MCViewPoint

Opinion from a Libertarian ViewPoint

Posts Tagged ‘imperialism’

On this day, June 10th, 1898, U.S. Marines began the invasion of Spanish-held Cuba at Guantánamo Bay

Posted by M. C. on June 10, 2025

Libertarian Party of Pennsylvania

On this day, June 10th, 1898, U.S. Marines began the invasion of Spanish-held Cuba at Guantánamo Bay during the Spanish-American War, expanding U.S. territory in a move toward imperialism. This action marked a shift from America’s early restraint, igniting debates about the cost of empire-building on both human lives and economic freedom. The legacy of this intervention lingers in ongoing geopolitical tensions, with the territory never returning to Cuba and being used to this day as an infamous detention center where constitutional protections against cruel and unusual punishment are blatantly ignored.

We critique these imperial motives, advocating for non-intervention. The Libertarian Party of Pennsylvania calls for peace over expansionist wars, urging a return to the non-interventionist ideals that once defined our nation, free from the burdens of overseas domination.

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To Promote Peace, You Must Fight Statism

Posted by M. C. on September 24, 2024

The necessity of the state is undoubtedly one of the worst myths that still persists in the public mind.

https://libertarianinstitute.org/articles/to-promote-peace-you-must-fight-statism/

by Oscar Grau

international day of peace or world peace day, symbol of peace

U.S.-Zionist imperialism in the Middle East is far from coming to an end. The Hamas attack of October 7 on Israel triggered a highly murderous phase in the long-running Israeli-Palestinian conflict. The subsequent retaliation of the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) and their killing tens of thousands of innocents and continual provocations has elevated the possibility of a soon-to-come war between Israel and Iran, with the additional chance of involving the United States. To make matters worse, the American relationship with Israel in all these decades has made possible an unfortunate tolerance of the Gazan genocide to many conservatives.

The American ability to produce humanitarian disasters, either with NATO or the IDF, is anything but new, proving over and over again that freedom and human rights do not matter to the U.S. government, which has supported the slaughter of innocents in the Middle East or done the killing itself. Besides, the creation of many more millions of refugees has provoked social turmoil in several European countries suffering from subsidized immigration. And yet, all this is actually assisted by the political leadership of these European countries. Meanwhile, in the Russia-Ukraine war, every time the U.S. government and its allies help President Volodymyr Zelensky with arms and money, they contribute to the death of ever more people by fueling a war provoked by NATO.

The necessity of the state is undoubtedly one of the worst myths that still persists in the public mind. Who demands the manufacture of weapons capable of simultaneously killing thousands of people? Who forces or convinces thousands of people to dress in uniform and shoot others? Who builds military bases all over the world? These situations would be impossible without the state. While technology is always advancing, it begins as a neutral tool, and only becomes a factor when the state’s ends are mass weapons of war.

It’s because of ideology that wars in the past century have been more devastating and total than those of previous eras. These destructive ideas include democratic nationalism, the fiat-money system, the abandonment of old ways in warfare, and the increasingly disregarded methodological individualism embodied in the concept of justice. In reality, democratic nationalism became one of the most important causes of the real Hobbesian war of all against all manifested in World War II, which destroyed tranquility, subjected the national economy of several countries to the prerequisites of war, and annihilated the lives of millions. So it is certainly not enough for states to murder or oppress their own subject populations; indeed, which crimes do states pursue and punish most intensely in their own territorial monopolies? Economist Murray Rothbard responds:

“The gravest crimes in the State’s lexicon are almost invariably not invasions of person and property, but dangers to its own contentment: for example, treason, desertion of a soldier to the enemy, failure to register for the draft, conspiracy to overthrow the government.”

In the meantime, a new arms race came into being post-war. States competed in the development, innovation, and growth of their armies and weapons, qualitatively and quantitatively, making them more powerful and more effective. The race is materially based on the unique ability of states to externalize their costs. As inflation, taxation, and the manipulation of money and credit helps states, the richer they become, the easier it is to afford the race, which underpins the enrichment of the military-industrial complex and solidifies the preparation for war. And although not all states are involved with the same eagerness, all are involved by extension and definition in this arms race, equipping their military forces and purchasing on the global arms market. In fact, industries specializing in technology for mass destruction are established and thrive because states are their only financiers, diverting market resources to militaristic and warmongering initiatives. The military-industrial complex as we know it is not the result of free-market capitalism, but of statism—its intervention, its central banks, and so on.

