- James Petras is Binghamton University, New York Professor
Emeritus of Sociology whose credentials and achievements are long and impressive.
He's a noted academic figure on the left, a well-respected Latin American
expert, and a longtime chronicler of the region's popular struggles as
well as being an advisor to the landless workers (MST) in Brazil and unemployed
workers in Argentina. Petras is also a prolific author. He's written hundreds
of articles and 63 books (and counting), published in 29 languages, including
his latest one and subject of this review - "Rulers and Ruled in the
US Empire."
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- The book is information rich on a core issue of our time.
It discusses the US empire's "systemic dimensions," evolving
changes in its ruling class, its corporatist system, myths about its coming
collapse, contradictions in the current debate on immigration and market
liberalization policies, the use of force and genocidal carnage, corruption
as a market penetrating tool, the Israeli Lobby's power and influence,
Latin American relations and events in the region, social and armed resistance,
and much more in four power-packed parts under 17 subject chapter headings.
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- It's all covered below giving readers a detailed sampling
of Petras' thoroughly documented, powerful and insightful account of his
subject - who rules America, who's ruled, the US imperial role in the world
economy and politics, and challenges to it in China, Latin America and
the Middle East. This is another must-read book by a distinguished intellect
and major figure on the left who writes dozens of them. This is his latest.
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- Part I: The US Empire As A System
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- Petras distinguishes between who sets policies and rules
America and whose interests are served. He defines the ruling class as
"people in key positions in financial, corporate and other business
institutions" with rules "established, modified and adjusted"
as the composition and "shifts in power" within the ruling class
change over time. One example is manufacuring's decline (from outsourcing
to low cost countries) as a "multidimensional financial sector"
(finance capital) rose in prominence with Wall Street's influence especially
dominant.
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- Petras defines "finance capital" to include
investment banks, pension funds, hedge funds, saving and loan banks, investment
funds and many other "operative managers" of a multi-trillion
dollar economy they've all benefitted hugely from. They've been the driving
force powering real estate and financial markets speculation, agribusiness,
commodity production and manufacturing. Petras calls "finance capital"
the "midwife" of wealth and capital as well as a "direct
owner of the means of production and distribution."
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- He stratifies it into three sub-groups from top to bottom
in importance: big private equity bankers and hedge fund managers, Wall
street executives, and senior officials of private and Wall Street public
equity funds as well as major figures in top law and accounting firms.
Political leaders are drawn from their ranks with Wall Street in the lead
and one firm in particular standing out - Goldman Sachs. Today, its former
CEO Henry Paulson is the de facto US economic czar in charge of proving
doomsayers wrong about the US economy with Federal Reserve Chairman Ben
Bernanke's money creation power partnered with him. Both of them must also
navigate around the powerful Israeli Lobby and its pro-war agenda that
could lead to catastrophic consequences if the US and/or Israel attack
Iran and the Middle East explodes and disrupts oil flows.
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- Petras sees an inevitable split between wealth-first
financial ruling class objectives and militarists in the Bush administration,
their counterparts in Israel, and the Lobby representing Israeli interests
with a stranglehold on most of Congress. The battle lines shape up over
Israeli Middle East dominance at the cost of imperial overreach, an escalating
trade deficit, a ballooning national debt, decreasing capital inflows to
offset it, and a declining dollar as other nations move to euros, yen and
pounds sterling. Something has to give, says Petras, as both sides support
opposing agendas that only a crisis-provoking widespread backlash may resolve.
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- For now, however, things couldn't be better for the ruling
class (despite their disrupted plans in Iraq and Afghanistan) with the
top 2% of adults in the world owning half its wealth, the top 10% with
85% of it, and the bottom half with just 1%. The result is an unprecedented
wealth disparity with corporate CEO's on average earning over 400 times
the median income of wage and salaried workers, and for top-earning speculators
and hedge fund managers the ratio is 1000 to one with some having incomes
topping a billion dollars a year. In addition, corporate wealth was at
a record 43% of 2005 national income accruing to profits, rents and other
non-wage/salary sources compared to a declining percentage of it to individuals,
except for those at the top gaining hugely.
