the base for English power and English wealth was central to the crimes of the British against the Indians. Indians were forbidden to make cloth...they grew the cotton which was shipped to English textile factories and the cloth shipped back to India to sell to the people who grew the cotton...and others who could afford it.
The voyages of Columbus, Sir Francis Drake, Magellan and other adventurers were sponsored by governments interested in colonies to exploit. By the turn of the 20th century, colonial countries had effectively divided up the world into colonies. A conference in Europe in 1898 divided up Africa into British, German, French and Italian colonies.
Colonialism rested, primarily, upon physical power. There was very little social power or moral power with which to legitimize colonialism. The core country could buy troops and could buy loyalty from a few natives in the peripheral country but most people saw colonialism as neither moral nor social in character.
As long as wealth was coming in satisfactorily from the colonies, the working class in the core country was happy enough. The factories were going, the stores were full, and the economy prosperous. Workers in England, France, and Germany were happy. Their children could go into the army of occupation, into the international trade, into administration of overseas colonies or into the factories, shops, mills and mines.
Wars Between Capitalist Powers France, England, Germany, Italy and Belgium fought among themselves for four centuries for control of the Americas, India, Africa, the middle and the far East. In 1898, the European powers meet to end that struggle and to make a permanent division of the rest of the world into their colonies.
That agreement lasted until World War I. The Germans tried to colonize Europe and failed. It lost its colonies and had to pay war reparations. Hitler came along with a plan to save Germany from the absolute despair into which the winners had forced it.
World War I and World War II are best understood as wars between capitalist states for control over three essential factors of production and profit: raw materials, cheap labor and markets, markets, markets.
It takes a lot of military resources to keep colonies under control and, since most of the profits of colony went to private ownership instead of to the state, colonialism was doomed. One after another, colonial powers found the costs of empire too much. Colonialism began in warfare and ended in warfare. England dismantled the British empire after WWII as did France, Portugal and Belgium.
The wars of national liberation began almost as soon as the colony was established.
Wars of Colonial Liberation. The first great war of colonial liberation in history was the revolution of the American colonies from the British Empire. For the next 200 years, especially since World War II, there has been a dismantling of colonial empire around the world as the various colonial powers lay exhausted from the first modern, high-tech war in history.
Britain lost her colonies in Burma, Malaysia, India, Africa and South America. All she has left is Northern Ireland and the Falkland Islands, Gibraltar and a few odd islands. Hong Kong returns to China in 1997. France lost Algeria in a bloody revolution and later lost Vietnam in a war that became bloodier as The United States replaced France in Vietnam.
Spain had lost her colonies a century earlier and slid into genteel poverty. Portugal lost her last colony in Angola in the 1970's. Portuguese Macao will be returned to China at the end of this century. Germany lost its colonies to England in World War I and has struggled ever since to keep its workers employed. There is little of empire left in the world today.
Wars of Socialist Liberation. As the sons and daughters of the upper classes in the colonial countries went to school at home or in England and Europe, they came to see the larger picture of colonial oppression. Many such as Gandhi, Ho Chi Minh, Fidel Castro and Father Ernesto Cardinale became revolutionaries. Father Cardinale is Minister of Culture in Nicaragua, he studied with Thomas Merton in the United States in the 1960s. Others from the core countries such as Marx, Lenin, Castro, Trotsky, Rosa Luxembourg and many others deserted their own class and joined with workers and peasants to make the revolution.
Many indigenous leaders did not need a college education to discover the abysmal working conditions of peasants and workers on farm and in factory. They lead liberation movements. Simon Bolivar, Jose Marti, Agusto Sandino, Emilio Zapata, Mao Tse Tung and others fought against imperialism.
Some indigenous leader corrupted and exploited the resentment of the masses to take state power: Juan Peron, Papa Doc Duvalier, the Somozas, Juan Baptista, Ferdinand Marcos and others started out as liberators but became dictators as pretheoretical rebellion turned such struggles into a great cycle of elites...as Wilfredo Pareto noted had happened in Italy and Europe earlier.
The working class and peasants in the 3rd world together with the intelligentsia returned from schools in Europe and America began a series of wars of socialist liberation.
Those countries without foreign colonies put together a new series of wars...wars of resistance and rebellion to colonial domination. Mexico resisted and rejected colonial domination by France in the 1830's. Cuba won its freedom from Spain in 1898. India forced the British to withdraw in 1949.
Workers in France, Germany, Russia, and other capitalist nations which couldn't compete in the world capitalist system, came to rebel against capitalist exploitation. Sometimes the rebellion was pretheoretical when the social base for revolution did not exist.
Sometimes it was theoretically sound in that it correctly identified the sources of poverty and oppression and in that it used effective means to alter those sources.
The workers' revolutions in France and in Germany were defeated but the workers' revolution in Russia produced the U.S.S.R. in 1917.
Beginning with the Russian revolution, a whole series of wars of socialist liberation began. In China, Vietnam, Cuba, and now Nicaragua, the socialists won.
In Greece, Indonesia, Korea, Chile, and Grenada the capitalist class won with the help of the United States army and many other rich capitalist nations.
In the Philippines, in El Salvador, in South Africa, in Afghanistan, and in Angola the struggle continues into the 21st Century.
All of the negativities of war are now focussed in these countries along with the many negativities of class, tribal, gender and bureaucratic politics.
The historical trend is toward emancipation and democratic socialism but the road is long and has many twistings and turnings. The student today has a front row seat on some of the most historic movements in human history. With the right concepts and with good data, one can begin to understand the crimes of one state against another as these continue into the 21st century.
THE WORLD CAPITALIST SYSTEM The World Capitalist System [WCS] is composed of about 3000 Multinational Corporations based in the 20 rich capitalist countries. The rich countries of the 1st World are at the top of an economic pyramid which transfers vast amounts of food and wealth from some 120 poor countries in the 3rd world.
Imagine a busy flow of food, profits, clothes, raw materials and drugs from the poor countries at the bottom of the pyramid to those at the top. The return flow from the rich countries are tourists, soldiers, weapons, movies and T.V. programs, CIA agents, scholars and students, luxury goods, fast food franchises and money from the drug trade.
