UK general election reveals crisis of capitalist rule

Chris Marsden

The campaign for Britain’s May 7 general election has brought into sharp relief the fragility and instability of the country’s political system. The crisis engulfing the UK—Europe’s second largest economy, the world’s third largest share market and a key political and military ally of US imperialism—has major implications for political developments worldwide.

With just 10 days to go, no one can even begin to predict the election’s outcome.

The ruling Conservatives are polling slightly ahead or on par with Labour, but without sufficient votes to form a government. The Liberal Democrats face electoral meltdown as punishment for their role as partners in the Tory-led coalition. Labour has been unable to benefit substantially from massive anti-Tory sentiment due to its own lurch further to the right, meaning it too must look to some form of coalition.

Business wants the Tories in office as a proven vehicle for continued austerity. However, it fears that, given Prime Minister David Cameron’s promise of a 2017 in/out referendum on European Union membership, the Tories’ possible reliance on the UK Independence Party will result in a drawn-out “Brexit.” This is now considered by many in Europe as a more fundamental threat to the stability of the continent than the worsening crisis in Greece.

At the same time, the possibility of Labour Party leader Ed Miliband having to rely on the support of the Scottish National Party (SNP), predicted to wipe out Labour in Scotland, raises the spectre of a renewed push for Scottish independence and the break-up of the UK.

No combination of parties in government is excluded, including a government of national unity involving the Tories and Labour. Leading academics have warned that a possible second election is “extremely likely” and assessed the chance of a new coalition lasting five years to be “miniscule.”

The common theme of political commentary is the likelihood of a descent into prolonged political uncertainty and crisis.

One prominent commentator, Anatole Kaletsky, writes, “In the years ahead, Britain will likely be Europe’s most politically unpredictable country.”

The Economist speaks of “the great fracturing,” worrying that “if the parliamentary system comes to be seen as both unfair and ineffectual, then it is in for a crisis of legitimacy.”

There are dire warnings of companies relocating and investors withdrawing money from the UK. The banking giant HSBC is considering moving its headquarters from London over fears of an exit from the EU. Investment firm Nutmeg has cut its holdings of blue chip British shares by two thirds, noting that US investors sold $58 billion of British shares prior to last September’s Scottish referendum and has since bought back only half of what was unloaded.

No bourgeois commentator can honestly address the underlying reasons for the crisis of rule now emerging in the UK.

As with the conservative New Democracy and social democratic PASOK in Greece, the Popular Party and Socialist Party in Spain, and the Gaullist Union for a Popular Movement and Socialist Party in France, the traditional mechanisms through which the bourgeoisie has governed have been eviscerated due to their imposition of savage austerity measures.

This is an election dominated by one issue above all others—the ever-widening social chasm between a thin layer of the super-rich and the broad mass of working people, who comprise the vast majority of the population.

This week, the Sunday Times noted that Britain’s super-rich are now more than twice as rich as they were in 2009. The wealthiest 1,000 people based in Britain are collectively worth £547 billion. There are now 117 sterling billionaires based in Britain, more per head of population than in any other country.

This obscene wealth is being gouged out of the working class.

The Tories are pledged to tens of billions of pounds in new cuts, including £12 billion in welfare. Labour has promised a “Budget Responsibility Lock” committing it to cut the deficit every year.

The SNP, Plaid Cymru (Party of Wales) and Green Party pose as anti-austerity alternatives, seeking to exploit popular opposition to the Tories and Labour. However, none of these capitalist parties offers anything more than a somewhat slower pace in the implementation of austerity measures.

The Institute of Fiscal Studies found the SNP’s budgetary policies to be “essentially the same” as Labour’s. All of these parties have made clear that the votes they receive will be handed to Labour in a “progressive alliance”—in reality, an “austerity alliance”—should the Tories be unable to form a government.

The nationalist SNP and Plaid Cymru and their allies among the pseudo-left groups play the essential role of dividing the working class in the face of the common enemy and tying workers to one or another section of the bourgeoisie.

The public declarations of the major parties are worthless lies designed to conceal what is being planned. The calculations they make for public consumption are based on continued economic growth at a time when a fresh plunge into crisis for the British, European and world economy is inevitable.

Looming over the election is the turn to militarism and war.

There is a conspiracy of silence over this danger. Meanwhile, against a background of massive naval exercises off Scotland, air war games over South Wales involving 13,000 NATO troops, and the repeated scrambling of fighter jets and ships to escort Russian vessels out of UK waters, the Tories and Labour are competing to demonstrate which party will be the firmer ally of the United States in the escalating conflict with Russia and China.

The election campaign began with the despatch of British military advisors and trainers to Ukraine and Syria. Either country could become the flashpoint for a broader war.

The SNP and Plaid Cymru pose as opponents of the Trident nuclear submarine programme while making clear their loyalty to NATO. They and the Greens speak of developing Britain’s conventional armed forces.

The Socialist Equality Party is standing Katie Rhodes in Glasgow Central and David O’Sullivan in Holborn & St. Pancras in London. We advance an independent political perspective to mobilise the working class in the fight for a workers’ government pledged to socialist policies as part of the struggle for a United Socialist States of Europe and a world socialist federation.

Our election campaign has been conducted as an integral component of a worldwide political offensive to establish the International Committee of the Fourth International as the “international centre of revolutionary opposition to the resurgence of imperialist violence and militarism,” as called for in the ICFI statement of July 3 2014.

Earthquake kills thousands in Nepal

W.A Sunil

More than 3,200 people are dead and over 6,500 injured after a major earthquake struck Nepal just before noon on Saturday local time. The death toll is likely to rise sharply as more bodies are pulled from the rubble and rescue teams begin to reach remote villages presently cut off. Thousands of people are homeless and most people are living outside amid fears of continuing aftershocks. Thirty of the country’s 75 districts have been affected.

The earthquake registered magnitude 7.8 on the Richter scale and its epicentre was located about 80 kilometres west of the capital Kathmandu. Twelve aftershocks occurred on Saturday alone with another major tremor of magnitude 6.7 yesterday.

The quake was felt as far as the Indian capital New Delhi and badly affected the states of Bihar and Uttar Pradesh in northern India killing 58 people. In Bangladesh two people were killed in the capital Dhaka and the north-western district of Pabna. The shock waves were also felt in Pakistan and in neighbouring regions of China.

The areas in and around Kathmandu, where more than 5 million people live, were among the worst affected. Shoddy buildings compounded by the lack of enforced building standards meant that much of the city was at risk. Many of the older buildings have been reduced to rubble. The historic nine-storey Dharahara tower, re-built in 1832 after the earthquake of that year, collapsed, killing or trapping an estimated 250 people.

Much of the capital is without transport, electricity or power. According to a UN report, “In Kathmandu Valley, hospitals are overcrowded, running out of room for storing dead bodies and also running short of emergency supplies. BIR hospital, a major hospital in Kathmandu is treating people in the streets … The majority of population is remaining outside houses due to fear of aftershocks and structural damage to buildings.”

Save the Children official Gary Shaye explained to the New York Times that Kathmandu was “densely, densely packed.” He warned that aid workers were in “a race against time” with the monsoon season due to begin in June. “Even if we had all the plastic sheeting and temporary shelter, is this going to be adequate?” he asked.

Outside the capital, many villages can only be reached by foot or helicopter. World Vision aid worker Matt Darvas told the New York Times: “Villages like this are routinely affected by landslides, and it’s not uncommon for entire villages of 200, 300, up to 1,000 to be completely buried by rock falls.”

An avalanche triggered by the quake killed at least 18 people and injured 61 at Mount Everest base camp.

The Himalayan region including Nepal is especially prone to earthquakes. The last major quake to hit the area was in Sichuan in south-west China in 2008 where some 90,000 people were killed. Nepal was struck in 1934 by a massive tremor that killed more than 10,000 people and another 7,000 in the state of Bihar in India.