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- Petras states: "The growth of monstrous and rigid
class inequalities reflects the narrow social base of an economy dominated
by finance capital" with the US redistributing far less to its people
than other developed nations like those in Western Europe. Democrats are
as culpable as Republicans with both parties tied to big monied interests
through campaign funding and the power of lobbies. It makes everyone in
the political power structure unwilling to change things so they don't.
The result is working Americans suffer hugely while those at the top never
had it so good. It signals warnings of a potential worker backlash ahead
that for now have gone unheeded. Elitists ignore it at their peril, so
far without negative consequences to their dominance, but watch out.
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- Capitalism or US Workers in Crisis?
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- Petras notes how for years many on the left and some
in the financial community have been predicting the "coming collapse,
decline or demise of capitalism" as though (for some) wishing would
make it so. They're still predicting, but it hasn't happened, and Petras
explains why not. It's because business and government partnered (especially
since the 1980s) to let workers take the pain so business could gain and
prosper. It's done it hugely and continues to despite the resurgent summer
doomsday predictions still ongoing.
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- In a letter to clients, noted investment manager Jeremy
Grantham explained why business is resilient by comparing the global financial
system (with its US anchor) to a giant suspension bridge. Thousands of
bolts hold it together, so when some of them fail, even a lot of them,
it's not enough to bring it down. Short of "broad-based....financial
metal fatigue," even more bolts may fail, but he's betting the bridge
will hold, supported by amazing "animal spirits," at least for
now.
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- Grantham is likely right in the near term, while Petras
takes a longer view, and his arguments are compelling. He sees labor today
in crisis with living standards declining the result of reduced or eliminated
business benefits, government services and stagnating wages. He also lists
popular myths predicting doom ahead - the growing budget and current account
deficits; ballooning national debt; excess speculation; weakening dollar;
high energy costs; outsourcing of jobs at all levels, and more. Petras
maintains these problems aren't as serious as claimed because:
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- -- budget deficits declined in 2006 as tax revenues rose
from high-end earners' greater income at the expense of labor getting less;
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- -- foreign investment in the US remains high;
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- -- the dollar remains the world's reserve currency; over
time, it weakens and strengthens based on interest rates, political events,
and the overall level of economic activity; nonetheless, the dollar weakened
considerably after the Fed cut interest rates and depreciated to an all-time
low against a basket of six of its major peer currencies that include the
euro, pound and yen; in addition, the New York Board of Trade index hit
its weakest level since it came out in 1973, and the same is true for the
Fed's trade-weighted dollar index since its creation in 1971; what's ahead?
Likely more of the same until everyone believes the dollar is dead; then,
watch out;
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- -- a decade-long trade deficit hasn't caused apocalypse;
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- -- strong economic underpinnings (Grantham's giant suspension
bridge) offset excess speculation, and workers, not capital, take the pain;
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- -- high energy profits overseas are recycled back into
dollar-based investments and have been for years although countries like
Iran, Venezuela and others are moving away from the dollar at least for
now;
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- -- the potential of new technologies is underestimated;
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- -- corporate profits have had their longest ever run
of double-digit gains; the number of millionaires and billionaires is growing;
the rich are becoming super-rich; and the beneficiaries are largely in
North America, Western Europe (plus Russia) and Asia.
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- Petras concludes that as long as worker exploitation
continues, the fundamental law of "casino capitalism" applies
- the house never loses, or in this case the neighborhood (of developed
nations) with some in it doing better than others and the US their anchor.
The weakness of US labor and its history of overpaid, underperforming,
corrupted leaders explains why with only 7.4% today in the private sector
organized compared to 34.7% in the 1950s. Unless new social and political
movements surface under activist leaders, Marx's "dirty secret"
and Adam Smith's "vile maxim of the masters of mankind" will
continue proving "the wealth of all nations" depends on the rich
taking it "all for ourselves and (leaving) nothing for" the working
class.
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- Market Liberalization and Forced Emigration
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- Migration and so-called illegal immigrants make headlines
but never the reasons why that are two-fold: fleeing political strife (as
in Iraq) or for economic reasons that the imperial globalized market system
causes horrifically. The latter forces millions of Mexicans el norte because
of NAFTA. Its disastrous effects on their lives leaves them no choice -
emigrate or perish.