The President of the WCS: Some 300 of the biggest 1000 multinational corporations are based in the USA. The president of the USA is more a president of the world capitalist system (WCS) than of the USA these days. The leaders of England, France, Germany, Japan, Italy and Canada are much like his cabinet. Together, they run the world capitalist system on behalf of multinational corporations.
In order to maintain the WCS, there are a wide variety of political crimes committed by the rich nations against the poor. The common practice is to install or support a 'friendly' fascist regime, supply it with arms and use the tools of international power to keep it in office. That way wealth, profits, food, and cheap raw materials can continue to move from poor nations to rich.
One can determine the amount of crime of one state commits against other states by several related measures:
*by the number of acts of terror directed at the citizens of the exploiting nation. The USA is the primary target of terrorism and hostage in the world today.
*by the amount of funds spent for military operations by the exploiting nation.
*by the number of the secret police working overseas on behalf of the exploiting country.
*by the number of soldiers of the exploiting country in the country of the exploited.
*by the number of secret wars sponsored by the exploiting country.
*by the inequality in the flow of wealth between two countries.
*by the amount of propaganda directed at the exploited country by the exploiting country. Today, 1999, most of the demonization of an 'enemy' is pointed at the Islamic countries which resist 'modernization.'
*by the amount of funds and training given in support of the local police and military by the exploiting country in the exploited country.
*by the number of allies in the U.N. found to support the exploited country.
*by the repression of dissent within the exploiting country of its own citizens: numbers of arrests, numbers of those expelled or disappeared; numbers of newspapers closed.
By every measure listed above, the USA and the USSR are the two most criminal countries in the world today. In other years, the British, the French, the Japanese or the Spanish would have rated as the leading political state criminals of the day.
Today, the dynamics of the world capitalist system and the conflict between the capitalist bloc and the socialist bloc has put the USA and the USSR in the forefront of political crime. Note: this paragraph was written before the collapse of the Soviet Union...The USA is now all by itself as the chief architect of war in the global capitalist system.
Today, 3rd world countries spend almost half of their national income for weapons rather than for social programs. The leading producers and merchants of weapons internationally are the USA, Israel, the USSR, Czechoslovakia, France, England, and China. France is the leading merchant in nuclear power and nuclear weapons capacity. Both the USA and the USSR are very careful what nuclear capacity they sell on the international market.
The industrialized countries sell close to a trillion dollars worth of weapons to the poorest countries in the world.
The USA spends close to $400 billions a year to protect the world capitalist system from national liberation movements or from socialist liberation movements. Thus social justice is postponed in order to maintain the flow of wealth from the 3rd world to the 1st world.
Legitimizing Political Crime The process by which young Americans come to accept the political crimes of its own country is the same process by which young British men came to be proud to help conquer colonies for Britain in the 18th century; young French men came to be proud to use force to exploit Algerians and young German men came to view themselves as Supermen and entitled to exploit Eastern Europe.
The legitimation process has two parts:
A. sharing of economic benefits and
B. ideological hegemony
A. Economic Benefits The sharing of economic benefits includes:
--Jobs for unemployed young men in the colony: soldiers, clerks, police, administrators.
--Profits for private companies in the core country.
--Servants and cheap living expenses for colonial residents...all have maids, cooks, and 'boys.'
--Prosperity and upward mobility for those at home.
--Low cost goods and foods from dependent nations.
--Pride and self esteem at being a member of a stronger nation
Ideological Hegemony The second part of political legitimacy involves subjective factors such as theories, beliefs, myths, loyalties, and ideas generally. Such ideas are produced by the intelligentsia and distributed in ideological education.
All societies have founding ideologies about how to do family, politics, economics, and leisure time activity. Ideology is important to the human process. The only interesting question is how that ideology adds to or detracts from the human potential of those inside and those outside that society.
Every society must enlist the loyalties of its young people; most countries do it with emotional appeals rather than by rational analysis. Patriotism, religion, and imaginary threats from the outside sometimes are used when political legitimacy is threatened. Highly charged emotional symbols often are used to counter critical thinking and balanced analysis.
The boundaries of social affiliation are always changing. The general trend is for people to include more and more of the population of the world in their definition of who is a person in the eyes of the law and in the norms of the society. This makes it difficult for traditional ideologies to survive. In turn, more and more emotional content is defined into the symbols of nation, ethnic group, or religious denomination. Young people are subjected to very heavy propaganda tactics by those who oppose such changes.
It is good for young people to commit themselves to their society; to acknowledge the heavy debt they owe present and past generations; to respect the best in the traditions they come to value. It is well and proper for young people to trust, to believe and to have faith in their parents, teachers, ministers, and political leaders. But at some point, young people must stop and reflect upon those ideas and practices which shape their life. People enter into the fullness of their morality when they review cherished social practices and judge them appropriate or no longer helpful to the human project. It takes much thought and wisdom to do so.
This exercise in ideological education often detracts from social justice when it:
--emphasizes the positivities of the home country while attributing failures: poverty, crime, infant mortality, or homelessnes, to individuals.
--by emphasizing the negativities of other societies while attributing their success to individual effort, luck, or unfair practices.
There are five major social institutions which engage in ideological education aimed at political legitimacy:
--the family. Most young people accept the political views of their parents. They learn democratic values or they learn elitist values in the very fabric of life.
In stratifies societies, young people from upper class families learn that their favored place in society is right and natural. Young people from lower classes and from the underclass often learn that they are not expected to do well; that they are inferior in biological, cultural or moral terms.
--the school system: pledges of allegiance, history and social science courses, holidays and celebrations propagate existing social relations. In stratified societies, teachers, professors and administrators benefit from existing relations in terms of social honor and economic security and thus tend to endorse them.
--the mass media: radio, magazines, T.V., and papers are very important agents of political legitimacy and cultural hegemony.
In the USA, the mass media are owned by those who benefit by existing relations. With 25,000 media outlets, 26 corporations control most of the books, magazines, T.V. and radio stations and motion pictures...by the first part of the 21st Century, six corporations will own most if the trend continues. The possibilities for elite control of the knowledge process grow in such a society.
Computers, copies and fax machines are technologies which open up the knowledge process. The long range trend seems to be toward critical and balanced knowledge processes in the various media, although those in the field will tell you that there is a long way to go in most countries.