Though an earthquake is the product of enormous natural forces, the extent of death and destruction has definite social roots—the product of the lack of preparation and planning and buildings and infrastructure that are not quake-proof. The worst hit and most neglected areas are invariably the poorest.

While it is difficult to make accurate predictions about when, where and with what intensity an earthquake will strike, more general predictions have been made. In 2013, seismologist Vinod Kumar Gaur warned in the Hindu: Calculations show that there is sufficient accumulated energy, now to produce an 8-magnitude earthquake. I cannot say when.”

However, the Nepalese government has done little to prepare. The country has been mired in protracted political crisis for a decade after the monarchy was abolished and the Communist Party of Nepal Maoist (CPN-M) was integrated into the political establishment. Bitter haggling between rival sections of the ruling elite stalled attempts to draft a new constitution and none of the major parties has the slightest concern for the plight of workers and the rural poor.

Information and Broadcasting Minister Minendra Rijal told Indian television that the government had “launched a massive rescue and rehabilitation action plan and lots needs to be done.” However, due to lack of necessary heavy equipment and aircraft, rescue operations have been slow, risking many more deaths.

Nepal is one of the poorest countries in the world. Oxfam executive director Winnie Biyanyima explained: “Half of Nepal’s 28 million population don’t have access to improved sanitation and live below the poverty line, around one-in-three of them in severe poverty.” Responsibility for the plight of the people rests not just with the Nepalese government but with the major powers that provide a pittance in aid, including to prepare for a major earthquake.

The British-based Economist pointed out: “There had in theory been abundant time for many international agencies and other aid donors to plan for an earthquake in Nepal, which is said to have 92 active fault lines. Nepal is stuffed with foreign experts, recruited to focus on precisely this sort of problem.” Yet apart from strengthening some school and hospital buildings, very little has been done.

The major powers while putting on a show of sympathy have provided little in the way of relief aid to date. India has deployed 13 military transport aircraft and a 40-member disaster response team while a Chinese search and rescue team has already arrived in Kathmandu. The British government has made $7.5 million available to charities working in Nepal and Norway has promised $4 million.

All of these pledges are far short of what is immediately required, let alone the financial assistance that will be desperately needed for reconstruction. To date, the US, via its embassy in Kathmandu, has offered a miserable $1 million in assistance and is sending a 62-person disaster response team.

The primary motivation in offering aid is to advance economic and strategic interests. Over the past decade, Nepal, which borders both China and India, has become the focus for intensifying geopolitical rivalry. That has been intensified by the intervention of the US, which as part of its “pivot to Asia” is seeking to encircle China through a series of military partnerships and ties, including with Nepal.

It is no accident that when the earthquake struck two teams of US Special Forces were already in the country on a training exercise. No doubt in the coming days Washington will up its pathetic offer of aid, all of which will be carefully calibrated to bring Nepal more firmly within the US sphere of influence.

Bureaucratized murder and the “war on terror”

Joseph Kishore

On Sunday, the New York Times published a lead article devoted to the Obama administration’s drone assassination program. The article describes a mechanism for state-sanctioned assassination that has become thoroughly bureaucratized and institutionalized. It makes clear that the assassination program is not a rogue operation of the CIA, but a central component of American foreign policy, supported by both Democrats and Republicans.

The Times report does not have the character of an exposé. Rather, it seeks to provide a rationalization for the program while desensitizing the population to the crimes of the state and implicating the American people in these crimes.

The beginning of the article is chilling. “About once a month,” authors Mark Mazzetti and Matt Apuzzo write, “staff members of the congressional intelligence committees drive across the Potomac River to CIA headquarters in Langley, Va., and watch videos of people being blown up.” The “macabre ritual,” the Times states, involves a review of “footage of drone strikes in Pakistan and other countries and a sampling of the intelligence buttressing each strike…”

These regular viewings of the documentary record of CIA assassinations are Congress’s counterpart to the “Terror Tuesday” meetings where Obama consults with intelligence and military officials to decide who will be included on the “kill lists” drawn up by the state.

The Times article appeared three days after Obama acknowledged that a drone attack in Pakistan in January had killed two hostages, an American and an Italian. The article makes clear that, Obama’s thoroughly insincere “apology” notwithstanding, the CIA drone program, which has already killed thousands of people in Pakistan, Yemen, Somalia and other countries, will continue unabated.

The newspaper notes the “unwavering support from Capitol Hill” as “one reason the CIA’s killing missions are embedded in American warfare and unlikely to change…” Among the most fervent advocates of the assassination program is Democrat Dianne Feinstein, the former chairwoman of the Senate Intelligence Committee.

The Times article for the first time names several individuals who have played a critical role in developing the CIA killing program. This includes Michael D’Andrea, a top CIA official who, according to the newspaper, “was chief of operations during the birth of the agency’s detention and interrogation program” before becoming head of the CIA Counter-terrorism Center and an architect of the drone assassination program.

The involvement of D’Andrea highlights the continuity between the Bush administration’s program of torture and the Obama administration’s program of assassination. Last year, the Senate Intelligence Committee published a detailed report on CIA torture, which, in the months since, has simply been dropped by the media and the political establishment. Those responsible for the torture remain in influential posts, including D’Andrea and Obama’s current CIA director, John Brennan, another architect of the assassination program.

At the top of the list of architects is Obama himself, who, during his more than six years in office, has worked to develop the pseudo-legal theory that the president has the authority to kill anyone, anywhere in the world, including US citizens, without due process or any judicial review. When Obama acknowledged in 2013 that he had ordered the killing of at least one US citizen, Anwar al-Awlaki, he made a pretense of calling for stricter regulation of the CIA drone program, but even this fig leaf has been abandoned.

Perhaps the most extraordinary aspect of the murder program is the matter-of-fact character of its operations and the way they are simply accepted by the media as part of the normal course of events. The same day the Time sarticle appeared, representatives of the state and the media assembled at the White House Correspondents Dinner to take part in the annual joke-punctuated celebration of wealth and influence.

It is taken for granted that the United States has the right to kill anyone it chooses once it proclaims the victim to be a “terrorist”—a category that covers any individual or group that opposes American policy in any particular region of the globe.

The CIA regularly fires off drone missiles against unidentified targets, often simply because they match “signatures,” i.e., a gathering of military-aged men traveling in a convoy. Civilian casualties, as a Guardian article put it, are considered a “cost of doing business.”

Routinized murder—such is the essence of the “war on terror.” Proclaimed nearly 15 years ago, this phony war has become a catch-all justification for neocolonial conquest and military aggression. Despite the multiple catastrophes that have resulted from this “war,” support for it within the political establishment has not only not diminished, it has grown.

Those who set government policy in the United States regularly carry out activities that were previously considered high crimes and misdemeanors. The administration that oversees the whole process represents the alliance of the financial aristocracy with the military-intelligence apparatus, buttressed by sections of the affluent middle class that have reconciled themselves to policies that go beyond even those carried out by the Bush administration.

The entire state and all of official public opinion are implicated in these crimes, making clear that war abroad and repression at home cannot be stopped apart from the independent mobilization of the working class in opposition to the Obama administration and both capitalist parties.