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- Petras explains when protective trade barriers come down,
millions of small farmers and entrepreneurs are no match for the power
of subsidized agribusiness, big manufacturers and corporate service providers.
They're displaced when their livelihoods are lost, and that creates a huge
surplus army of labor on the move and an opportunity for business to exploit
for profit. It affects all skill types and levels (farm workers to computer
specialists to doctors), undermines unions, and allows management to replace
higher-paid US workers with low-wage immigrants at their mercy and getting
little. Pay is kept low, benefits few or none, working conditions unsafe,
unions weakened, and dare complain and be sent home.
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- Petras notes that as imperial power grows, "the
massive movement of dislocated workers toward the imperial center multiplies,"
and there's no end in sight nor will there be as long as highly exploitative
sectors like agriculture, construction and low-end manufacturing and services
thrive on it. Workers lose and so do "sender" countries. They
bore the costs of raising, educating, training and providing services for
millions with "receiver" nations getting the benefits. It amounts
to multi-billions in the form of critically needed skilled areas lost
that include professionals like doctors, nurses, teachers and others. This
won't ever change unless worker movements unite against it.
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- Empire-Building and Corruption
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- Petras notes how empire-building "is the driving
force of the US economy (especially post-9/11)," corruption a key
corporate predator tool to re-divide the world, and nations with the greatest
firepower get the choicest slices. Business profit growth depends on exploiting
overseas opportunities for their resources, markets and cheap reserve armies
of labor with four so-called "BRIC" countries especially targeted:
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- -- China for its cheap labor and opportunities in finance,
insurance and real estate;
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- -- India for its low cost information technology services;
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- -- Brazil for its high interest rates that hit 19.5%,
were then greatly cut, but are still around 11%; and
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- -- Russia for its high profit oil and gas reserves, transport
and luxury goods markets with booming opportunities in real estate once
political leaders are bought off in a country rife with corruption as is
China.
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- Petras notes that today over half the top 500 transnational
corporations earn most of their profits overseas, and for many it's 75%
of it. This trend will continue, he says, as these companies shift most
of their operations abroad for greater cost savings. In addition, "political
corruption, not economic efficiency, is the driving force of economic empire-building
(with) the scale and scope of Western pillage of the East....unprecedented
in recent world history." It's from business-friendly legislation
on low wages, pensions, job tenure, land use, worker safety and health,
all designed for maximum profit. Political leaders are bought off to get
state-owned businesses privatized, markets deregulated, wages kept low,
with a huge reserve army of exploitable labor the payoff for "the
US Imperial System."
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- Hierarchy of Empire and Use of Force
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- Petras explains the US imperial system in terms of its
"hierarchy of empire" rankings. Imperial powers top it (the US,
EU and Japan) followed by emerging powers (China, Russia, India), semi-autonomous
client regimes (Brazil, South Korea, South Africa), and collaborator regimes
on the bottom (Egypt, Mexico, Colombia). Then come independent "revolutionary"
(social democratic) states like Venezuela and nationalist ones like Iran
as well as "contested terrain and regimes in transition (Iraq, Afghanistan,
Somalia, Palestine)." Client regimes provide "a crucial link
in sustaining imperial powers" by allowing them to project and extend
their state and market reach.
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- One "anomaly" in the hierarchy is Israel. It's
a colonialist and nuclear power and world's fourth largest military power
and arms exporter that's breathtaking for a country of 7.1 million and
5.4 million Jews. It's influence over US Middle East policy, however, inordinately
outweighs its size with Iraq exhibit A and Iran moving up fast. More on
this below.
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- Petras notes the constant flux within the imperial system
the result of wars, national struggles and economic crises. They bring
down regimes and elevate others with examples like Russia, the Eastern
European states, South Africa and Venezuela. It shows "no singular
omnipotent imperial state....unilaterally defines the international or....imperial
system (that in the case of the US) proved incapable of....defeating popular....resistance
in Iraq and Afghanistan."