--the political system reinforces uncritical patriotism in campaigns, elections, patriotic games, and special days honoring those who died in war.
In stratified societies, politicians often are funded by or profit directly from those who benefit the most by existing arrangements.
--The church is very important as part of the ideological indoctrination in many societies. Some religions are open to the variety of cultural and religious experience; some are very narrow and destructive of other ways of being a human being. Important changes are going on in religious institutions in this century.
--To their great credit, many nuns, priests, ministers, preachers and rabbis take the lead in opposing the exploitative wars of their own society...
Power and Ideology Four forms of power converge to shape the beliefs and loyalties of young people in the USA: the social power of their parents; the economic power of their employers; the moral power of their ministers; and the physical power of the law.
Sometimes it is difficult for young people to challenge or to resist in the face of all the power ranged against critical analysis. In most democratic countries and in many authoritarian countries, there are social movements one can join in order to share in the collective social, economic, and moral power of the group. As the saying goes,
If you want peace at home or abroad, work for justice.
WARFARE TODAY In your lifetime, there have been more than 7 million people killed in the various forms of war. Robert Sollen, of the Santa Barbara Peace Resource Center, reports in The Nation (Jan. 9-16, 1989) that there are more than 78 wars going on in 1989. They include:
The USA is directly involved with arms and advisors in the following as of Feb., 1989.
Country Number Killed
Afghanistan...........1 million since 1979
Angola..................213,000 since 1975
El Salvador..............65,000 since 1979
Nicaragua................65,000 since 1978
The USA is supplying arms in the following as of Feb., 1989:
Indonesia................100,000 since 1975
Philippines...............35,000 since 1972
South Africa...............3,000 since 1985
Iran-Iraq................400,000 since 1980
Israel-Lebanon/Syria.....152,000 since 1975
States use violence in order to control markets, raw materials and to extract surplus value from workers in other countries. As you can see from above, religion and ethnic antagonisms still inform much organized murder in the world today. These often have economic sources mixed in as one ethnic or religious group tries to exploit another.
The sub-text in the ethnic wars in Bosnia, Serbia and Kosovo centers more around oil than around ethnic cleansing although mass murder and rape become the visible symptoms of both economic distress [since the collapse of socialism] and economic ambitions [since the degradation of social justice in Yugoslavia].
Motives for Making War in the Global Capitalist System:
Markets and Profits As you learned in Lecture 3, capitalist nations must have markets overseas since workers at home are not paid 100% of the value of the goods they produce; thus they cannot possibly buy 100% of the wealth they produce. Owners must find someone to buy the other 5, 10, or 20% produced...or reduce production.
The 20 rich capitalist countries need new markets in the 120 poor capitalist countries for domestic corporations or face depressions at home. Without the markets of the 3rd world, social justice programs at home would not cover the needs of housing, education and health care for many of the surplus population. This would result in a legitimacy crisis.
Raw Materials Capitalist firms must have raw materials or their factories will close. There are 86 kinds of raw materials found in the 3rd world needed for modern industry but which are scarce in the USA.
Capitalist firms turn to the US government to guarantee access to copper, tin, oil, tungsten, chromium, uranium and dozens of other minerals together with coffee, tea, spices, cotton, soy beans, meats, cocoa, as well as many fruits and vegetables.
Cheap Labor As workers get organized, they win good wages and safer working conditions. In order to keep profits up, capitalist firms need cheap labor. They often relocate in the 3rd world and replace high priced workers in the USA.
This tends to disemploy workers at home; tends to drive down wages; tends to increase welfare costs while reducing the tax base in the USA. This in turn adds to deficit spending and a fiscal crisis. However, the devil's choice is to help firms based in the USA to gain access to cheap labor and to repatriate profits...or lose every thing to another capitalist country: labor and markets and raw materials.
The US government helps MNCs get access to labor, markets and raw materials in the 3rd world by supporting 3rd world governments, by helping local elites keep their favored position, by loaning money to governments, and by giving foreign aid to those countries which are 'friendly' to American business. The C.I.A. has many politicians in the 3rd world on their payroll.
Capital Flow Companies need the freedom to move investment capital in and out of 3rd world countries. The 1000 MNCs need to ensure the flow of profits to 1st world stockholders. They need to ensure the flow of products from 3rd world countries to the rich markets in the first world.
All these needs of US based corporations are weighed when the USA forms foreign policy on war, human rights, international treaties on the environment and on sea usage. Often, the USA places the economic interests of these corporations ahead of the human rights interests of workers and farmers and small business in the 3rd world.
Policing the World Since WWII, the USA has become the chief policeman of the world capitalist system. Before that the British ruled the seas and the capitalist system. At its height, British citizens bragged that, 'The Sun Never Sits on the British Empire. Before the British, Spain and Portugal dominated international trade.
The use of military force in a globalized political economy is pointed more at maintaining the false peace of commerce and finance than the real peace of social justice.
In the role of the police force for the economic interests of multinational firms, the US government often makes decisions which cause hardship for American firms. US manufacturers of shoes, steel, electronics, and many other products complain that the federal government no longer protects these industries with tariffs and subsidies. While the 300 giant MNCs can depend upon the US to protect its interests in the 3rd world, other capitalist firms lose out to foreign competition. There is a vast restructuring of the economy of all capitalist countries as they try to fit themselves into the newly expanded and newly integrated world capitalist system.
Japan may well become the next international policing nation. It will probably use financial tools rather than military tools to control its markets and suppliers. Japan now, 1989, has 9 of the top 10 banks in the world capitalist system.
The center of capitalism has moved slowly over the pass centuries; in its commercial stage, the was in Venice as crusaders purchased food, clothing, weapons, transport and local comforts on their way to Jerusalem. Then the center moved to Brussels in the 1500's as new navigational techniques opened up the world to trade; London became the center of the world capitalist system in the 1700's; New York in the 19th century and now, Japan.
Who will be dominant in the 21st century is open to question; China grows daily as an economic force; India has millions of cheap workers to tempt capital flow; Brazil and the Southern Cone also stand as contenders to the future of capitalism.
The motive for almost all political crime between countries today...and for the past 300 years...is to move wealth from dependent countries in the 3rd world to the core countries of the world capitalist system.