Linked to the understanding of justice as an individual matter, private defense removes the need or diminishes incentives for military-sized weapons aimed at large destruction rather than individual execution. In the private world, where we have not yet forgotten how to live in peace, virtually no person or security company would ever consider the manufacture and use of highly destructive weapons. The need to avoid collateral damage, the concern for personal justice and defense, the search for profitability, and the private and voluntary financing of customers wanting to live in peace, happen naturally. Indeed, human tendency toward cooperation is so obvious that it suffices to realize that interpersonal conflict is actually rare and not a predominant feature of social life.

True, there will always be a global arms market, since defense and justice are not needs that appear with states, but exist independently. In reality, neither requires the existence of states. But unlike states, which do not compete or worry about the loss of voluntary customers, private security and justice services have incentives to be managed in a way that is not only economically profitable, but also peaceful. They cannot externalize the cost of their aggression or negligence as states do, nor do they have the legal means to systematically commit crimes and escape unscathed from the consequences or risks common among private individuals. Thus, private security and justice services lead people to care more about peace and the rights of others than is possible under statist terms.

The approach to justice and defense as an exclusively individual and private matter is precisely something that statism has no way of emulating.

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‘Humanitarianism’ As an Excuse for Colonialism and Imperialism

Posted by M. C. on January 23, 2024

by Ryan McMaken

By the early twentieth century, the idea of the civilizing mission became a dominant mode of thinking for imperialists. The British imagined they were civilizing the backward Catholic Irish. The Russian colonizers in Siberia saw themselves as the “benevolent civilizer[s] of Asia.” British colonies in Africa and Asia were cast as outposts of civilized European culture in a sea of primitives. The Americans, not content with their own civilizing mission in North America, did the same in Puerto Rico where American reformers sought to replace Puerto Rico’s “backward” and “patriarchal” culture with a “‘rational’ North American one.”3

https://libertarianinstitute.org/articles/humanitarianism-as-an-excuse-for-colonialism-and-imperialism/

imperialism on a usa flag background, 3d rendering. united state

Spreading civilization and human rights has long been used as an excuse for state-building through colonialism and imperialism. This idea dates back at least to early Spanish and colonial efforts in the New World, and the rationale was initially employed as just one of many. The importance of the conquest-spreads-civilization claim increased, however, as liberalism gained ground in Europe in the nineteenth century. Liberals were more skeptical of the benefits of imperialism, so, as political scientist Lea Ypi notes: “During the late nineteenth century and early twentieth century, the purpose of colonial rule was declared to be the ‘civilizing mission’ of the West to educate barbarian peoples .” The residents of these colonies were deemed to be “unsuited to setting up or administering a commonwealth both legitimate and ordered in human and civil terms.” The implied conclusion was that it was necessary that the European rules “take over [the natives’] administration, and set up new officers and governors on their behalf, or even give them new masters, so long as this could be proved to be in their interest.”1

That last caveat would become important to late colonial rationales: colonial rule was said to be in the interests of the natives themselves, who were incapable of proper and legitimate self-government. The British adopted these Spanish notions as their own in later centuries, and by the nineteenth century, we find John Stuart Mill claiming that “barbarians” were incapable of administering a respectable legal regime, and thus “nations which are still barbarous have not got beyond the period during which it is likely to be for their benefit that they should be conquered and held in subjection by foreigners.”2

The old empires have largely disappeared but this thinking has certainly not disappeared. Today, the same thinking takes the form of support for humanitarian intervention both internationally and domestically. Just as the traditional imperialists assumed the residents of the colonies were too “backward” to be capable of enlightened self-government, modern internationalists and progressives assume that the old colonial metropoles still must serve as enforcers of human rights across the globe. Moreover, at the domestic level, the same rationale is employed to oppose decentralization or secession for separatist groups. The old imperialist mentality still prevails: self-determination and political independence must be opposed in the name of protecting human rights.

The “Civilizing Mission” of Empire

By the early twentieth century, the idea of the civilizing mission became a dominant mode of thinking for imperialists. The British imagined they were civilizing the backward Catholic Irish. The Russian colonizers in Siberia saw themselves as the “benevolent civilizer[s] of Asia.” British colonies in Africa and Asia were cast as outposts of civilized European culture in a sea of primitives. The Americans, not content with their own civilizing mission in North America, did the same in Puerto Rico where American reformers sought to replace Puerto Rico’s “backward” and “patriarchal” culture with a “‘rational’ North American one.”3 In Algeria, the ultimate goal was to bring the blessings of French culture and government to all Algerians via government schools. The locals who embraced French culture were labeled the évolués—literally, the “evolved ones.”