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- Even in Somalia, a US proxy war is in trouble, but it's
too early to predict the outcome. The easy 2006 overthrow of the popular
Islamic Courts Union (ICU) put an unsupported warlord regime in charge
(that plundered the country from 1991 - 2005) with predictable results
- strong resistance against the US puppet regime and its deeply corrupted
Transitional Federal Government (TFG) "president," Abdullahi
Yusuf.
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- Washington backed a hated regime and an equally detested
Ethiopian government that's been "prop(ping) up its Somali puppet"
with a lift from US-supported force. Earlier in 1993-94, the Clinton administration's
intervention failed. It spawned mass opposition, took thousands of Somali
lives in retaliation, and ended in defeat and a humiliating US pullout.
That may repeat despite Washington's establishing an African Command (AFRICOM)
to solidify its hold on the continent and its strategically important Horn.
So far, it's very much up for grabs with US presence in the region unwelcome
and greatly destabilizing. The "empire" never learns, so it's
on to the next target that looks like Iran. More on that below.
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- Imperialism and Genocide
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- Petras explains how Korea, Vietnam and other wars hid
their true cost in lives, devastation and human wreckage. It's the way
of all empires sweeping over populations like crabgrass. It becomes "an
accelerating predisposition to genocides to accomplish political aims,"
and in an age of "shock and awe," it can come with "awesome"
speed. An example is from the latest O.R.B. British polling data reporting
1.2 million Iraqi deaths since March, 2003 alone plus another 1.5 million
up to that date. The true toll may be even higher with huge uncounted numbers
of daily violent and non-violent deaths that one estimate by Gideon Polya
places at 3.9 million from 1990 to the present. No one knows for sure,
and his estimate may be as good as any other. All of them are horrific.
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- Petras notes the "quantity" of killings elsewhere
- six million Jews and 20 million Soviet civilians in WW II as well as
10 million Chinese civilians in Asia. He explains genocide as policy from
a "state (promoted) racialist-exterminationist ideology (as well as
from) an historical antipathy of one culture to another." This allows
ruling classes to legitimize their ideology and achieve "uncontested
dominance" and ability to economically exploit domestic and overseas
markets. An omelet requires breaking eggs. Mass human slaughter is the
frequent fallout from consolidating empires with living beings having no
more worth than egg shells.
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- Genocides also result from revolutionary challenges to
unpopular puppet rulers with Korea, Indo-China and Iraq Exhibits A, B,
and C. Up to eight million perished in Asia, and three (or maybe four)
million could be reached in Iraq in 2008 at the present pace. There's no
end to it in sight with billions funding it, and no reporting on the carnage
in the mainstream.
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- Petras reviews examples of imperialism becoming genocide
with the Reagan administration alone responsible for its share. It committed
multiple proxy genocides in Africa, Afghanistan and Central America, but
you'd never know it from reports at the time about a president being prepped
for Mount Rushmore with a spot for George Bush beside him until Iraq got
him in trouble.
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- Another unreported genocide is Israel's six decade-long
crusade against the Palestinians with predicable results. It caused many
thousands of deaths, mass population displacement, and excessive use of
detentions and torture to deny a people freedom and justice in their own
land. The policy continues because Israel has a powerful ally in Washington
and an even more influential Lobby working on its behalf. More on that
below.
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- Petras notes genocides are "repeated, common practices,"
impunity for committing them the norm, and no effective international order
is in place to stop them. Victors justice prevails so victims face kangaroo
tribunals like the ICTY for Yugoslavia and the equally corrupted one for
Iraq. Genocides will only end when imperial powers are defeated and their
leaders held to account for their crimes, but that goal is nowhere in sight.
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- The Global Billionaire Ruling Class
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- The number of world billionaires reached 946 in March,
2007, they have an estimated combined wealth of $3.5 trillion, and over
half of them are in three countries - 415 in the US, 55 in Germany and
53 in Russia where never did so many people lose more so a handful of others
could gain so hugely in so short a time. India ranks high as well with
36 billionaires with China next in the region at 20. The number of millionaires
exploded as well with close to 10 million in 2007, and in 2006 their numbers
grew by an estimated 8.3%.