People in the poor countries prefer to keep the profits and food at home and to sell the raw materials at higher prices so foreign goods and technologies can be bought and used in the home country. Sometimes it is a small elite of nationalistic capitalists who want to control the wealth of a country.
In El Salvador, Honduras, Guatemala and dozens of other small countries, a repressive elite exploits workers and peasant farmers. When moderates or socialist try to overthrow those repressive elites, the U.S., in its role as tough cop, intervenes and help the elites put down the rebellion.
POWER TOOLS The USA uses mainly three power tools to impose its policies on other nations:
The Military. The USA spends about $300 billion a year to maintain the Army, the Air Force, the Marines and the Navy.
*There are 1,380,000 persons on active duty [1988 figures]
*1,580,000 in reserve forces
*979,300 civilian employees of the U.S. Military.
The C.I.A., the National Security Agency, Military Intelligence and other secret agencies spend billions more in secret funds to gather information, to supply other armies, to pay local politicians, and to fight secret wars.
The International Financial Agencies. The USA uses the International Monetary Fund, the World Bank, the Agency for International Development and other financial tools are used to support or destabilize governments.
In addition, the USA uses its influence with allies to support American plans and programs. It makes and breaks governments which are not friendly to the 300 multinational corporations based in the USA.
COSTS OF POLICING THE WORLD CAPITALIST SYSTEM The costs to a nation for engineering political crimes around the world are immeasurable. While those costs at home can be set forth below, the larger costs are borne by the peoples in the 3rd world whose lives, peace and need for social justice are crippled.
Social Costs The social costs of policing the world capitalist system are very large.
Some of these costs the world capitalist system include:
--distortions of basic institutions at home
--inability to provide social justice for minorities and the elderly
--bigger and bigger deficits for future generations to pay
--distortion of electoral politics in the 3rd world: vote fraud, bribery of candidates, harassing of critics.
--more and more violence in the 3rd world as workers and peasants turn to armed rebellion and resistance.
--more and more political crime engineered by the rich capitalist countries in the 3rd world lead by the USA
--the growth of a garrison state (one dominated by military priorities).
--more and more street crime as people are disconnected from land and from community.
Economic Costs The economic costs of maintaining the great inequalities in the World Capitalist system with all its political crime at home and abroad is huge. Warfare is now capital-intensive. The costs of capital intensive warfare grows faster than the kill ratio. It cost hundreds of dollars to kill each person in the Civil War, it now costs millions of dollars to kill each person in high-tech warfare.
Each year the costs increase. In 1988, some $290-300 Billions will be spent to protect capitalist interests abroad. This is double the amount spent in 1980. By the 21st Century, it will be more than $1 Trillion dollars a year in the US budget alone. When one adds up all the military expenditures of all the nations in the world to keep or to overthrow capitalism, the costs far exceed those spent on social justice.
Both the USA and the USSR find that the costs of maintaining their policing of each respective bloc of countries is producing a debt burden that is unpopular and harmful of social justice at home.
The USA is presently (1988) conducting several secret and undeclared wars in violation of the U.S. Constitution which says that only Congress has the social power to declare war. Active and secret wars financed by the USA in 1989 include: Afghanistan, Angola, and Nicaragua.
Former President Reagan authorized 50 secret military operations including the hijacking of a commercial airliner. This is the most such operations authorized in the history of the U.S.A.
Mr. Reagan put together his own secret army with funds not authorized by the Congress of the U.S.A. His military budget doubled in 8 years while the national debt exceeded that of all other presidents combined.
The costs of policing nations in the 3rd world are charged to the public while the profits from the 3rd world go to private corporations in the World Capitalist System. This makes policing other countries a losing proposition in the USA. The USA has yet to make a major policy shift in funding political oppression in the 3rd world even though the National Debt is reaching a dangerous level for your generation.
You can get some idea of the costs of funding political crime by looking at the size and expenditures for the US military.
THE STRUCTURE OF THE U.S. MILITARY The USA is, indeed, a Garrison State. It spends a third of its national income on war and the weapons of war. It has invaded other countries 256 times since 1865.
After World War II, the USA had about 3000 military bases which surrounded the USSR and Communist China. The USA, the USSR, and China have reached a stalemate. Today most of overseas USA bases and military actions are located in and are used to control third world countries rather than Communist countries.
The Garrison State The overall structure of the US military in 1988 is, in brief:
--1266 US Military bases in the world
--871 are in the USA: at least 2 in every state
--There are four military services
-The Army has 206 bases in the USA
-The Marine Corp has 25 bases in the USA
-The Airforce has 384 air bases at home
-The Navy has 242 bases on the US coast
--The payroll of those on active military duty is $34,000,000,000
--The pay roll of civilian employees is $26,300,000,000
--The pay roll of the reserve military forces is $5,500,000,000
--There are millions more retired military most of whom have jobs in local business and government with influence in local politics.
-their pensions total $18,700,000,000
--Military contractors got $266,700,000,000
-they donate hundreds of millions to political campaigns and are vigorously protected by their Congress people.
--The National Security Agency has the biggest budget of any civilian agency including the Department of Health, Education, and Welfare. The budget is secret; even from most members of Congress.
--The C.I.A. owns some of the biggest companies in the USA and around the world. Its budget is secret as is the number of its employees.
--The USA is the biggest arms dealer in the world. The Pentagon and the State Department acts as sales offices for the various private arms manufacturers at home. This part of the Garrison State is worth a closer look.
--All together, the US taxpayers spent $370,000,000,000 on direct military expenses in 1987-88.
-Several secret agencies have budgets in the billions which are hidden in 'social' spending bills. The National Security Agency is supposed to have one of the largest budgets in the federal accounts. No one knows how much the C.I.A. has to spend in its efforts to de-stabilize countries unfavorable to transnational capital.
Merchants of Death Michael Klare, a Fellow at the Institute for Policy Studies in Washington, D.C., has recorded the role of the USA in selling arms in the 3rd world. He says the Pentagon runs a huge supermarket for arms which keeps hundreds of thousands of managers, engineers, skilled machinists, and unskilled workers prosperous.
Klare reports (1984) that US arms sales have grown from $250 million yearly in the 1950s to $10 billion in the late '70s. Part of the economic growth in America is based upon arms sales and repression in South America.