Among the imperial powers, rule by the metropole’s central state became intimately intertwined with what the elites saw as humanitarianism. Imperialists warned that without the metropole’s oversight, residents of the colonies would slaughter each other, or be constantly at war. Imperialists thus cast themselves as instruments of peace and safety for vulnerable minority populations. Ann Laura Stoler describes how, “appeals regarding moral uplift, compassionate charity, appreciation of cultural diversity, and protection” of women and children from aggressive men “were woven into the very weft of empire. —[they were] how control over…markets, land, and labor were justified…”4 Alleged humanitarian efforts thus often consisted of the imperial powers protecting the colonized populations from themselves. Alan Lester and Fae Dussart note: “Appeals for the protection of indigenous peoples against white and even British men…were also intrinsic to the legitimation of Britain’s governance of newly colonized spaces.”5

Imperialists developed informal litmus tests designed to “prove” that various groups of barbarians were ripe for colonization.

See the rest here

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Opposing War Is The First Step Toward Moral Politics: Notes From The Edge Of The Narrative Matrix

Posted by M. C. on December 16, 2022

This is brain poison. Can you think of a belief system more toxic for important critical thought than one which says you must forcefully attack any dissent against the most dangerous agendas of the most powerful people in your world? I can’t. It’s a great way to keep people stupid, quiet and obedient.

Caitlin Johnstone

https://open.substack.com/pub/caitlinjohnstone/p/opposing-war-is-the-first-step-toward?utm_source=share&utm_medium=android

Forcefully opposing the warmongering and imperialism of your rulers is the very first step toward political morality. It’s not the only step, but it is the first step, because if you haven’t taken that step then no other ostensibly moral politics you might espouse are meaningful. 

Your anti-capitalism is meaningless if you’re not aggressively opposing your government’s mass military murders for power and profit. Your anti-racism is meaningless if you’re not aggressively opposing your government’s butchery and exploitation of brown-skinned people overseas. If you’re not forcefully opposing your government’s warmongering and imperialism, then the rest of your politics are irrelevant, because they are false. A sincerely antiwar right-winger with all the wrong positions on all other issues is still a much better person than you are.

When I see a lefty voicing solid perspectives without also aggressively opposing the warmongering, militarism and imperialism of their rulers, I personally just ignore them, because their failure in that one area has made a lie of their successes in all the other areas.

If this seems strange or not obvious to you, it’s simply because you have not spent enough time sincerely contemplating the immense suffering and savagery that is inflicted upon our world by war and imperialism, or learned enough about who the worst offenders are on that front. Literally the only reason western warmongering isn’t met with a backlash of horror and outrage is because it’s been so normalized and propaganda-distorted for us. If we could see what our rulers are doing to people with fresh eyes, we would fall to our knees and scream with rage.

War is the single worst thing in the world. It’s the most insane thing humans do. The most ruinous. The most traumatizing. The least sustainable. And the US-centralized power alliance is its most egregious perpetrator, by a massive margin.

There’s no excuse for ignoring this.

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Saying a US politician is bad on foreign policy but good on domestic policy is like saying a serial killer was nice to his family. It’s like, okay, who gives a fuck? They’re mass murderers and you should hate them.

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It’s a bit nutty how the term “Old Left” gets used to describe lefties who oppose war and distrust the US intelligence cartel instead of simply acknowledging that the real left has been effectively stomped out by propaganda and psyops.

“You’re the Old Left. Those people over there cheering internet censorship and proxy warfare and nuclear brinkmanship, they’re the left now.”

Are you sure? Are you sure they’re not just a bunch of brainwashed dupes? Because they look an awful lot like brainwashed dupes.

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Two types of foreign policy

Posted by M. C. on July 7, 2021

Foreign policy aims at preventing conflicts with neighbors and developing their peaceful relations. However, Westerners have abandoned this objective to adopt the promotion of their collective interests to the detriment of other actors.

https://www.voltairenet.org/article213605.html

by Thierry Meyssan

Each century of international relations is marked by the initiatives of a few exceptional men. Their approach to their countries’ foreign relations is based on common principles.

Let us take as recent examples the cases of the Indian Jawaharlal Nehru, the Egyptian Gamal Abdel Nasser, the Indonesian Soekarno, the Chinese Zhou Enlai, the French Charles De Gaulle, the Venezuelan Hugo Chávez, and today the Russian Vladimir Putin or the Syrian Bashar al-Assad.