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- Balzac was right saying behind every great fortune is
a crime (and most often a small fortune as seed money) but likely nowhere
more rapaciously than in Russia. Petras notes "Without exception,
the transfers of (state) property were achieved through gangster tactics
- assassinations, massive theft, and seizure of state resources, illicit
stock manipulation and buyouts." They strip mined over a trillion
dollars of Russia's wealth into private predatory hands who, in turn, stuffed
them in offshore accounts. It happens everywhere with the US exhibit A.
The Rockefellers, Morgans, Fords and Carnegie's didn't amass wealth by
being neighborly or nice. They got it the old-fashioned way - by strong-arming
and stealing.
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- In developing countries, it came faster under Washington
Consensus rules favoring capital over people with billionaires coming out
on top. Latin America has 38 of them, mostly in Brazil (with 30) and Mexico
(with industrialist Carlos Slim Helu now the world's third richest man).
These "two countries.... privatized the most lucrative, efficient
and largest public monopolies," and benefitted hugely from regressive
taxes, tax exemptions, deregulation, big subsidies, and the ability to
hike prices and make vital services unaffordable to millions who can't
pay for them.
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- "How to become a billionaire," Petras asked.
No need for an MBA or market savvy when the "interface of politics
(aka friends in high places) and economics" works much better. The
road to super-riches came from privatized state assets that began with
bloody military coups in Latin America. In countries like Chile, Colombia
and Argentina, results were always the same - great riches at the top,
stagnant economies, vast poverty, high unemployment, two-thirds of the
region's population with "inadequate living standards," and the
long shadow of US involvement backing military dictators, business elites,
and neoliberal politicians to assure lucrative ties to corporate interests
in America. More on this below.
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- Part II - The Power of Israel and Its Lobby in the US
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- Petras covered how the Israeli Lobby defeated the Jim
Baker Iraq Study Group's (ISG) proposal released December 6, 2006. Its
alternative US Middle East agenda lost out to the Israeli Lobby's influence
on Congress, a massive supportive propaganda campaign in the major media,
and Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert being as able to "have the
US president under our control" as Ariel Sharon once boasted.
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- For a time it looked like the ISG plan would prevail
with top Bush advisors recommending dialogue with Iran; high-ranking military,
active and retired, wanting a phased withdrawal for a failed effort; and
the Army, Navy and Marine Corps weekly publications wanting Defense Secretary
Rumsfeld sacked shortly before he resigned. Even Big Oil interests backed
Baker because stable conditions favor business more than conflict (at least
to pump oil), and that won't happen without a change of course now off
the table.
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- Iran wants rapprochement as well but not on the usual
US terms - making demands and offering nothing in return. Iran's objectives
are simple and reasonable - normalized relations and an end to Washington's
confrontational stance and military threats. They're off the table because
the "Israel-First power structure (Lobby-Congress-Mass Media-Democratic
Party Donors)" reject them. Syria is just as compliant, but its overtures
are also rebuffed for the same reason.
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- Petras explained that AIPAC wants war with Iran as its
top priority objective. In addition, the publications, conferences and
press releases of the Conference of Presidents of the Major American Jewish
Organizations (CPMAJO) asked their members "to go all-out to fund
and back candidates (mostly Democrats) who supported Israel's military
solution to Iran's nuclear enrichment program" even though IAEA agrees
it's in total compliance with Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty rules while
Israel violates them with impunity.
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- In the end, Prime Minister Olmert co-opted George Bush,
got him to reject the ISG proposal and ally with Israel's aim to solidify
its Middle East dominance by removing a non-existent Iranian threat with
Syria also targeted. In many respects, this flies in the face of logic
as many influential US figures know. Petras believes Iran is a key interlocutor
for a Middle East settlement that might let Washington retain its strategic
Arab allies. Tehran is willing to cooperate but not when its government
is lumped with Al-Queda, the Taliban and Iraqi resistance and is being
threatened with war. That's the current condition with renewed Bush administration
efforts to prep the public to accept more of it if it comes.