21st Centry Challenges To American Democracy- Part II -Rising Public Debt, Dwindling Democracy

Jon Kofas

Conservatives attribute the rising public debt to government spending on costly entitlement and social programs. They conclude that deficit financing for entitlement and social programs poses a threat to the free market which they equate with democracy. Liberals argue that the fiscal system favors the top income groups and such capital concentration poses a threat to a pluralistic society and the market itself. The public debt is indeed massive by historical standards for a peacetime economy. However, the US still has the advantage of using the dollar as a reserve currency that is more universally used for trade and transactions than any other, thus keeping interest rates low and funding “vertical economic growth” focused on capital goods and luxuries, as opposed to horizontal growth focused on labor intensive projects for the benefit of the mass consumer. (Romina Boccia, “How the United States’ High Debt Will Weaken the Economy and Hurt Americans. The Heritage Foundation”, 12 February 2013)

With rising GDP-to-debt ratio rates and with other reserve currencies on the horizon, the US does not have the luxury it has enjoyed since Bretton Woods in 1945 with regard to the dollar as the premier world currency. If the public debt is not contained by slashing the corporate welfare programs through subsidies and fiscal system as well as trimming defense that remains the largest in the world, then US debt-to-GDP ratio will double by the middle of the century. This will mean a weaker dollar and a weaker and smaller middle class that historically has been the backbone of American democracy. While the public debt by itself does not constitute a threat to American democracy, combined with other egregious policies it is a challenge because it is not creating wealth and raising productivity for the benefit of all, but concentrating wealth for the top one percent of the richest Americans.

Because there are foreign buyers of US treasuries and largely because China needs the US as a market as much as the US needs China to buy bonds, the dollar remains stable for now despite a debt-to-GDP ratio that could reach 190% by the early 2030s, according to the Congressional Budget Office. In 2008 when the global financial crisis started as a result of the subprime lending among other bank and insurance company scandals for which the US taxpayers had to pay bailout funds, US debt-to-GDP ratio was just 64%. In 2014 the ratio stands at 102%, costing taxpayers $223 billion. Servicing the debt amounts to 6.5% of the budget, which is still less than half of what it costs Japan to service its debt. The public debt per se is not the issue assuming that funding is used to finance future growth and development.

If there is continued borrowing to finance the military industrial complex and to continue the corporate subsidies, instead of financing labor-intensive economic growth, then the debt cycle will continue growing and falling more heavily on workers and middle class whose living standards will suffer more losses. While the US was a net debtor nation from its independence until the outbreak of WWI, the debt in the 19th century was invested in the civilian sector resulting in rapid modernization of the agrarian and mining sectors as well as manufacturing. It was not until the late 1880s-early 1890s that funds were expended to build a major defense sector. The result was upward socioeconomic mobility. After 1980, debt at unsustainable levels has been crippling, especially when it was not directed toward productive enterprises that create more wealth for the broader middle class. As the popular base of American democracy weakens partly because of the rising debt, this will have an impact on democracy no differently than in other debtor countries under austerity.

Finally, the debt burden falls inordinately on the middle class and workers, undermining not just social programs that would otherwise benefit society, but the fabric of a democratic society with a modicum of social justice as its base. One could argue that this would all be well worth it if it resulted in “horizontal economic growth” in which the broader middle class and workers benefited. However, debt crises only result in massive capital concentration and austerity politics results in authoritarianism. Debt becomes a creditor’s tool of influencing if not determining policies that the debtor must follow, thus losing national sovereignty. (Michael Moran, The Reckoning: Debt, Democracy, and the Future of American Power; Samuel Rines, “How Debt Destroys Democracy” The National Interest, October 2013; Andrew Ross, Democracy and Debt. http://what-democracy-looks-like.com/democracy-and-debt/)

Systemic Inequality, Corporate Power, and Parasitic Economics.

When the American Republic was founded, there was an institution of slavery, native Americans were marginalized with their condition becoming much worse a century later, women had no political rights, and social inequality was very much alive and deemed “normal”. Despite progress toward democratization of society in the past 200 years, the republic remains an unequal society in the early 21st century characterized class, racial, ethnic, and gender inequality. If we assume that industrial, technological and scientific progress necessarily yielded overall progress for society, including a course greater not less democracy, it would not be a wrong assumption. However, it would be wrong to assume that the Industrial and Scientific revolutions in 19th and 20th century America necessarily represent a parallel course toward democratization. The reason for this is that as much in the 19th century as in our own times, affluence simply buys influence. (Martin Gilens, Affluence and Influence: Economic Inequality and Political Power in America)

Hardly any political observer of American politics is unaware of how money buys favors that includes everything from subsidies to corporations to export their products, to tax breaks and tax loopholes for the very rich. Just one look at the occupancy rates of lobbyist office space in Washington D.C., northern Virginia and southern Maryland, and immediately there is a realization that entrenched corporate interests have a keen interest in determining policy. In some cases, the lobbyists actually draft the bills that go before Congress, in others, lobbyists have the last word and only conflicts among the disparate capitalist interests within the same sector or in different sectors are resolved through political compromise. (Ailsa Chang, “When Lobbyists Literally Write the Bill”, 11 November 2013,WWW.NPR.ORG; Jeffery Birnbaum, The Lobbyists: How Influence Peddlers Work Their Way in Washington)

If lobbyists determine policy on behalf of business, and if politicians do not take into account the general welfare of the broader population, is it any wonder that for the last four decades the US has been experiencing a downward social mobility and decline in democracy? One of the characteristics of American society in the early 21st century is inherited socioeconomic immobility. Unlike the children of the working class in the post-WWI decade, the children born in this new century to workers are unlikely to move into the middle class. There are very few mainstream media outlets that even cover this issue and those that do insist that inequality is not a threat to American democracy.

It is no secret that the US has one of the worst records among the G-20 in income distribution, any more than it is a secret that the US has one of the world’s highest wealth concentration, thus inequality, and a rapid downward socioeconomic mobility. Such polarization in the economic domain leads to political polarization, or at the very least alienation and this is a contributing threat to democracy. Advocates of neoliberal policies insists that the problem is not lack of fair income distribution, but government legislating minimum wage, safety, health and environmental standards, and layers of bureaucratic costs that make it difficult for companies to reinvest. (Richard Fry and Rakesh Kochhar, America’s wealth gap between middle-income and upper-income families is widest on record. Pew Research Center, 17 December 2014)

Many conservatives insist on slashing entitlements and revamping the entire social welfare system as we have known it, and just let the market fix everything the way it did in the Gilded Age! If government simply offered the private sector “opportunities” through contracts for all services performed by public employees, then all would be grand with society. As long as government outsources all services from cleaning services to complex engineering projects to the private sector, and as long as government keep paying those subsidies to corporations, bails out banks and insurance companies during recessions, and makes certain they paid the lowest possible taxes, there would be no problem whatsoever with society.

Therefore, democracy equals a neoliberal approach to public policy and opportunities for businesses carrying out government contracts. Where would this leave the middle class and workers is up to them individually based on what they have to offer the marketplace. Where would this neoliberal model leave citizens demanding accountability for all public services? Even today we can see the striking difference in everything from street maintenance to the condition of parks between an urban slum and a wealthy neighborhood. This reflects the very real class divide and reveals the fundamental inequality in services, no matter what politicians claim about government serving all people equally.

The real prospect that inequality will become worse and a permanent feature of American society poses a huge threat to democracy. Apologists of the political economy insist economic inequality is not a challenge for American democracy because inequality is simply a “natural” condition reflective of individual effort and ambition. Even those acknowledging there is a systemic problem propose that it can be solved only by raising productivity, not redistributing income. US productivity rates averaged about 3% from 1995 until 2005, outpacing the rest of G-7. Despite such impressive productivity rates surpassed only by China and the BRIC group, the middle class and workers continued to experience downward trend of incomes. Therefore, the productivity argument, which has been used since Adam Smith in the late 18th century, is hardly pertinent. Meanwhile, massive wealth concentration is a major problem for both the economy and democracy. The media and most in society applaud the news that Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos made close to $5 billion in profit in a single day on 24 April 2015, while a few may ask how can one individual make more money the combined annual GDP of eight sub-Sahara countries? According to the Wall Street Journal, America’s richest 3% experienced a 30.5% of income rise, in 2013, while the bottom 90% of income earners continue to lose income. According to various studies, the inequality gap is very real and becoming worse. In fact, US inequality is worse now than it was on the eve of the Great Depression, signaling a crisis in the economy and society. (Emma Bell, Soft Power and Freedom under the Coalition: State-Corporate Power and the Threat to Democracy)

Besides the grossly uneven income distribution impacting democracy, there is also the issue of the parasitic nature of the economy. There are many studies on banks and financial firms as parasites, just as there are studies about consulting firms and defense contractors as parasites, especially since they overcharge and their services are of dubious quality. One could argue as neoliberals do that dishing out contracts, even to parasitic entities, is one way to keep the private sector strong, even if it offers nothing back to society. Clearly, the narrow definition of a parasite to an economy is one that only takes and adds nothing to growth, productivity or value to the economy in the present or future, thus weakening it for the majority so the minority benefits. There are many examples from which we can illustrate this point, but let us take one that the New York Times exposed regarding the role of Goldman Sachs in the last ten years, although the same strategy has been carried out by J. P. Morgan among other major firms.