Klare reports that the U.S.A. is involved in subverting the government of some 50 countries in the third world today (1987). John Stockwell, the highest ranking officer in the CIA to defect and go public, has said that the U.S. policy is to destabilize those governments in the third world which are not 'friendly' and to replace them with governments which are friendly to the objectives of U.S. policy (1987).
The C.I.A. The C.I.A. routinely violates U.S. law, International law and the laws of the various nations in which it works on behalf of the world capitalist system (Agee, 1975; Wise and Ross, 1964; John Stockwell, 1987).
--The C.I.A. engineered the overthrow of a democratically elected socialist in Iran in 1955. The C.I.A. brought the Shah of Iran back to rule it. The Shah used the SAVAK, the secret police to murder and imprison political opponents.
--The USA helped engineer the military overthrow of president Sukarno of Indonesia. He was replaced by General Suharno who was armed by the USA. Hundreds of thousands of labor leaders, teachers, lawyers, socialists, communists and reporters were murdered by the Suharno regime in the 1970s.
--The C.I.A. ran a secret war in Cambodia in the 1960s and 70s with its own armies, airports, cities, and missions. A few members of Congress knew about it but most American citizens did not.
--Patrice Lumumba, president of Zaire, ended up in the trunk of a car driven by a C.I.A. agent. Lumumba had tried to nationalize the uranium mines. The USA was the chief customers for uranium. The USA installed the Mobutu government which is one of the most corrupt and repressive in Africa.
--The C.I.A. gave Mobutu $1.4 millions to give to counterrevolutionaries trying to overthrow the Angola government. Mobutu pocketed the money. The USA continues to try to overthrow the Angolan government which pushed out the White government which ran it.
--The C.I.A. organized and supplied the military overthrow of the democratically elected government of Chile. Chileans elected a socialist government which appropriated the copper mines of American corporations. The new military government killed thousands of socialists, communists, labor leaders, students and professors as well as the President, Salvador Allende.
--The C.I.A. planned some 20 attempts to assassinate Fidel Castro. Eight of these were activated. The USA used bacteriological warfare to kill 500,000 pigs in Cuba in the 70s. The US Military paid a Canadian $5000 to infect chickens with a viral disease in Cuba. The US used private planes to spread a tobacco virus to destroy the cigar industry in Cuba.
ITEM: CIA STATION CHIEF ADMINISTERED CONTRA INSURGENCY.
(Knight-Ridder Newspapers: 1 Mar, '87)
Thomas Castillo, the C.I.A. station chief in Costa Rico helped organized and run the Contra operations against Nicaragua from 1982 until the present. Among other things he:
--selected Contra leaders
--paid for expenses
--arranged news stories
--purged Contra ranks
--supervised the mining of harbors in Nicaragua
--supported the supply flights over Nicaragua
--defended the Contra military officers who murdered their own men
--supervised the writing of a psychological
warfare manual which advocated murder of civilian leaders in Nicaragua
All this which American, International Law and American treaties forbade.
House Speaker Jim Wright of Texas (Dem) said that the Iran-Contra hearings revealed that the USA violated the law seven times. The crimes included violations of:
1. the National Security act which requires that the Reagan Administration keep Congress fully and currently informed of covert operations.
2. the Arms Exports Control Act which required Reagan to report the transfer of arms to Iran.
3. the same Act forbids the export of arms to countries which support terrorism (as defined by the USA).
4. The Appropriations Act which prohibits the shifting of funds from one use to another, unauthorized use.
The student will want to know why the U.S. continues to oppose wars of national liberation and wars of socialist liberation while, at the same time, supporting some of the most brutal and corrupt government in the world.
Corporate Interests Since World War II, the United States has lost markets and access to raw materials to other capitalist nations (Japan, Germany, South Africa, Korea, Taiwan, and Hong Kong to name a few) and has lost markets and access to raw materials in the socialist liberation wars mentioned above.
Both wars of socialist liberation and wars of nationalist liberation in the third world tend to reduce the arena of 'freedom' of the multinational corporations which run the world capitalist system. Again, there are about 1000 such corporations. 500 of them dominate the world capitalist system. Some 300 of these MNC's are based in the U.S.A. and they bring in great amounts of profits, foods, goods, and raw materials to the U.S.
The U.S. cannot fight another world war to take markets back from Japan, Germany and Korea. The U.S. won WWII and still loses the trade wars. The U.S. cannot attack the established socialist countries unless they are very small and very far from other socialist countries. In Korea, Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos, the U.S.A. attempted to rollback communism and failed. The U.S.A. and the other European countries didn't try to help Hungary and Czechoslovakia with the people there rebelled against bureaucratic socialist dominated by a foreign power. Grenada and Cuba and Nicaragua are small and distant and even of the three, only the invasion of Grenada was successful.
One workable option the U.S. has is to help existing capitalist countries in the third world remain capitalist...if they are 'friendly' and support 'freedom.' By freedom and by friendliness, U.S. governments mean that these countries must provide access to MNC's to buy and sell, to move capital goods in and out of the country, to repatriate profits back to the rich capitalist countries. 3rd world countries which do not allow exploitation by 1st world countries are said to be communist.
Since the end of World War II, the United States has been spending about one third of its federal budget to develop and to maintain the military capacity to guarantee the rights of some 20 rich capitalist countries to obtain raw materials, food, and profits from some 120 poor capitalist and semi-capitalist countries.
Political crime is the most serious form of crime committed to establish and maintain the modes of production used in history. Good theory of political crime requires that we make the connection between warfare and modes of production. Take some time now to try to see how warfare is related to creating and opposing economic systems...turn to Reading F, Waves of Warfare, for a short overview that explains the political economy of war in human history.
THE REAGAN CASE John McFarlane, former Director of the super- secret National Security Agency, testified before the Tower Commission in 1986 that Mr. Reagan had authorized 50 secret military actions; some of which Mr. Reagan failed to inform the Congress as required by law. Of those about which Mr. Reagan did tell the Congress, many were in violation of other U.S. laws, International treaties and International law.
John Stockwell, former Station Chief of the C.I.A., has said that the Reagan administration is the most criminal since the days of Warren Harding, a president known for his corrupt cabinet.