Identity or Geopolitics

First and foremost, these men sought to develop their countries. They did not base their foreign policy on a geopolitical strategy, but on the identity of their country. On the contrary, the current West considers international relations as a chessboard on which one could impose a World Order through a geopolitical strategy.

The term “geopolitics” was created at the end of the 19th century by the German Friedrich Ratzel. He also invented the concept of “vital space” dear to the Nazis. According to him, it was legitimate to divide the world into large empires, including Europe and the Middle East under German domination.

Later, the American Alfred Mahan dreamed of a geopolitics based on the control of the seas. He influenced President Theodore Roosevelt, who launched the United States into a policy of conquering the straits and transoceanic channels.

The British Halford John Mackinder conceived the planet as a main land (Africa, Europe and Asia) and two large islands (the Americas and Australia). He posits that control of the main land is only possible by conquering the great plain of central Europe and western Siberia.

Finally, a fourth author, the American Nicolas Spykman, attempted a synthesis of the two previous ones. He influenced Franklin Roosevelt and the policy of containment of the Soviet Union, that is to say the Cold War. It was taken up by Zbigniew Brzezinski.

Geopolitics in the strict sense of the term is therefore not a science, but a strategy of domination.

Smart power

If we go back to the examples of the great men of the XX-XXI centuries who were acclaimed not only at home, but abroad, for their foreign policy, we see that it was not linked to their military capabilities. They did not try to conquer or annex new territories, but to spread the image they had of their own country and its culture. Of course, if they also had a powerful army -and therefore the atomic bomb- like De Gaulle and Putin, they could make themselves heard better. But that was not the main thing for them.

Each of these great men also developed the culture of his country (Charles De Gaulle with Andre Malraux). It was very important for them to magnify the artistic creations of their country and to weld their people around them. Then to project their culture abroad.

In a way, this is the “Smart Power” of which the American Joseph Nye spoke. Culture is worth as much as cannon as long as you know how to use it. Why doesn’t anyone consider attacking the Vatican, which has no army? Because that would shock everyone.

Equality

States are like the men who compose them. They want peace, but they easily make war on each other. They aspire to the application of certain principles, but sometimes neglect them at home and even more with others.

When the League of Nations was created at the end of the First World War, all member states were declared equal, but the British and the Americans refused to consider all peoples as equal in law. It was their refusal that led to Japanese expansionism.

The United Nations, which replaced the League of Nations after the Second World War, endorsed the equality of peoples, but not the Anglo-Saxons in practice. Today, Westerners create intergovernmental organizations on all subjects, for example freedom of the press or the fight against cyber-crime. But they do it among themselves, excluding other cultures, notably Russian and Chinese. They create these organizations to replace the United Nations forums where all are represented.

Let there be no mistake: it is perfectly legitimate, for example, to bring together the G7 to get along with one’s friends, but it is not at all acceptable to claim to define the rules of the world economy. What’s more, by excluding the world’s largest economy, China, from the meeting.

Law and rules

The idea of a legal regulation of international relations was pushed by the Russian Tsar Nicholas II. It was he who convened the International Peace Conference of 1899 in The Hague (Netherlands). The French radical republicans, led by the future Nobel Peace Prize winner Léon Bourgeois, laid the foundations of international law.

The idea is simple: only principles adopted in common are acceptable, never those imposed by the strongest. These principles must reflect the diversity of humanity. Thus, international law began with tsarists and republicans, Russians and French.

However, this idea was deviated with the creation of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (self-proclaimed “sole legitimate decision-making center”), then with the Warsaw Pact. These two alliances (Nato from its creation, the Pact from the Brezhnev doctrine onwards) were nothing more than “collective defense arrangements intended to serve the particular interests of the great powers”. In this sense, they formally contravene the UN Charter. Hence the Bandung Conference (1955) during which the non-aligned countries reaffirmed the Hague principles.

This problem is resurfacing today, not because there is a new movement to escape the Cold War, but because the West wants to return to a Cold War against Russia and China this time.

Systematically, in all their final communiqués, the summits of the Western powers no longer refer to international law, but to “rules”, never explicitly stated. These rules, which are contrary to law, are enacted a posteriori as often as necessary by the West. They then speak of “effective multilateralism”, that is to say, in practice, of violation of the democratic principles of the UN.

Thus, while international law recognizes the right of peoples to self-determination, the West recognized the independence of Kosovo without a referendum and in violation of a Security Council resolution, but rejected the independence of Crimea, even though it had been approved by referendum. Western rules are “Rights à la carte”.