When Goldman purchased Metro International aluminum warehousing company, it slowed shipping to such a degree that Goldman realized $165 million per year in rents for the stored aluminum, not counting the sharp rise in profits resulting from higher metal price because of the artificial shortages. This is the same Goldman firm that was helping Greece and other governments during the 1990s and early 2000s to convert debt into assets on paper only, of course in order to deceive creditors and regulators. This illegal enterprise realized millions in hefty fees for Goldman and fooled the EU regulators, at least until the EU demanded an end to this practice. Ironically, at the time of these illegal activities, European Central Bank chief Mario Draghi was the head of Goldman’s international division!

Most large US and EU banks have been involved in scandals amounting to hundreds of billions in illegal activities resulting in the collapse of the financial system from 2008 until 2013. The bailout for the private banking system came from public money.

US and European banking scandals in the last two decades are salient factors in the massive transfer of capital from society into the hands of very few people. This as government repeatedly intervenes to save banks using taxpayer money and lowering living standards for the middle class and workers in the process, but justifying it on the basis of a) too big to fail, and b) jobs would be lost.

All along, the media has been singing the praises of the “heroic capitalist” while vilifying the state as the culprit in these scandals, as though the state has been acting on behalf of the general public instead of finance capital. Banks demanded deregulation so they can engage in high risk practices with funds of depositors that they gambled, and for which they had to pay billions in punitive fines both in the US and European governments. Yet, according to the media the fault rests with government for failing to do its job right. (Steve Schifferes and Robert Manning, eds., The Media and Financial Crises: Comparative and Historical Perspectives)

Beyond the systemic problem of legal and illegal parasitic capitalism that is global and not the domain of a single country, there is the direct correlation between healthy economic development and a thriving democracy. Healthy economic development where the benefits are fairly distributed among workers and the middle class that produce wealth and democratization of society cannot possibly take place when a tiny percentage of the population owns the vast wealth and keeps recycling it without investing for the broader good of all people. The higher the level of parasitic economic activity in a society, the lower the level of democracy, a phenomenon invariably associated with underdeveloped nations but actually plagues the US and the EU. (Tatu Vanhanen, Democratization: A Comparative Analysis of 170 Countries; Nicholas Ryder, Financial Crime in the 21st century: Law and Policy; Ismael Hosein-zedeh, Beyond Mainstream Explanations of the Financial Crisis: Parasitic Finance Capital).

According to a Rolling Stone article, the London-based firm ICAP which is the world’s largest broker of interest-rate-swaps, has been involved in a massive banking scandal. The interest-rate-swap market is worthy $379 trillion, which means that ICAP in essence has the immense power of manipulating massive amounts of capital by fixing rates and manipulate the market on behalf of its clients that include the largest US and EU banks. The shocking thing here is that the US government draws some of its top people to run various departments, including Treasury from financial institutions that the Justice Department has repeatedly fined for all sorts of violations. How can democracy possibly function in practice as it is conceived in theory when the same people who manipulate markets to the benefit of the very few insider investors that government entrusts the mechanisms of running a democracy?http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/everything-is-rigged-the-biggest-financial-scandal-yet-20130425#ixzz3Y4HyHpDJ

The Supreme Court and the new Gilded Age

Is the Supreme Court out of touch with the American people and has the nation’s highest court reverted to the Gilded Age of the late 19th century during the era of robber barons? The role of the Supreme Court has always been very important in interpreting Constitutional law and its rulings are significant in either strengthening democracy for all citizens, or weakening it so that the privileged few may prevail. In September 2014, senators Tom Udall and Bernie Sanders wrote that a century of hard won battles to create a more democratic society have been obviated by recent developments. For example, American democracy has become less inclusive because the Supreme Court has 1) struck down important elements of the Voting Rights Act and 2) diluted campaign finance laws, permitting even greater influence by the very rich in the political arena.

As campaigns become increasingly more expensive, a few hundred people directly and through various entities, including super-PACs, exert dominant influence in politics. It is for these people that policy is formulated to the detriment of the rest of society because they have paid to elect politicians at every level of government. The Supreme Court justified buying political influence with the First Amendment that constitutionally protects free speech. Senators Sanders and Udall argued that: “Americans’ right to free speech should not be proportionate to their bank accounts.”

When the Supreme Court becomes an impediment to democracy and fails to protect all citizens so that it can serve the politically entrenched elites, then the democratic regime itself has suffered a damaging blow. The republic survived the Gild Age when the Supreme Court was serving the narrow interests of the very rich, and it will survive the criticism today that it has reverted to 19th century undemocratic thinking. However, no matter how much the Supreme Court tries to legitimize social injustice people know the difference between what is just for a society and what is unjust. This is something that Justice Louis Brandeis grasped more than any other Supreme Court Justice as he realized that a democratic government must balance societal inequities that industrial capitalism produces to represent the interests of all social classes. Everything from utility regulatory powers to setting up a social safety net were issues with which government has a legitimate role to preserve the pluralistic nature of liberal democracy evolving under a rapidly changing political economy. Serving in the court during the tumultuous interwar era, Brandeis recognized the contradictions of capitalism and democracy, stating that: “We can have democracy in this country or we can have great wealth concentrated in the hands of a few, but we cannot have both.”

During the “Warren Court” era under Chief Justice Earl Warren, 1953-1969, America actually made moderate progress toward realizing the democratic goals of the Constitution. Key constitutional amendments dealing with equal rights for minorities were ratified, while at the same time the political climate moved toward greater pluralism and tolerance and away from the apartheid conditions that existed before the Civil Rights movement. The Supreme Court in the recent decades, especially in the last two, has devoted itself to striking down all progress of the part with regard to equal rights, free speech, and due process, while using free speech to strengthen the role of big capital.

At the same time, the Supreme Court ruled in favor of violating human rights when it came to Guantanamo Bay detainees, in direct conflict with the UN Human Rights Commission. That the US Supreme Courts fails to safeguard human rights and civil rights, while using Constitutional amendments to strengthen the wealthy is indicative how far from the people and from any sense of justice it has been and remains to this day. Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsberg has warned that if there are no limits on campaign contributions, the result will be that a few hundred people will control the country. Justice Ginsberg recognized the dangers to democracy of massive wealth concentration just as did justice Brandeis several decades before her, but these were and remain minority opinions in the history of the Supreme Court. (Ian Millhiser, Injustices: The Supreme Court's History of Comforting the Comfortable and Afflicting the Afflicted; Lawrence Goldstone, Inherently Unequal: The Betrayal of Civil Rights by the Supreme Court)

Islamophobia and Terrorism, and Right-Wing Politics

In the early 1990s, it appeared the Cold War as a way of life was coming to an end. However, the US would only replace it with counter-terrorism and simply transfer the anti-Communist ideology and institutions into the domain of anti-terror ideology and institutions, thus perpetuating the status quo. This was done in part because it was the only way to justify maintaining very high levels of defense spending, in part to keep the global imperial network as leverage for global hegemony, and in part to continuing forging a popular consensus around security issues. In the absence of Communism as a threat to Pax Americana, militant Islam had to be invented as a global security threat. First there was the imminent threat from Iran after the 1979 revolution, simply because Iran was no longer economically, militarily and politically obsequious to the US. Then the alleged security threat of Saddam Hussein became a massive regional threat to all of the Middle East and by extension to the US because Iraq. Finally, came 9/11 that allowed for the US-led global anti-terror campaign. All of these were massive threats to American democracy as far as both Republican and Democrat politicians were and still are concerned. The only question was the degree to which Islam jihadists posed the kind of threat the US government described. Secondly, is such a threat the underlying cause undermining democracy or is the government’s institutional structure intended to combat the threat the real obstacle to democracy?