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- Hamas also has been conciliatory. Its leaders made two
peace proposals as a show of good faith, is willing to recognize Israel
if Palestinians get justice, pledged a cease-fire in the face of Israeli
attacks, and was rebuffed with rejection and an Israeli blockade of Gaza
along with frequent hostile incursions. Conflicts rage in Iraq and occupied
Palestine, more war threatens in Iran, and the road to peace in the region
runs through Jerusalem providing Washington concurs. But it's not possible,
in Petras' judgment, unless foreign military bases are closed, there's
public control or nationalization of the region's resources, and Israel
ends its colonial occupation of Palestine. So far, those objectives are
nowhere in sight.
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- The Lobby and Media on Lebanon
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- In Petras' powerful 2006 book, "The Power of Israel
in the United States," he documented how this power derives from a
vast pro-Israel Lobby in the country supporting all aspects of its agenda.
It's position is firm - "Israel is always right, Arabs and Muslims
are a threat to peace," and the US should unconditionally support
Israel across the board. In Petras' view, that's the main reason why the
Bush administration attacked Iraq and may now target Iran and Syria. Israel
perceives these countries as threats, Washington seems willing to remove
them, and a chorus of media-driven propaganda approves.
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- They always support Israel and jumped right in last summer
backing "Operation Change of Direction" against Hezbollah and
"Operation Summer Rain" against Hamas that caused many hundreds
of deaths and mass destruction. It was all papered over in the major media
and characterized as Israel's "defensive, existential war for survival
against Islamic terrorists." It was pure baloney. In fact, and unreported,
Israel launched dual long-planned aggressive wars with Hezbollah's capture
of three IDF soldiers in Lebanon the pretext and Hamas taking one Israeli
corporal the justification in occupied Palestine. Never mentioned are the
many thousands of Palestinians illegally abducted, imprisoned and tortured,
and that unprovoked aggressive wars and their fallout are war crimes and
crimes against humanity.
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- Also unmentioned is that if Hezbollah and Hamas hadn't
provided the pretexts, Israel (as it's often done) would have manufactured
them to launch its summer aggression. With full US support and backing
from its Lobby and dominant media, these type actions continue at the expense
of their victims with US taxpayers duped into funding them generously.
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- US Empire and the Middle East
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- Petras notes key factors help explain US Middle East
policy that in his judgment are "challenged from within and without,
are subject to sharp contradictions," and are likely to fail.
-
- First, is the influence of the Israeli Lobby he documented
powerfully as have Mearsheimer and Walt in their work. It's likely the
most potent lobby in Washington and can practically mobilize the entire
Congress, every administration and the dominant media to back pro-Israeli
policies even when they run counter to US corporate interests that in Middle
East means those of Big Oil primarily.
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- The Lobby wanted war with Iraq and got it. Now its top
priority is stiff sanctions and war on Iran, and if the orchestrated media
hate frenzy targeting President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's Columbia University
address September 24 is an indication, it may get it. As Petras notes,
the Lobby's fanatical support for Israel is so extreme and uncompromising,
it's even willing to risk world war and economic collapse to get its way.
-
- Another key factor is the US ability to enlist and co-op
client states and proxy forces to serve our interests - the Kurds in Northern
Iraq; the Abbas-Dahlan Fatah militants in Palestine; the Sinoria-Hariri-Jumblat
pro-US/Israel, anti-Syria/Hezbollah/Hamas alliance in Lebanon; Mubarak
in Egypt; King Hussein in Jordan; pro-US regimes in Turkey; the Saudis
and others.
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- Petras then explains how the Israeli Lobby's influence
runs counter to the US "Arab agenda." It shows up in Washington's
failure to construct a NATO-style power-sharing alliance in the region,
except for Turkey and Israel, and the former may not prove solid. The Iraq
policy has been disastrous, each tactic tried failed, resistance is unabated,
the Arab street overwhelmingly rejects occupation, and Arab leaders offer
tepid support.
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- Petras calls Washington's permanent war strategy (next
targeting Iran and Syria) "an irrational gamble comparable to Hitler's
attack on Russia" that doomed him. Today in the Middle East, attacking
these two countries may only compound the Iraq failure with "greater
defeats, greater domestic rebellion" and still more wars without end
promising gloomy prospects ahead.
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- Part III - The Possibility of Resistance
-
- Petras discusses China and the "general consensus
(it's) emerging as the next economic superpower" to challenge US dominance.