The West claims that every country must respect the equality of its inhabitants in law, but it is fiercely opposed to equality between states.

Imperialism or patriotism

The West, self-proclaimed as the “camp of liberal democracy” and the “international community,” accuses all those who resist them of being “authoritarian nationalists.

This leads to artificial distinctions and grotesque amalgams with the sole aim of legitimizing imperialism. So why oppose democracy and nationalism? Indeed, democracy can only exist within a national framework. And why associate nationalism and authoritarianism? If not to discredit nations.

None of the great leaders I mentioned was American or a follower. That is the key.Thierry Meyssan Translation
Roger Lagassé

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Ideological Imperialism Is Leading to a Bad End – LewRockwell

Posted by M. C. on February 6, 2021

During the Cold War, the United States regularly dumped over regimes we believed imperiled our cause — Iran in 1953, Guatemala in 1954, the Congo in the 1960s. After the Cold War, the United States was a major mover in the “color revolutions” that changed regimes in Ukraine and Georgia.

According to Victoria Nuland, then of the State Department, now back again, $5 billion was pumped in to effect the overthrow of the democratically elected pro-Russian regime in Kiev and its replacement by a pro-American one.

https://www.lewrockwell.com/2021/02/patrick-j-buchanan/ideological-imperialism-is-leading-to-a-bad-end/

By Patrick J. Buchanan

When it was learned in 2016 that Russia may have hacked the emails of John Podesta and the DNC, and passed the fruits on to WikiLeaks to aid candidate Donald Trump, mighty was the outrage of the American establishment.

If Russia’s security services filched those emails, and a troll farm in Saint Petersburg sent tweets and texts to stir up rancor in our politics, it was said, this was an attack on American democracy and its most sacred of rituals — the elections by which we chose our leaders.

Yet, when it comes to interfering in the affairs of other nations, how sinless, how blameless, are we Americans?

During the Cold War, the United States regularly dumped over regimes we believed imperiled our cause — Iran in 1953, Guatemala in 1954, the Congo in the 1960s. After the Cold War, the United States was a major mover in the “color revolutions” that changed regimes in Ukraine and Georgia.

According to Victoria Nuland, then of the State Department, now back again, $5 billion was pumped in to effect the overthrow of the democratically elected pro-Russian regime in Kiev and its replacement by a pro-American one.

This was the triggering event that caused Vladimir Putin to annex Crimea to secure his country’s Black Sea naval base at Sevastopol.

Consider the reaction in this capital to the arrest and imprisonment of dissident Alexei Navalny, following his return from Germany, where he had been treated for chemical poisoning, allegedly by Putin’s security services.

In an editorial, “Nothing But a Poisoner,” The Washington Post thundered:

“Western governments should be doing what they can to help this unprecedented challenge to Mr. Putin’s autocracy survive and grow…

“Mr. Putin has dedicated himself to exploiting the weaknesses in democratic systems. Now is the time to return the favor.”

Consider what the Post is calling for here:

The U.S. and NATO nations should openly side with protesters in Russia’s cities whose goal is the overthrow of Putin and of the internationally recognized government of Russia.

How, one wonders, would Americans react if Putin openly urged worldwide support for the “Stop the Steal” mob that invaded the U.S. Capitol to overturn the results of the Nov. 3 election?

Though Americans are divided over racial, cultural, social and moral issues, liberal interventionists still talk of our “universal values” that represent the future toward which all nations should aspire. Among these are the values of democracy as practiced in the United States.

These are the standards by which other nations are to be judged. And nations that do not conform to these standards are candidates for U.S. interference in their affairs. Ours is an ideological imperialism of a rare order.

Where did we Americans acquire the right to intervene in the internal affairs of nations — be they autocracies, monarchies or republics — that do not threaten or attack us?

When we have intervened in these nations militarily, disaster has most often been the result. It was partly because the regimes of Libya, Syria, Iraq and Yemen did not comport to our ideas of good governance that we went in militarily to change them. Result: millions of dead, wounded and displaced Arabs and Muslims all across the Middle East. A historic calamity.

When the Arab Spring arose, we embraced it. The democratic revolution was here! And what happened in the largest Arab nation that responded as we insisted, Egypt?

An ally of 30 years, President Hosni Mubarak, was ousted. The Muslim Brotherhood was voted into power. It was replaced a year later by a new general, Abdel Fattah el-Sissi, a man more ruthless than Mubarak.