If the war on terror had actually reduced instead of increased both the number of jihadists while lessening the culture of fear resulting from the institutionalization of counter-terrorism, then one could argue that it was worth the sacrifice of human rights and civil rights, of democracy, and social justice. The institutional structure – Homeland Security, “war on terror” unilateral foreign policy, and police-state methods that override all civil rights and human rights – remain in place in a country that calls itself a ‘democracy’ and committed to spreading its values, rather than economic imperialism throughout the world.

According to one poll, only 20-40% of Americans were immersed in fear one year after 9/11, while in 2014 the fear factor ranges from 47% -65%. It is ironic that the wealthiest country in the world is terrified by a culture of fear that the media, both conservative and liberal, reinforces on a daily basis. This is largely because the elites have succeeded conditioning the majority of population to subordinate their democratic impulses to the “emergency security state” as though the US is in perpetual war. The end result is an inward-looking population afraid to question the existing social order and political regime that values conformity far more than it does pluralism, equality, and freedom.

While the mass psychology of fear may appear counterproductive to those advocating pluralism, democracy, equality, social justice and creativity as core values in society, as far as the political, social and economic elites are concerned the culture of fear helps to engender conformity at all levels and helps to maintain loyalty to the existing social order and political economy that strengthens the hierarchical structure. The domestic implications of the counter-terrorism regime can be seen on the role of city police departments toward black males and minorities in general. Islamophobia has wider implications of how authorities see illegal immigrants from Latin America and blacks. The idea that the minority is the enemy is deeply rooted in the culture of intolerance by the white majority toward the non-white minority. White there is videotaped evidence of repeated patterns of behavior on the part of the police toward minorities the mainstream media continues to defend the police forces, focusing not on the political culture of intolerance but on the “unusual singled out” action of a cop killing a black male. The challenge of American democracy in the 21st century is to leave the culture of fear behind, something that cannot be done unless the government abandons the political culture of counter-terrorism targeting Muslims as though they are the new Communists about to take over Omaha from the good Christian folk.

When one listens to right wing talk radio and watches TV programs such as FOX News, listens to right wing politicians demonize Muslims and castigate Latin immigrants, it is easy to understand why a segment of the American institutional structure has abandoned all pretenses to dealing with citizens of a democratic society. Just as there is a crusade to hunt down and kill militant Muslims in Afghanistan, among other places, similarly there is a crusade against minorities at home if their class status does not transcend their ethnicity and race. All along, the Justice Department has done nothing about the sharp deterioration in tolerance at the institutional level, let alone at the cultural that receives its messages from the media. (Carl W. Ernst, Islamophobia in America: The Anatomy of Intolerance; Clifford A. Kiracofe, Dark Crusade: Christian Zionism and US Foreign Policy)

The evangelical wing of the Republican Party has opportunistically used the “war on terror”, just as it used the anti-Communism during the Cold War to promote its own agenda and elect officials who embrace that agenda. It is not that the Republican evangelicals believe they can create a theocracy, but they know that they can use the counter-terrorism issue just as they used the Communism issue to engender sociopolitical conformity, and distract the American people from social and economic interests impacting them. Using religious fanaticism to polarize society and maintain conformity and a docile population, the government and media add the moral-religious dimension to foreign policy issues intended for domestic political consumption. This undermines the very fabric of America’s pluralistic tradition and poses a major challenge to democracy. If the evangelical wing of the Republican Party did not have behind it millionaires and billionaires supporting its agenda, and if it did not have the mainstream media, then its voice would be a faint one. What makes it powerful is the big money hiding behind the message, not the message. (David Green: The Biblical Billionaire Backing The Evangelical Movement; FORBES, October 8, 2012; William V. D’Antonio, et al. eds., Religion, Politics, and Polarization: How Religiopolitical Conflict Is Changing Congress and American Democracy)

The assumption that the threat to democracy is coming from out there somewhere, from evildoers whether they are Islamic jihadists or Russian nationalists is utterly absurd. Democracy falls from within under its own weight when it deviates from the social contract. The great Athenian writer Aristophanes realized this 2,500 years ago. American journalist and Presbyterian minister Chris Hedges argues in “How Democracy Dies: A Lesson from the Master” (Aristophanes) that society decays from within by corruption, greed, arrogance, distortion of ideals designed to promote the welfare of all people, and of course perpetual militarism that debilitates society and ultimately contributes to its demise.

“There is a yearning by tens of millions of Americans, lumped into a diffuse and fractious movement, to destroy the intellectual and scientific rigor of the Enlightenment. They seek out of ignorance and desperation to create a utopian society based on “biblical law.” They want to transform America’s secular state into a tyrannical theocracy. These radicals, rather than the terrorists who oppose us, are the gravest threat to our open society. They have, with the backing of hundreds of millions of dollars in corporate money, gained tremendous power. They peddle pseudoscience such as “Intelligent Design” in our schools. They keep us locked into endless and futile wars of imperialism. They mount bigoted crusades against gays, immigrants, liberals and Muslims. They turn our judiciary, in the name of conservative values, over to corporations. They have transformed our liberal class into hand puppets for corporate power.” (Chris Hedges, Democratic Underground, October 2010)

Periyar – The Socrates Of South Asia

Satya Sagar

Trust Markandeya Katju to rush in where angels fear to tread – casually disparaging the legacy of E.V.Ramaswamy Naicker or ‘Periyar’, founder of the Dravidian movement and arguably one of the greatest social reformers in modern India.

According to former Justice Katju, in a recent post on his Facebook page, “Periyar ( E.V. Ramaswamy) was objectively a British agent, who preached caste hatred, particularly against Brahmins”

It is perhaps a fitting tribute to the revolutionary character of Periyar that, four decades after his death, he is still reviled by upper-caste Hindus of India,of both the Establishment and ‘anti-Establishment’ variety. And Markandeya Katju is not the only ‘secular, progressive’ intellectual in this country to have such contempt for or very little knowledge of Periyar and his work.

In recent times, alarmed by the rapid growth of Hindu extremism, communalism and the open attack on Constitutional rights of religious minorities Indian secularists and liberals have evoked the memories of Gandhi, Nehru, Maulana Azad and in more leftist circles that of Bhagat Singh. Few however have bothered to rememberor evoke the memory of Periyar, whose championing of secularism or human rights was far more radical, courageous and long-term in its implications.

While such indifference to Periyar in the past could be put down by many to ignorance today it is clear that the reality is much uglier. Unfortunately there seems to be a deliberate denial of Periyar’s legacy by ‘upper’-caste ‘progressives’, who cannot envisage someone from any ‘lower’ caste being far more revolutionary, radical or even humane than their ‘lordships’. While the domination of the Indian Establisment since Independence (and before) by ‘upper’-caste Hindus in general has been well recognised the sad truth is that even now the ‘anti-Establishment’ is also run by the same priviliged castes.

This essentially means that much of what passes off as Indian ‘politics’, including its so-called ‘revolutionary’ version, is essentially a clash between two sections of the same elite – somewhat like a modern-day Mahabharata war between royal cousins fighting over property that belongs to neither of them. No wonder then, in seven decades since Independence,nothing has changed in a country with the world’s largest number of absolute poor, levels of malnutrition worse than sub-Saharan Africa and where a bulk of the population gets ground to dust between feudal oppression and crony capitalism.