The political crimes of the Reagan Administration includes:
--An illegal Invasion of Grenada, an Island country in the Caribbean
--An illegal bombing of Libya for alleged support of terrorism. Innocent civilians including children died. The bombing was designed to assassinate Omar Kaddhafi, the Libyan leader.
--The financing, training, supplying and advising of the military in El Salvador from 1980 to 1988. The military and Right wing murder squads have executed thousands of labor leaders, reporters, students, professors, lawyers, and liberal politicians in those eight years. Catholic nuns and priests from the USA have been murdered for offering medical care and pastoral counseling to farmers. 14 families control most of El Salvador. The average wage is $2 per day. The capitalist class and the US businesses which operate there do not want to pay higher wages.
--An illegal mining of a harbor in Nicaragua. The right
of shipping to move freely in international commerce was denied as neutral ships were sunk.
--The subversion of the Nicaraguan government...elected in what most observers say was the most honest election in Central America. It is against national and international law to subvert governments with which a nation has diplomatic ties.
DRUGS AND POLITICAL CRIME The drug trade is deeply involved in the secret wars of the USA as in the liberation movements in the 3rd world. Profits run into the billions of dollars. Some of these profits are used to finance revolution and some profits are used to finance counterrevolution and low intensity warfare.
On the Right The CIA permitted drug overlords in Burma, Laos, and Cambodia to use their airline, the Flying Tigers, in return for help in the Vietnamese war. The drugs were shipped, in part, to the USA and to Europe.
Testimony at the Iran-Contra hearings held by Congress revealed that the CIA permitted its counterrevolutionary force, the Contras, to trade in drugs in order to buy weapons. When the US Congress cut off aid to the Contras, they were still able to buy weapons with drug profits. The planes which flew arms from the USA brought drugs back to sell on the streets of America. Colonel Oliver North ran the operation from the basement of the White House.
In Pakistan, profits from the heroin trade are used to supply the Afghans who are rebelling against the communist regime in Afghanistan. The drugs flow through Italy under the control of the Sicilian Mafia and then to the USA. The fundamentalist Muslims who are fighting the war are sponsored by the Reagan administration.
On the Left The rebels in Columbia are financed, in part, by profits from the drug trade. Production and distribution of cocaine to the USA is informed by the theory that the USA is the chief imperial power in the world.
There continues to be rumor that Cuba allows drug runners to land and depart from Cuban locations. A high official was removed from office in the mid-1990's- -allegedly for co-operating with such trafficking in drugs. American sources claim he was merely scape-goat for official Cuban policy.
Those who use drug profits say that the sale of drugs to the USA is justified because the USA supplies weapons to kill young men and women in Latin America. They say that the only way they have to kill young men and women in America is to send the drugs.
Many politicians in Latin America turn a blind eye to the drug trade since it is an important source of hard currency with which to pay off the International Banks. 3rd World countries owe $1.3 trillion to the 1st world. Other politicians are on the take from the drug barons who run international trade in drugs.
The position that selling drugs to people in 1st world countries which exploit 3rd world countries is, for the most part, pretheoretical. The young men and the young women ruined or dead from drug use are not the people who decide to send the arms from the USA nor are they the ones who profit from the exploitation of the 3rd world. And it is pretheoretical since the death of some Americans will not stop the use of force against social justice in Latin America. It is pretheoretical, as well, since the drug trade does not resonate with the concept of praxis.
There are, as mentioned, persistent rumors that Cuba in part of the drug trade for much the same reasons...to circumvent the trade embargo the USA uses against Cuba...and to gain petty revenge.
THEORIES OF INTERNATIONAL CRIME There are two major theories about political crime on the international level; one is Dependency Theory and the other is Marxian-Leninism. Both offer considerable insight into why corporations and capitalist state engineer so very much crime and focus the 3rd World as their target.
Against these two theories, one should always weigh a third theory; Modernization Theory.
Modernization Theory holds that, in the long run, free market economics is best for all peoples. Sincere and honest people believe this and there is much to support their belief. Capitalism is the most productive economic system in history; it is the most flexible; it powers the best educational system; it destroys ancient forms of power and privilege not excluding racism and patriarchy. Capitalism is innovative and it demands freedoms not possible in feudalism, slavery and tribal communism.
But capitalism has many grave flaws: it dis-employees people who want to work; it buys the political process; it concentrates ever more wealth in ever fewer hands; it sells any and everything for which there is market...including drugs, sex, child pornography and energy inefficient transport. It pollutes land, sea, air and the bodies of its workers and its customers. And it has great cycles of ups and downs which promote the worst kind of pre-theoretical adjustments; crime, racism, warfare as well as hunger, homelessness and prostitution of its young men and women.
Dependency Theory This theory was developed by several Latin American scholars who observed the fact that economic relations between North and South hemispheres led to worse social conditions rather than better social conditions as Modernization Theory had predicted. These scholars, among them Sergio Bagu`, Fernando Cardoso, Theotonio dos Santos and Octoavio Ianni, argued that unequal trade relations contributed to the dedevelopment of Latin America (Amin: 1976).
Dependency theory implies that corporations and countries which benefit from trade engage in crime in order to establish and to maintain that unequal trade. Since there is not reciprocity in the trade relations, those who are exploited have no motive to stay in the relationship; force, deception, intimidation and bribery are used by the core countries in the 1st World to retain their advantages in the periphery of the world capitalist system.
Marxist Leninism This theory says the wage-profit relationship in the developed capitalist countries produces a surplus of wealth that has to be invested elsewhere. The place for the biggest profits are the countries with the fewest capitalist competitors...the 3rd World countries. Protection of overseas profits requires control of the political process in the third world countries where the investments are made. This control can only be maintained by political crime.
The surplus of wealth in developed capitalist countries occurs since the market is saturated...that means that workers don't earn enough to buy all they produce. But there are markets in the 3rd world. The 3rd World has lots of wealth to exchange: raw materials, cheap labor, art and artifacts, land, food, tourist opportunity and other resources for which capitalists will exchange the goods and services that are unsold in the developed markets.
This is the heart of Marx and Lenin's theory about why capitalism leads to imperialism. So there is some truth in the view of the right-wing in America that marxist-Leninists are present in many revolutions in the third world.