This week, the generals in Myanmar (Burma) ousted the civilian leadership of the country and assumed full power. President Joe Biden reacted reflexively, calling it a “direct assault on the country’s transition to democracy.”

“In a democracy,” said Biden, “force should never seek to override the will of the people or attempt to erase the outcome of a credible election.”

Derek Mitchell of the National Democratic Institute, a subsidiary of the National Endowment for Democracy, explained: “Democracy is one of the pillars of the Biden Administration’s foreign policy agenda. They recognize they have to address this pretty seriously. The question is what to do.”

Actually, the larger question, the basic question is why the internal affairs of Burma, a nation 10,000 miles from the United States, are the business of the United States.

The post-Cold War world, where America stood in moral judgment of the democracy credentials of all other nations, and acted against those that did not sufficiently conform, is coming to an end.

And if we do not give up this ideological imperialism, that end, especially where Russia and China are concerned, could come sudden and soon.

The Best of Patrick J. Buchanan Patrick J. Buchanan is co-founder and editor of The American Conservative. He is also the author of Where the Right Went Wrong, and Churchill, Hitler, and the Unnecessary War. His latest book is Nixon’s White House Wars: The Battles That Made and Broke a President and Divided America Forever See his website.

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Despair, depression, and the inevitable rise of Trump 2.0: Glenn Greenwald tells RT his Biden administration predictions — RT USA News

Posted by M. C. on January 18, 2021

Biden is “somebody who has repeatedly supported militarism and imperialism” and “one of the crucial leading advocates of the invasion of Iraq,” he said. On the domestic front, Biden is “a loyal servant of the credit card and banking industry” and the “architect of the 1994 crime bill,” the latter of which has been blamed for dramatically upping the incarceration rate of black men in the US.

That leftists involved in Black Lives Matter protests rallied around Biden, given his involvement in passing the crime bill (he was one of 61 senators who voted for it) is “ironic,” Greenwald told Hedges, but also serves as an example of how the Democratic Party operates.

https://www.rt.com/usa/512749-greenwald-biden-elections-prediction/

America, Joe Biden says, “is back.” Beyond the sloganeering, journalist Glenn Greenwald reckons that means “militarism, imperialism, and corporatism,” he told RT’s Chris Hedges.

Glenn Greenwald is a lawyer who turned to journalism in 2005 to protest the suppression of Americans’ civil liberties under the Bush-Cheney ‘war on terror’. Greenwald came to international fame by breaking the Edward Snowden NSA whistleblower story in 2013. He later co-founded the Intercept, but quit the outlet in October after saying editors there suppressed his coverage of Democrat presidential candidate Joe Biden.

“I don’t think it’s particularly difficult… to know what to expect from the Biden administration,” the acclaimed American journalist told Chris Hedges, host of RT’s On Contact, on Sunday. Biden, Greenwald continued, has enjoyed a five-decade career in Washington and made his policy priorities well known over these years.

Biden is “somebody who has repeatedly supported militarism and imperialism” and “one of the crucial leading advocates of the invasion of Iraq,” he said. On the domestic front, Biden is “a loyal servant of the credit card and banking industry” and the “architect of the 1994 crime bill,” the latter of which has been blamed for dramatically upping the incarceration rate of black men in the US. 

That leftists involved in Black Lives Matter protests rallied around Biden, given his involvement in passing the crime bill (he was one of 61 senators who voted for it) is “ironic,” Greenwald told Hedges, but also serves as an example of how the Democratic Party operates.

“Democrats are very good at creating a brand that is radically different than the reality, but essentially the Democratic party serves militarism, imperialism, and corporatism,” he said. “That’s who funds them, that’s what they believe in. It’s why you see neocons migrating so comfortably back to the Democratic Party, why you see Bush and Cheney operatives cheering for Joe Biden, why Wall Street celebrated when he picked Kamala Harris.”

Biden’s campaign didn’t only draw support from the left – who Biden then spurned by packing his cabinet with Obama administration alumni while giving progressives like Bernie Sanders the cold shoulder. The former vice president was also supported by Republican hawks like Bill Kristol and Max Boot, as well as the much-maligned ‘Lincoln Project’ Republicans, who fundraised $67 million to shoot attack ads against Trump in the runup to November’s election.

The rallying of the establishment – Democrat and Republican alike – behind Biden could have far-reaching consequences, Greenwald warned.