Petras expresses doubts that can only be summarized briefly. He notes Chinese
capitalism not only depends on growth and the ability to generate jobs,
but also on "the social relations of production, circulation and reproduction."
They come at a high price - ferocious labor exploitation, rampant corruption
and nepotism, mass small farmer displacement, firing millions of workers
from state-owned and bankrupt enterprises, ending social services, and
higher living costs increasing class warfare in the streets against billionaire
kleptocrats and foreign investors profiting hugely at the expense of most
Chinese.
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- Petras then distinguishes between "made in China"
and Chinese-owned and whether the former enhances China's growth or foreign
investor profits instead. He sees China taking on "features of both
a neo-colony and an emerging imperial power," but mostly the former.
He notes the standard of living for most Chinese "declined precipitously;"
air, water and ground pollution greatly increased; the quality of life
for most Chinese suffers; class inequalities are vast; and gains from a
consumerist society for a minority of the population are offset by dirty
air, loss of leisure, job security, near rent-free housing, state-provided
health care and education, deteriorated working conditions and more. Paradise
it's not, at least for workers, and conditions aren't improving.
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- Petras then discusses China's transition from state to
"liberal" capitalism. As it deepened, trade barriers were dismantled;
protective labor laws abolished; price controls lifted; the countryside
ravaged; a massive new army of unemployed workers created; and an export-driven
market strategy followed. The result today is a new class of billionaires
and about 2900 former party "princelings" who control around
$260 billion of wealth. In addition, property, real estate and construction
boomed, an export strategy concentrated development on coastal regions,
and domestic consumption is relatively constrained.
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- In contrast, "millions of construction workers,
miners, domestic servants and assembly-line workers (labor) under the most
abominable conditions" - long hours, low pay, awful sanitary conditions
and little regard for safety in an unregulated environment structured for
maximum profit. China today is a "magnet for capitalists and investors
worldwide," a free market paradise that's hell on workers paying hugely
for the country's marketplace "success."
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- Petras envisions China's capitalism deepening and mainly
benefitting foreign investors. He sees their "initial beachheads as
minority shareholders" extending into production, distribution, transport,
real estate, telecommunications, consumer goods and services, entertainment,
finance and more and eventually gaining more control. As a result, he believes
China's next great leap forward will be from liberalism to neoliberalism,
the country will lose its national identity, it will become a "territorial
outpost" for foreign-owned transnationals, and the country's bid for
world power status will be subverted.
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- Petras sees 21st century China emerging as a "gigantic
proxy for imperial powers," but China won't be one of them. Its "Great
Leap Backwards" will be consummated when the nation's "share
of profits shifts from the national bourgeoisie" to foreign investors
in a process now accelerating.
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- But it won't come easily as a new generation of China's
leaders may stop or curtail it. In addition, growing mass resistance has
now emerged for obvious reasons cited above. Already, close to 100,000
mass demonstrations have occurred involving millions of Chinese protesting
a workers' hell. Social crisis is deepening, class struggle has returned,
and the government has taken note. It's beginning to address concerns but
giving back pathetically little considering China's massive population.
Petras calls these remediating actions "too little and too late."
Ahead he sees decentralized protests becoming organized urban worker movements
that when joined with displaced farmers may set off a new rebellious period.
This may then blossom into "a new revolutionary struggle" that
will determine China's future and its climate for investors.
-
- The US and Latin America
-
- Petras has studied Latin America for decades and knows
the region as well as anyone. Here he dispels notions of a revitalized
regional populism with US dominance waning. His case is compelling as he
argues Washington's influence has increased in recent years (though not
to the level of the 1990s) despite the success of Hugo Chavez and his ability
to thwart US efforts to unseat him.
-
- The Bush administration lost out on FTAA but has had
other successes:
-
- -- bilateral trade agreements with numerous Latin American
states from the Caribbean to Chile;
-
- -- an expanded number of military bases despite the possible
loss of one in Ecuador ahead;
-
- -- US business interests in the region flourishing, including
in Venezuela where they're booming; and
-
- -- neoliberal free market policies intact despite campaign
rhetoric promising change.