Anyway, to come back to Periyar, I will argue that without understanding his philosophy, actions and methods of mobilisation or his insights into the history and contemporary realities of India it is not possible to challenge the idea of Hindutva and the forces of obscurantism, communalism and upper caste hegemony it represents. And, without defeating the racist Brahmanical culture that underpins the entire Hindu caste system there is little possibility of actually carrying out any revolutionary transformations in India either.

Undoubtedly Periyar’s greatest cause was that of thoroughly exposing varnasharma dharma, the Hindu caste system, which confers superior or inferior status to people by birth and not their individual merit. Though he was certainly not the first to point this out Periyar was the most forceful critic of Hinduism’s arbitrary division of society into the ‘high’ and the ‘low’.

“One should respect another in a way in which one expects to be respected by the other. This is a revolutionary principle for the Hindus. It can materialise not by reform but only by revolution. There are certain things that cannot be mended, but only ended. Brahmanic Hinduism is one such,” said Periyar.

The politics, administration and education system of Tamil Nadu at beginning of the twentieth century, like many other parts of India, was overwhelmingly dominated by Brahmins. For instance, although the Brahmins were only 3.2% of the population, 70% of the university graduates between 1870 and 1900 were Brahmins. Again in 1896, Brahmins occupied 53 per cent of the 140 posts of Deputy Collector, 71.4 per cent of the 18 posts of Sub-Judge and 66.4 per cent of the 128 District Munsif posts. Most of the graduates and teachers in educational institutions were from the Brahmin community.

Again, in Madras Presidency in 1912, Brahmins occupied 55 per cent of deputy collector posts, 82.3 percent of sub-judge posts and 72.6 percent of munsif posts. In contrast, the respective shares of non-Brahmins, despite their much larger numbers were 2.5, 16.7 and 19.5 percent only.

All this together with their control of Hindu religious institutions, practice of untouchability and use of the derogative term ‘shudra’ against non-Brahmins led Periyar to dub the existing order as a ‘Brahminocracy’. In response Periyar and his followers attacked the political, economic, social and cultural foundations of Brahmin power in Tamil Nadu.

All this had nothing to do with ‘hatred of Brahmins’ that Katju alleges. Periyar’s growing popularity as a social reformer in Erode led the Congress stalwart C.Rajagopalachari, a Brahmin, to befriend him and invite him to join the Congress in 1919. Periyar joined and became an ardent Gandhian making numerous personal sacrifices during the non-cooperation, anti-liquor and swadeshi movements.

He also went on to become the President of the Tamil Nadu Congress Committee but failed to get his own party’s support on issues such as the right of non-Brahmins to enter the sanctum sanctorum of temples or for the creation of trusts to manage religious instiuttions. In 1925 though, he finally quit the party in disgust after failing repeatedly to get its support for the policy of reservation for non-Brahmins in government jobs and educational institutions.

Periyar joined hands with other political groups challenging Brahmin hegemony to demand proportional reservation for non-Brahmins in all government jobs and educational institutions. Despite strong opposition from the Brahmin lobby Madras state, the precursor to Tamil Nadu, was the first state to implement such reservations in 1928.

Later on, in 1950 when the Supreme Court held that such reservations were ultra vires of the Indian Constitution the resulting agitation in Tamil Nadu forced the government of Jawaharlal Nehru to bring in the first constitutional amendment to uphold the right of the government to enact laws which provide "special consideration" for weaker sections of society, such as the reservation policy.

Along with leveling the playing field for non-Brahmins in employment and education, Periyar sought to deconstruct the theoretical basis of the caste system, which claimed legitimacy from the Vedas and Hindu scriptures like the Puranas or epics such as Ramayana and Mahabharata. Periyar and other scholars of the Dravidian Kazhagam (DK) he founded laid bare the contradictions, immorality and biases of these texts in great detail and showed how they provided religious sanction to the caste system.

For example, the Dravidian movement offered a detailed critique of the Ramayana, which according to Periyar was essentially a tale of conquest by migrant Aryans coming from outside the sub-continent of the indigenous people of India – broadly categorized as Dravidians. The Brahmins of Tamil Nadu had used Max Muller’s concept of the culturally ‘superior Aryan’ to legitimise their authority and the Dravidian movement took opposition to this concept as the point of departure in its politics.

In their reading of the Ramayana the hero of the epic Rama is actually the invading villain and Ravana, the so-called ‘demon king’ is the victim of Rama’s aggression. The book ‘Ravana Kavyam’ a Tamil epic on Ravana, written in the early period of the Dravidian movement extols the virtues of Ravana, while DK activist and film personality M. R. Radha’s theatrically provocative parody on the ‘Ramayana’ depicts Ravana as a great hero. In numerous public meetings the Ramayana was burnt by Dravidian activists for its portrayal of Dravidians as ‘rakshasas’ or at best as monkeys and bears who were allied to Rama.

“Invocation of Ravana functioned as an antidote restoring the pride of the Tamils in the non-Sanskritic regional culture and unleashing a critique of brahminism. If Indian nationalism uncritically prided itself as Aryan, Ravana was the response from the alienated south” wrote M.S.S.Pandian, the late scholar of the Dravidian movement.

Periyar opposed blind faith in religion and superstitious practices by promoting rationalist thinking based on the study and understanding of modern science. In particular he attacked the phenomenal waste of hard earned money and resources of ordinary people on meaningless rituals and donations to temples that ended up enriching only the Hindu upper caste.

Despite his opposition to religion in general and being an atheist personally, Periyar asserted the right of non-Brahmins to enter the sanctum sanctorum of Hindu temples, arguing that stopping them from doing so was to deny them the status of human beings. In 1970 Tamil Nadu, again became the first state in India to have a legislation brought in by the newly elected Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam government of C.N.Annadurai to ensure people from all castes could become temple priests if they wanted.

One of the keys to the success of the Dravidian movement was its brilliant use of language and culture to awaken people is legendary with many of its leaders being not just skilled orators but also good quality Tamil poets, musicians, actors and writers. Opposing the imposition of Hindi on southern states by the Indian government was a natural corollary to the Dravidian movement’s arousal of pride in the Tamil language and culture, with Periyar even threatening to fight for a separate ‘Dravidanadu’ in response.

It was public mobilisation around this issue that propelled the DMK, a breakaway group from Periyar’s own Dravida Kazhagam (DK), to power in Tamil Nadu in the 1967 elections. The spectre of separatism together with the fierce anti-Hindi agitation compelled the Indian government to take the demands of the Dravidian movement seriously enough to offer many concessions on the economic and political front to the state.

On the social front, in order to reduce the role of Brahmins in the daily life of ordinary people, Periyar promoted what he called ‘Self Respect Marriages’, which enabled couples from any religion to get married in a secular manner through just a simple exchange of garlands and without the services of any priest. These marriages were legalised through a special Act brought in by the DMK government in 1967.

Periyar’s most revolutionary insights were perhaps in his espousal of radical feminism, which he theorised well before the term itself was invented anywhere in the world. Periyar for example attacked the oppressive notion of female ‘chastity’ thus: “To insist that chastity is only for women and should not be insisted upon for men, is a philosophy based on individual ownership; the view that women are the property of the male determines the current status of a wife.”

Periyar’s championing of the right of women get educated, work and to live and love as they please was too bold for many of his own ardent followers in the DK movement, which has failed to elaborate or even uphold his thoughts on this issue. As the feminist and Periyar scholar V.Geetha pointed out in a recent talk in memory of the 19th century social reformer Savitribai Phule, “Periyar has been de-radicalised and made an exponent of the reservation policy, crude atheism and a strident anti-Brahmin rhetoric and so his views on caste, hierarchy, the gender and sexuality question have all been relegated to a forgotten archive”

Indeed, much water has flowed in the Kaveri since the heydays of Periyar and the political parties born out of the Dravidian movement, have decayed to a point where they have compromised on many of other issues too. Today Tamil Nadu’s ruling politicans have become notorious for rampant corruption, casteism, patriarchal attitudes and in more recent times even forming alliances with the BJP, once seen as a hated promoter of ‘Aryan supremacy’ and Hindi chauvinism.