“It’s not a coincidence that after eight years of Obama and Biden, we got Donald Trump,” he said. “Obviously, if you go back and do exactly the same thing that the ‘Obiden’ administration did for 8 years, which is what Biden’s preparing to do, any rational person has to expect the same outcome.”

The American middle class, Greenwald predicted, will “continue to be destroyed,” while companies “that have no allegiance to the US” will continue to outsource jobs. “Communities will continue to be ravaged with unemployment crises, drug addiction, suicide, depression, all the things that are dominating small American towns.” 

After what Hedges called a “third term of the Obama administration,” Greenwald warned that Biden could set the stage for a “smarter, more stable version” of Trump to take power.

Americans looking for in-depth coverage of the Biden administration will likely be short-changed. Four years of Donald Trump have birthed left-leaning journalists that cheer on the censorship of conservatives and deplatforming of “dangerous” voices, Greenwald believes. 

The left, he said, shows little objection to Biden because they “bought into the overarching narrative that there are only two choices – unite behind the Democratic Party and fight fascism and Hitler, or succumb to fascism.”

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New Opportunities for Marxists: Climate Change and Coronavirus | Mises Wire

Posted by M. C. on July 23, 2020

Many people do not know what capitalism really means. Capitalism is the social and economic order in which the means of production are privately owned. In its “pure” form, capitalism means unconditional respect of people’s private property, free markets, and, most importantly, a form of state that is confined to protecting people and their property against aggression from inside and outside the country’s borders. “Pure” capitalism is no doubt conducive to peaceful and productive cooperation nationally as well as internationally.

https://mises.org/wire/new-opportunities-marxists-climate-change-and-coronavirus

In The Communist Manifesto (1848) Karl Marx (1818–83) and Friedrich Engels (1820–95) predicted that capitalism would lead to the impoverishment of the laboring class. Why? Well, to raise profit on capital invested, Marx and Engels argued, entrepreneurs (the capitalists) would exploit the workers. They would reduce wages and worsen working conditions by, say, increasing working hours. From that viewpoint, Marx and Engels put forward an immiseration theory of capitalism.

Worker “Exploitation”

Marxists would not argue that workers’ wages would decline in absolute terms, but certainly in relative terms: the wage incomes of the many would rise less than the incomes of the capitalists, thereby making the former poorer compared to the latter over time. Especially in times of crisis, which are inevitable and recurrent in a capitalist economy, workers would be hit particularly hard, causing their economic and financial conditions to fall further behind of those of the capitalists.

Capitalist “Imperialism”

To make things worse, Marxists argue that capitalism would bring about violent colonialism and imperialism. As capitalists pay less for labor than what is appropriate, the workers cannot buy all available products. Profit-seeking capital is, therefore, seeking to open up new markets in other parts of the world. Conflicts over who controls what arise among nations, paving the way toward war. This is, in fact, the message Vladimir Lenin (1870–1924) hammered home to his readers in his 1917 book Imperialism: The Highest Stage of Capitalism.

If capitalism is bad—if it brings exploitation, misery, and even war to a great many people, and all this comes to the benefit of the capitalists—isn’t it rightful and consequential to do everything to overcome capitalism and replace it with socialism-communism, the alternatives said to bring peace, equality and happier life for the people in this world? Sound economics reveals that the Marxist critique of capitalism, as well as the high-flying enthusiasm for socialism-communism, is tantamount to outright intellectual confusion.

What Capitalism Really Is: Peaceful Cooperation

Many people do not know what capitalism really means. Capitalism is the social and economic order in which the means of production are privately owned. In its “pure” form, capitalism means unconditional respect of people’s private property, free markets, and, most importantly, a form of state that is confined to protecting people and their property against aggression from inside and outside the country’s borders. “Pure” capitalism is no doubt conducive to peaceful and productive cooperation nationally as well as internationally.

It is capitalism that makes mass production possible—the production of goods and services for the consumption of the greatest number of people. The productivity gains that it creates result in a tendency toward a continuous increase in people’s average living standard. Producers are subject to the profit and loss principle: they are economically rewarded only if and when their products meet consumers’ preferences. If they don’t, entrepreneurs will suffer losses, forcing them to improve their output to the benefit of their customers.

Pure capitalism not has only a built-in mechanism to improve the masses’ material well-being. What is particularly wonderful is that under pure capitalism, people’s wages do not depend on individual workers’ productivity, but the marginal productivity of labor in general. Assume a firm makes a productive innovation. To hire new labor, it has to pay higher wages compared to those paid by other employers. The latter, to retain their staff, will also have to offer a higher wage—to the benefit of less productive workers.