-
- Aside from Venezuela and maybe Ecuador (where it's too
soon to tell), the left's appraisal of progressive change is nowhere in
sight, so what are they seeing that's not there.
-
- Petras assesses the current state of things in the region
after reviewing its recent history readers can get from the book. He notes
signs of Washington's declining influence that's had no adverse affect
on corporate interests except in Venezuela where taxes are now fair compared
to earlier when they were too low. He also explains so-called center-left
regimes in Brazil, Argentina, Bolivia, Uruguay and elsewhere tamed mass
social movement demands while embracing 1990s neoliberalism. In Brazil,
if fact, President Lula da Silva actually deepened and extended the privatization
and restrictive budget policies of the preceding Cardoso regime, and despite
his Workers Party background, demobilized mass movements and trade unions
instead of supporting them as people expected. Many now see him for what
he is - a traitor, but sadly, he's got company, too much of it.
-
- Of great significance is the way Petras explains four
competing regional power blocs representing varying degrees of accommodation
or opposition to US policies and interests.
-
- 1. The Radical Left
-
- It includes:
-
- -- the FARC guerillas in Colombia (active since 1964);
some trade union sectors; and peasant and barrio movements in Venezuela;
-
- -- the labor confederation CONLUTAS and sectors of Brazil's
Rural Landless Movement (MST);
-
- -- sectors of the Bolivian Labor Confederation (COB)
and the Andean peasant movements and barrio organizations in El Alto;
-
- -- peasant movement sectors (CONAIE) in Ecuador;
-
- -- teachers and peasant-indigenous movements in Oaxaca,
Guerrero and Chiapas, Mexico;
-
- -- nationalist-peasant-left sectors in Peru;
-
- -- trade unionist and unemployed sectors in Argentina;
and
-
- -- other Central and South American social movements
and some Marxist groups in several countries.
-
- 2. The Pragmatic Left
-
- -- Hugo Chavez in Venezuela who combines grassroots participatory
democracy and redistributive social policies with support for business
interests;
-
- -- Evo Morales in Bolivia;
-
- -- Fidel Castro in Cuba;
-
- -- various large electoral parties and major peasant
and trade unions in the region; leftist parties including the PRD in Mexico,
FMLN in El Salvador, CUT in Colombia, Chilean Communist Party, Peru's nationalist
parliamentary party, sectors of Brazil's MST, Bolivia's MAS governing party,
CTA in Argentina, and PIT-CNT in Uruguay.
-
- 3. The Pragmatic Neoliberals (the most numerous political
block)
-
- -- Lula in Brazil;
-
- -- Kirchner in Argentina;
-
- -- the major trade union confederations in Brazil and
Argentina;
-
- -- business and financial elite sectors providing subsistence
unemployment doles and food aid; and
-
- -- similar groups in Ecuador, Nicaragua (the Sandinistas
and their split-offs), Paraguay and other countries.
-
- 4. The Doctrinaire Neoliberal Regimes
-
- -- Calderon in Mexico;
-
- -- Uribe in Colombia;
-
- -- Bachelet in Chile (in spite of her being imprisoned
and tortured under Pinochet);
-
- -- the Central American countries: El Salvador, Honduras,
Costa Rica and Guatemala;
-
- -- Garcia in Peru;
-
- -- Paraguay with the region's largest military base;
-
- -- Uruguay's ex-leftist regime now rightist;
-
- -- US-occupied Haiti through proxy thuggish paramilitary
UN peacekeepers; and
-
- -- the Dominican Republic.
-
- The notion that populism swept Latin America in the new
century is pure fantasy. In fact, there's a "quadrangle of competing
and conflicting" regional forces with Washington having less market
leverage than in the 1990s "Golden Age of Pillage" but still
enough to be dominant and able to keep business flourishing.
-
- Petras continues his analysis with detailed examples
of key center-left regimes in Brazil under Lula, Argentina under Kirchner,
Uruguay under Vazquez, Bolivia under Morales plus some comments on Peru
and Ecuador under leaders preceding their current ones. Each case substantiates
the fantasy that these regimes represented "new winds from the Left"
sweeping the region. Hot air maybe, but little, if anything, in the way
of progressive change despite the beliefs of many intellectuals on the
left.
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