The state has also courted infamy in recent years for attacks on Dalits by the middle-castes who, while benefiting from the anti-Brahmin movement, do not want those further below them to assert their own rights. This was something Periyar had warned about when said that as long as there was a hierarchy of castes in Hindu society there could always be conflict between those on different rungs of the ladder.

Despite all these subsequent distortions of Periyar’s legacy it can be said that the Dravidian movement effected the most successful social transformation in modern Indian history on the issues caste, education, assertion of language and gender rights anywhere in the country. Tamil Nadu, thanks to Periyar, is one state where the Brahmins no longer dominate politics and society or set the standard for cultural ‘superiority’ in any way – one important reason why Brahmins of all hues everywhere, either explicitly dislike Periyar or pretend to ignore him completely.

The assertion of pride in the Tamil language too resulted in widespread literacy in the mother tongue while the social welfarist leanings of the Dravidian movement have helped the state develop the best primary health care infrastructure in the country today. Compared to other parts of India Tamil Nadu also has the least amount of communal disturbances with the Hindutva forces finding it extremely hard to grow here, despite many desperate attempts to do so.

The influence of Periyar’s ideas have also had a deep impact nationally, in particular through the rise of backward caste and Dalit movements challenging upper caste hegemony in many other parts of India, including Uttar Pradesh and Bihar. Tamil Nadu’s historical defence of local language and culture has also encouraged other states in India to assert their regional identities, ultimately strengthening the principle of federalism, diluting concentration of power in New Delhi and helping to preserve national diversity.

What is truly remarkable is that all these achievements were made through a largely non-violent movement drawing its strength on well-researched arguments, creative communication techniques and popular mobilisation. With all its imperfections, the Dravidian movement offers an excellent model to the rest of India to combat the barbarism of the caste system and establish a society where reason and democracy prevail over the dictatorial urges of a tiny minority of upper caste Hindus.

One area though where the Dravidian movement’s legacy needs to be complemented is emphasis on class issues. While Periyar was a great fan of the Soviet Union, after a visit there in the 1930s, and a proponent of socialist principles he did focus a bit too much on caste at the expense of differences in wealth and income in society.

In the current juncture of Indian society where an unholy alliance of global and domestic capital with traditional religious elites is leading the country towards majoritarian fascism it is only the united front of caste and class assertion that can offer a fitting response.

Learning from Periyar and building upon his great legacy is surely the only way forward in our times. For a self-styled champion of secularism and socialism like Mr Katju to accuse him of being a ‘British agent’ or a preacher of ‘caste hatred’ just signals that we have a long battle ahead before any real transformation takes place in this country.

The Perils of Being a Public Intellectual

Henry A. Giroux

Michael Eric Dyson has launched in the New Republic a bitter attack on Cornel West. At the heart of Dyson’s critique is a discourse that engages in character assassination but not before he makes clear what is really at stake in his attack. Dyson resents West’s critique of Obama’s domestic and foreign policies. But rather than judiciously and analytically weigh such criticisms, hardly confined to West, he positions West as a spurned lover, angry and bitter because among other things, he did not get a ticket to Obama’s 2008 inauguration. Dyson expands his critique by claiming that West is not a scholar, who has lived up to the standards of decent scholarship, bolstering his case by quoting among others the irrepressible apostle of neoliberalism and unbridled finance capital, Larry Summers. It never occurs to Dyson that Summers’ critique of West may be more political than anything else. In what appears to me to be a move towards infantilism Dyson claims that West is a talker rather a scholar, as if speaking truth to power does not have its place as a legitimate mode of political intervention or that the realm of university-based scholarship is the only true space where truth can speak to power.

Finally, Dyson decries West for not being a prophet in the manner of Martin Luther King, Jr. and others and for not exploring adequately the genealogy of prophecy. I want to argue that the attack should not be seen simply as a personal attack as much as it is a product of the fear liberal intellectuals have about the role of left-oriented public intellectuals and the crucial role that pedagogy and changing consciousness plays in creating the formative cultures that make individual and collective resistance possible. West in this attack is simply a stand in for a range of public intellectuals who no longer believe in existing political formations and are redefining politics through both their words and actions.

Some have complained that there are other more important issues to address than to criticize Cornel West, and I partly agree with that, but at the same time the issue is not whether West should or not be held up to criticism. The issue is that the criticism in this case is close to worthless and another indication of the bankrupt liberalism that wallows in the irrelevant, personal, and soothes itself with what it thinks is a trenchant analysis, one that in reality reads like an apology for a politics that is tied with some guilt to the defense of the status quo. Talking about West’s personal life is a venture into the kind of spectacularized psychosis exhibited in the Dr. Phil show and in full display in the entertainment media. This isn’t scholarship. On the contrary, as Herbert Marcuse once put it, this is a form of scholarshit. With the recent killing of so many black men by the police, the increasing reach of the punishing state, the militarization of all aspects of society, and the cruel attack on social provisions and the welfare state by the financial elite, you would think that Dyson as a Black intellectual would use his talents to address a number of serious social problems. In fact, Dyson’s article is important less because of its focus on Cornel West’s shortcomings, personal and political, however fabricated, than as a exemplar of the crisis facing the work of many prominent intellectuals in the academy who have silenced themselves or lost themselves in the corridors of power, refusing to extend their intellectual capacities to addressing important social issues while defending higher education as a public good and reaffirming the connection between scholarship and social justice.

Political commitment and the work of the public intellectual is difficult and it takes many forms from writing books to engaging broader public spheres as a speaker, populist, organizer, and so it goes. West is a powerful and courageous activist and intellectual. Dyson has become a populist in ways that is not free of its own brand of opportunism–power seduces, and Michael now has to bear that burden. Unfortunately, he does not bear it with dignity in this case. Whatever Dyson might say about West withers next to the intellectual and moral comatose he displays in this assessment and putrid defense of Obama. He writes: “The odd thing is that Obama talks right—chiding personal irresponsibility in a way that presumes the pathology of many black families and neighbourhoods—but veers left in his public policy.”This is more than a form of a moral and political self-sabotage, it is a decent into the dark cave of oppressive ideology. Tell that to the parents of the children killed by drones, to the whistle blowers put in prison, to people harassed by the surveillance state put in place under Obama, or to the endless number of immigrants exported and jailed under his administration. Maybe we should also include his tolerance for the crimes of bankers and torturers and his intolerance for the children and others who live close to or below the poverty line. And regarding prophecy, it is not earned on the TV circuit talking to zombies who believe critical dialogue is a shouting match. As my friend and colleague, Brad Evans points out, “Dyson represents the worst kind of liberal posturing, and is sadly more revealing actually of what is deemed important in the academy today … ” 

Dave Zirin has chimed in on the academic catfight, but he is too nice to Dyson. He suggests that Dyson’s critique of West’s scholarship is partly on target but his political critique reveals an uncritical endorsement of Obama. There is something odd about this defense of Dyson’s scholarship given that much of his work is about rap stars, famous black women, and, well about his own self-proclaimed wisdom, made clear in his book, Can You Hear Me Now?: The Inspiration, Wisdom, and Insight of Michael Eric Dyson—a book whose title bears a close affinity to type of self-indulgence paraded in the smothering world of celebrity culture. In this instance, Dyson’s critique of West as vain and unimaginative appears more as a projection than a serious criticism. It would be too harsh to claim Dyson’s books are examples of what might be called shoddy work. More to the point, many of them simply err on the side of being just irrelevant, except when you want to appear on Fox news, host an MSNBC program or travel the celebrity culture circuit. Zirin is too diplomatic in his attempt to suggest that both West and Dyson have engaged in uncivil behavior and in doing so have more in common than one might realize. But Zirin does make one claim that I believe should have framed his essay more stronly. He writes:

Cornel West believes in Palestinian liberation. He believes in amnesty for undocumented immigrants. He believes that the bankers responsible for the 2008 crisis should be brought to justice. He believes that capitalism is a driving engine of much of the injustice in our world. He believes that Obama’s drone program is an act of state-sanctioned murder. One can choose to agree or disagree with these points, but one cannot ignore that West has been relentless in his efforts to place them in the political discourse. The word “Palestine” or “Palestinian” does not once make its way into Dyson’s piece. Neither does “Wall Street” or “immigration.” The word “drones” only comes up in a quote attributed to West. We can debate how sincere West’s commitments are to these issues or whether they are a cover for his hurt feelings and heartbreak that Dyson posits is at the root of all the discord. But they should be reckoned with. Does a “black politics” going forward need to have something to say about corporate power, Israeli occupation, immigration, and drone warfare? That’s the unspoken debate in this article, made all the more glaring because Dyson is sympathetic—and far closer to West than President Obama—on many of these questions.

It is the unspoken in Dyson’s essay that raises more questions about what is really at the heart of his critique and speaks forcefully to what the real object of his criticism might be. While Dyson uses the rubric of faulty scholarship and character assassination to condemn West, what he is really doing is defending the illiberal politics of centrism, the permanent warfare state, the power of the financial elite, disparaging the multifaceted role of the public intellectual, and making a case for accommodating dominant power while reducing the purpose of the university to an adjunct of corporate power.

Others who rightly defend Cornel West have done a good job at pointing how trivial and personal Dyson’s attack is and how his criticisms are deeply motivated by a back-hand defense of Obama’s ideology and policies. Max Blumenthal argues that Dyson’s critique both ignores the eruption of new forms of politics among young people while offering a tepid defense of a Democratic Party that has become simply an adjunct of corporate power and the financial elite. Against Dyson’s silly critique of West as a jilted lover, Blumenthal offers up an informative list of West’s tireless involvement among a range of grassroots organizations. He writes:

Few public intellectuals have positioned themselves at the nexus of these emerging movements as firmly Cornel West has. Earlier this month, I joined him on a panel at Princeton University to support a group of students and faculty seeking to pressure the school into divesting from companies involved in human rights abuses in occupied Palestinian territory. His presence boosted the morale of the young student activists who had suddenly fallen under attack by powerful pro-Israel forces. Days later, West joined veteran human rights activist Larry Hamm at Bethany Baptist Church in Newark for a discussion on local efforts against police brutality. It was in places like this, away from the national limelight, where West gathered his vital energy and his righteous anger. West’s investment in grassroots struggles ignored and even undermined by the Democratic Party has thrown him in direct conflict with the president and his supporters. He has been particularly withering in his criticisms of high profile African-American intellectuals and activists who have served as Obama’s loyal defenders.

Blumenthal has joined a number of critics who have made clear that as a public intellectual West is involved in a number of grassroots campaigns against a range of injustices whether they be in protests against the incarceration state, racism, massive inequality in wealth and power, or the massive suffering produced by the financial elite. For instance, Carl Dix and Lenny Wolf have done a superb job analyzing both the absences and misrepresentations in Dyson’s attack. They point to the evolving nature of West’s scholarship, his generosity of spirit in
bringing others into the limelight, his solidarity with a number of grassroots groups, and his clearly endearing devotion not to a singular politics but to the radical spirit of democracy itself. What they do that other critics do not do is also expose Dyson’s genuflection not simply to Obama but to the dominant registers of a lethal kind of politics that makes it impossible to associate the United States with even a vestige of democracy. And for that their piece should be widely read.

Many of the articles critical of Dyson’s attack take up his critique of west on his terms and fail to widen the parameters of the debate. Consequently, what is missed is that West is being attacked because he is a public intellectual who enters the political arena through a variety of venues and attains a visibility rarely given to left intellectuals. There is more at stake here than rendering West self-indulgent, characterizing is work as being narrowly motivated by a hatred of Obama, and arguing that he does not produce rigorous academic scholarship. Of course, a minor but important question here is who appointed Michael Dyson as an arbiter of what counts as a productive intervention into the public sphere? What accounts for Dyson’s chutzpah in defining what counts as scholarship, public discourse, and the meaning of politics itself? Much of Dyson’s attack appears as an act of policing, particularly within the new and old boundaries and spaces in which dissent is produced, circulated, and distributed.

What Dyson disregards in his self-appointed role of being an arbiter for legitimate scholarship is that West does not define himself as a scholar but as an intellectual. Nor is West first allegiance to the standards of academic scholarship. West begins with important social problems and uses theory as a tool to address such issues. Hence, his approach to theory is not circumscribed by the often narrow and abstract dictates of what the academy deems as scholarship, which I believe has in recent years become an exercise in the production of jargon and a depoliticizing discourse. These are crucial points that Dyson misses entirely. West writes and acts by beginning with problems, his sense of commitments are defined as political interventions, not as attempts to be published by a university press or celebrated in the New York Review of Books, though both are possible given the influence he has in fashioning new kinds of political formations outside of the existing parameters of power. West functions as an intellectual who takes the educative nature of politics seriously and in doing so he changes the rhetoric, magnifies a pedagogy of disruption, moves in an out of a variety of public spheres without compromising his principles, and breaks open the confusing discourse of common sense, so deeply treasured by the apostles of oppression.

West’s politics are performative, and are not tied to the printed word. Is he at times a bit theatrical, sometimes appearing self-indulgent? That seems a minor, if not irrelevant, criticism compared to his ongoing attempts to fuse theory with action, reach into history in order to reclaim those elements of public memory long forgotten. And lest we should forget, he is not the lonely intellectual preaching from the Olympian heights of Princeton University. What is notable about his work is that he is one of the few public intellectuals in the United States who embraces the assumption that domination is not simply about economic structures but also about beliefs, rhetoric, and the pedagogical. He understands that the symbolic and pedagogical are powerful weapons to be used in creating alternative understandings of both the present and the future. He recognizes that such tools are crucial in creating the agents necessary to produce the collective struggles for a more democratic future to unfold. He works with social movements and does so as an intellectual not a prophet or an isolated academic scholar.  He is an intellectual because he believes in the power of ideas not the rewards given to those in the academy who become servants of power. And he believes that such power is collective not individual, the product of social movements and ongoing struggles not the abstract rhetoric of isolated and often irrelevant academics. Moreover, he does not think within a single discipline and understands that there is no closure in history.

History is open but it is only open to change if there are struggles, if a collective consciousness emerges that understands the nature of a new historical moment and the forces at work in necessary to change it. West’s appeal to hope is a political intervention, not an act of prophecy–it functions so as to make thinking troubling, conjure up new public spaces open to new forms of solidarity. West’s politics is a call to educated hope, a recognition that knowledge can only speak to power and truth when people can locate themselves in the narratives it provides. West does that and he does it brilliantly and he does it as a public intellectual who not only embarrasses liberals but appears, in Dyson’s case to reveal their most poisonous and cowardly attributes. West is not a hero; he is not a celebrity; he is not a political romantic. On the contrary, he is a fighter. Someone who struggles in the name of justice and uses all of the intellectual resources, outlets and ideological and affective spaces at his disposable. Rather than impugning him, we should learn from him, be in dialogue with him, and be grateful that such a teacher is in our midst. And, let’s not forget that all of us who take on this role as engaged public intellectuals will not get rewards, we will not be invited to the White House, and we will not receive the usual empty accolades from the mainstream press. Instead, we will be considered dangerous, but as Hannah Arendt once said, thinking itself is dangerous in dark times. What Michael Dyson’s critique of Cornel West has done is make Arendt’s point obvious.