It should also be noted here that pure capitalism encourages the division of labor among people, nationally and internationally. This, in turn, entices people to seek peaceful cooperation rather than conflict: everyone realizes that it pays off to cooperate, that this is mutually beneficial to all parties involved. In other words: pure capitalism is a recipe for peace. In a world of pure capitalism, there would simply be no reason for large-scale violent conflicts, let alone state wars.

Interventionism vs. Capitalism

Why do so many people harbor resentment or even hate against the concept of capitalism? One answer is that they presumably look around and see the many evils in this world, such as the recurrence of financial and economic crises; mass unemployment; bailout programs that make big corporations richer, disregarding the fate of small and medium-sized firms; chronically rising costs of living; growing income and wealth inequality; and growing geopolitical tensions and conflicts.

Unfortunately, all these evils are attributed to capitalism. A fatal conclusion, though, because there is no pure capitalism, neither in the US nor in Europe, Asia, Latin America, or Africa. What we find are interventionist-collectivist and sometimes even socialist economic and societal systems. Especially in the Western world, basically all states, and the special interest groups that exert great influence over them, have succeeded in increasingly replacing what little is left of the capitalist system in recent decades.

States have interfered in all areas of people’s lives. Be it education (kindergarten, schools, universities), health, pensions, transport, law and order, money and credit, or the environment, the states and their governments have become major players in markets for goods and services, turning free markets into hampered markets, raising taxes ever higher, and increasingly undermining and even destroying the institution of private property.

Intervention Cripples the Wealth Creation Offered by Capitalism

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PLUNDERING IRAQ « Eric Margolis

Posted by M. C. on November 18, 2019

https://ericmargolis.com/2019/11/plundering-iraq/

by

Victor Hugo said of the devastated Balkans in the 19th century: ‘The Turks have passed by here. All is in ruins or mourning.’

Welcome to modern Iraq.

The British were always masters of efficient imperialism. In the 19th century, they managed to rule a quarter of the Earth’s surface with only a relatively small army supported by a great fleet.

Many of their imperial subjects were so overawed by the pomp and circumstance of British rule that they often willingly cooperated, or at least bent the knee.

Call it colonialism 101. Ardent students of Roman history, the British early on adopted the Roman strategy of ‘divide et impera’, divide and conquer. The application of this strategy allowed the British Empire to rule over vast numbers of people with minimal force.

In my last book, `American Raj,’ I sought to show how the American Empire was using techniques of the British Imperial Raj (raj = rule in Hindi) employed in India to control the Mideast. Now, we are seeing the same strategy in forgotten Iraq.

Few talk or think about Iraq these days; the media ignores this important but demolished nation. Iraq, let’s recall, was the target of a major western aggression concocted by George W. Bush, Dick Cheney and Britain’s Tony Blair, financed and encouraged by the Gulf oil sheikdoms and Saudi Arabia.

Most people don’t understand that Iraq remains a US-occupied nation. We hear nothing about the billions of dollars of Iraqi oil extracted by big US oil firms since 2003. For the US, Iraq was a treasure house of oil with 12% of world reserves. It was OPEC’s 2nd largest producer.

Recall one of the leading neocons who engineered the invasion of Iraq, Paul Wolfowitz, claimed the US could finance its entire invasion of Iraq (he estimated the cost at about $70 billion) by plundering Iraq’s oil. Today, the cost of the occupation has reached over $1 trillion. Wolfie is nowhere to be seen. Meanwhile, President Trump says the US will grab Syria’s oil fields. Wherever it may be, oil is as American as apple pie.

So where did all the money go? A large amount for corrupt Iraqi politicians and more for the ten plus US bases in Iraq. Perhaps a modest payoff for neighboring Iran, and Iraq’s Shia clergy, or helping finance Iraq and Syria’s ISIS. But that still leaves a huge amount of unaccounted cash from oil plundered by the US. One day we may find out.

In recent weeks, Shia and Sunni Iraqis have been rioting to protest continuing US proxy rule via a Washington-installed puppet regime in Baghdad that, curiously, also has some Iranian support. As of this writing, 120 Iraqis have been shot dead and some 6,000 wounded. This while scores of Palestinians are being killed by Israel in Gaza…

Today, Iraq is far worse off than during the days of Saddam Hussein. It is being plundered and exploited while its people suffer. So much for ‘liberation.’

Be seeing you

The Forgotten Plunder of Iraq | Common Dreams Views

 

 

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