The major difference between the two theories is in their policy implications. Dependency theory suggests that capitalist development would solve problems if local capitalists could trade on even terms with the core country corporations. Marxist-Leninist theory suggests that political crime at the international level would transform into street crime, corporate crime and white collar crime in the 1st world if the flow of profits, food, and raw materials from the 3rd World were reduced.
In this idea, one can see the interconnectedness of the forms of crime clearly.
Pretheoretical Politics Most young people in the third world are not marxists-Leninists. They have never heard of either. Many are young people who see landlords using force to evict their families from land they have farmed for generations.
Many are young men and young women who see their sisters prostitute themselves to the rich businessmen and foreign tourists. Many see their older brothers turned into petty thieves, pimps, and drug pushers to gain access to the consumer goods restricted to the wealthy.
Young people in the 3rd world see these things and they are morally offended. They are ready to listen to socialists, to preachers, prophets, and priests, to right wing demagogues or to any body else who tells them why these things are and how these things may be stopped.
Many are young people who listen to the teachings of Christ about justice, brotherhood, and the sufferings of the poor. Many are the flotsam and jetsam of neighborhood barrios, ghettoes, and favelas who have nothing better to do than to join the many revolutionary movements in the third world, steal from the rich, buy weapons and use them for social justice or, sometimes for personal gain.
All revolutions today carry a mixture of such people...some informed by the highest of principles; some by the lowest of motives. Equally, they are brutally repressed with the aid of the United States in the most serious form of political crime found in the world today.
Indeed, when one counts up the costs of political crime over the past four hundred years, it far outweighs street crime, white collar crime, corporate crime and organized crime. Political crime produces the most deaths and the destroys the most wealth of the world than any other form.
Theoretically informed politics require that the relations of production be changed...not the beneficiaries of exploitation. Let us look at some ideas by which political crime can be reduced.
TERRORISM IN THE WORLD CAPITALIST SYSTEM There are more than 2000 terrorist groups working in the world capitalist system in the 1980s. Schmid and Longman, Swiss specialists in terrorist activity, emphasize that state terrorist groups are hard to count since they are secret and since there is censorship. Left wing groups identify themselves and their goals or there would be little public understanding of that for which they work. And the state reports leftist groups in defense of its actions.
Most terrorism is in the 3rd world and most of that is aimed at people who want social justice as opposed to the structures of domination: class, racist, gender, and bureaucratic.
Terrorism is a particularly disturbing form of political crime since non-combatants are victims. Terrorist groups do not hit targets at random, however. U.S. citizens are far more likely to be targets than any other nationality since the U.S. is the major architect and policing agent for the world capitalist system.
The USA used terror in Project Phoenix in Vietnam. Special teams of assassins were recruited and trained by the CIA to murder those who helped the communist liberation movement. It failed since it was not backed by moral or social power.
The Classic Case The modern day use of terror as a political tool developed in Algeria as a means to force the French colonialists to leave. The French Army had used terror to eliminate both peaceful and violent resistance to its control of Algeria after WWII. Algerians used terror against the French Army and against colonials in order to provoke more repression against the entire Algerian population.
The French did respond by issuing unpopular orders...and the rebellion grew to include many elements of the Algerian population. So widespread became the resistance that the French government could not afford the costs of policing Algeria. The De Gaulle government withdrew. Terrorism worked. It was joined to moral power and to social power.
Terrorism Today. Below is a small sampling of the most active terrorist groups in the world. Again, most terrorism is state sponsored; most in the 3rd world.
The USA, Iran, Libya, Israel, the U.S.S.R., and perhaps Cuba, sponsor the most terrorism around the world today.
The general rule is that Left-wing terrorist groups are more numerous in the 20 rich capitalist countries while Right-wing terrorist groups are more numerous in 3rd world countries. In the first world, the governments are liberal but support repression in the 3rd world...the Right has little complaint as long as the state does its work. In the 3rd world, the government is right-wing so it is the target of attacks.
Europe There are a number of left-wing terrorist groups working in Europe today. Their efforts to use terrorism to eliminate NATO or to end capitalism is failing. Terrorism is not theoretically informed and it is not joined with moral or social power for the most part. For the most part, terrorism has no social base in Europe. Ireland and the Basque region of Spain are exceptions.
Terrorism in Europe has failed despite the assassination of members of the ruling classes. Politicians, judges, generals, and leading capitalists have been shot in the knee, murdered, kidnapped, and threatened by one or more of the groups below.
The most active left wing terrorists today include:
*the Red Army faction [It assassinated a Senator in Italy in April, 1988: there are many cells in Europe].
*the French Action Directe [It hits computer retrieval systems but also aims to destroy the 'capitalist slave state.'
*the Baader Meinhof group [It robs banks, kidnaps, and bombs]
*the Belgium Cellules Communistes Combattantes
*the Irish Republican Army
*ETA-M [Basque Separatist Movement]
*Animal Rights Militia [England: they send bomb letters]
*Free Wales [ This group bomb selected English targets in Wales]
There are far too many Right Wing groups to list. Below is a sample of some about which you will read in the news:
*The C.I.A. [the most active terrorist group in the world]
*the National Front [England]
*Viking Youth [Belgium: extreme right wing group]
*OAS, DELTA, FNE [all french fascist groups]
*National Fascist Front, Nazi Action Front [and many more in West Germany]
*Massada, MOSSAD [Israel: each has a murder brigade and secret police]
*NAR [Italy: neofacist group]
*UDA, UFF, UVF [Protestant terrorists in Northern Ireland]
Below are some names for which to watch around the rest of the world. First the Left wing terrorist groups then the Right wing:
*Bandera Roja [Columbia: Red Flag group
*the Maoist Sendero Luminoso movement (Peru)
*the Tupac Amaru Revolutionary movement (Peru)
*Moluccan movement [operates in the Netherlands]
*the Japanese Red Army
*the PLO [Palestinian Liberation Organization]
The two most active are the Japanese Red Army which acts in several countries; the PLO, which is active against Israel and its supporters and the Sendero Luminoso movement which is very active in Peru.
Most of the news about terrorism in the US media focus upon the pretheoretical politics of the Left. The fact is that the overwhelming use of terror is on the Right. That does not redeem Left wing terror but a good theory of terrorism needs to consider the social location and the social purpose of terrorism everywhere it occurs.
Rightist Terror The Right wing terrorist groups in the 3rd world are very active. Almost every Latin American government uses death squads or turns a blind eye to right wing death squads. Even when populist leaders are elected they seldom prosecute thugs on the right...it is far too dangerous. In May, 1988, the entire cabinet of Columbia resigned for fear of drug dealers death squads.
In El Salvador alone there is the Escuadron de la Muerte; the Escuadron de la Muerte Nuevo; the ESA...secret death squad; the Escuadron de Muerte; the UGB...union of White Guerrillas; and the Falange made up of the 14 families which rule El Salvador.
Other terrorist groups include:
*the ESA in Guatemala [Ejercito Secreto Anticomunista]
*The tanton Macoutes [some 14,000 Duvalier thugs]
*FPAN, Brigada Blanco [anticommunist groups in Mexico]
*Contras [a CIA sponsored army in Nicaragua led mostly by former Guard members in the Somacista regime]
*Afrikaner Broederbond, Koevoet [South African terrorists]
Muslim Terrorism The terrorists who operate in support of the Moslem Brotherhood are hard to characterize in conventional political terms. They work for an extremist religious state in dozens of Muslim countries from the Philippines to Iran, Afghanistan, and Iraq to Saudi Arabia and then all across north Africa to Morocco.
Muslims engage in Jihad, a holy war against both socialist and capitalist governments. They oppose the semi-feudal regime in Saudi Arabia. Their vision is a very conservative society led by holy men. They maintain a severe gender stratification system yet a generous program of social welfare. The Muslim society is very punitive and a low crime society. There are 750 million Muslim followers so it should not be lightly taken.
The Ayatollah Khomeini has issued a death order on a novelist who wrote a book offensive to Muslim fundamentalists. Several people connected with the book, Satanic Verses, have been murdered.
Israeli and Arab The British guaranteed European Jews a homeland in Jerusalem. After WWII, tens of thousands displaced Jews went to Israel. They were the targets of violence and repression by the Arab Muslim states which surrounded them. The British pulled out and left the Jews to their fate. Somehow, they survived to build a democratic and socialist society.
Menachem Begin was an Israeli terrorist who killed British soldiers and civilians indiscriminately in the late 40's. Israeli terrorism was successful in forcing the British to withdraw. When he become the head of government of Israel in the 1980s, Begin used state power to dispossess the other Palestinians and to distribute land and business to Israeli citizens. In turn, the Palestinians who had been peaceful but now are powerless in the face of the armaments of the Israelis, began to use terror against Israelis.
Palestinians, denied access to state power in their own land, having no access to social power and without enough economic or physical power to confront the Israeli State, the Palestinians try to use the social power of the International community against the Israeli state. They commit terrorist acts against third parties under the theory that the third parties will help them get their land back from the Israelis.
The hijacking of ships and planes, the bombing of restaurants and the assassination of Israelis in host countries embarrass and provoke other countries to intervene. All countries which maintain relations with the Israelis have social power to shape its policies.
The USA has the most social and economic power to use on Israel since it supplies it with billions in military and other aid. The USA is often a target of terrorism for that reason. The Palestinian terrorists hope to use public opinion in the USA to pressure the American government to pressure the Israeli government to return the lands of the Palestinians.
In their turn, Israelis use terrorism as a control tactic since they have no moral power or social power to control the Arab Muslim population. Economic power flows from Arab workers to Israeli owners and thus cannot be used to reduce hostility.
Theory of Terrorism Terrorism can be understood as partially theoretical rebellion and resistance only when:
*It targets the source of alienation and exploitation rather than innocent victims of oppression.
*It is oriented to collective emancipation rather than to private advantage.
*It is an effective means to promote praxis rather than producing more alienation.
*There is no better political means available.
But terrorism is less than theoretical since it often provokes more repression...and slaughter of the very people it seeks to liberate. It is less than theoretical when there are other, less violent means to achieve the same end. It is less than theoretical when it strikes out blindly at false targets including other oppressed minorities.
WHAT TO DO ABOUT POLITICAL CRIME Most political crime in the world has International origins. The solution to political crime must involve the transformation of the international system.
Pacifism, as admirable and morally informed as it is, will do little to stop war and other forms of political crime. One should have deep respect for the men and women who refuse to do war...as Muhammed Ali, the boxer said when he refused to go into the army, 'The Vietnamese ain't never done nothing to me.' In the context of a racist America, his words infuriated white patriots...he went to jail.
The free market rights of the 20 or so rich capitalist countries to extract food, wealth and profits from the 120 or so poor capitalist and semi-capitalist societies must be set aside in favor of the political rights of the local governments to use those resources for housing, health care, education and development of each 3rd world country.
Human rights must trump market rights if we are to avoid more warfare.
The Social Democratic Solution Democratic socialists call for a new world economic order in the capitalist world system in which profits remain in the underdeveloped countries. The profits are to be used for social justice: housing, schools, hospitals, child care centers, roads, canals, docks, pensions and such.
The flow of food, wealth, and raw materials from the poorest hungriest countries in the world to the richest, fattest countries must be reversed. A truly non-zero economic game must replace the present trend toward greater inequality.
Democratic socialists call for a new world order in communications in which the cultural values of the local society are respected...and the exploitative cultural values of the USA are to be excluded from mystifying human consciousness: competition, individualism, false needs, private profit, and privatized use of sacred supplies.
The role of the United Nations or some such transnational confederation of states to coordinate social justice programs and to police international crime is essential as poverty, inequality, hunger, and repression increases in the 3rd world.
The 1st world is now run by a loose federation of the Big Seven: Britain, France, Italy, West Germany, Japan, and Canada lead by the USA...Russia aspires to be the 8th member of this ruling consortium.
Democratic socialism requires a much broader structure of governance based upon Human Rights and Human Obligations since the big seven tend to give the interests of their own workers and capitalists preference in policy decisions.
In the long run, the possibilities for a peaceful world hinge upon being able to think about and to respond to the needs of other countries. Just as a praxis society is needed to facilitate the human potential in a society, a praxis international system is needed to help individual countries live in peace. As the bumper sticker puts it: If you want peace, work for justice.