Guns Don’t Kill People, Settlers Do: The Second Amendment and the Myth of Defense

By Oliver Baker

"Our nation was built and civilized by men and women who used guns in self-defense and in pursuit of peace." - Ronald Reagan

"If you are coming to the idea of resistance as a resolute no to the Empire, then armed self-defense is as much a yes to liberated life as the yes of community gardens." - Ashanti Alson

Many of the households where I grew up in rural Missouri have at least one good hunting rifle in their collections of firearms. Every November, most families here-usually the father and son, but sometimes the father and daughter-will go deer hunting, not only for sport but also for the meat it provides households. They will often say hunting is the reason they own firearms.

Several years ago, I was invited to go target shooting at the property of a long-time acquaintance. He was proud of his expansive and comfortable set-up: he owned several dozen acres of land in the country with a nice three-bed, two-bath home and a stable income to support it all. His property, in other words, allowed him to be a gracious host for friends, neighbors, and acquaintances looking to shoot guns, improve their marksmanship, and build community and comradery.

When I arrived, there were 15-20 men armed to the teeth, strutting around with ARs slung tightly around their chests and handguns of various calibers holstered on their belts. Their wives were inside preparing food and tending the kids. As the men-some dressed in army surplus gear, others still wearing their work clothes-blasted away at various targets, the property owner began talking to me about why he loved his home(stead) so much. It was, in his words, "out in the sticks, good and far away from all of that inner-city mayhem." After showing me a sample of his extensive gun collection, spread out before everyone on the tailgate of his truck, he continued his white-to-white conservation with me:

"Yeah, I have all this firepower because I gotta protect my property and family when, you know, shit hits the fan, and all them inner-city people dependent on government hand-outs are left high and dry and start coming out here where the pavement meets gravel looking to loot food and other things."

It was clear he wanted me to understand that he had guns to defend against, in his eyes, Black people coming to loot his home in the event of a "societal collapse," and that he'd be ready with an arsenal of firepower to repel them. That is, gun ownership for him was about using violence to defend his property-as-whiteness from racialized populations whom he recognized were deliberately excluded from the formal economy and corralled in inner-city ghettos. His guns were the lynchpin for maintaining this line between the "good guys" like himself-the productive worker, the property holder, the respectable law-abiding citizen-and a zombified surplus population marked for death. This metaphor is telling: of all the firearms he showed me that day, he was most proud of some recently purchased specialty ammunition with the tagline: "Supply yourself for the Zombie Apocalypse." Guns and zombie rounds animated the fantasy of defending whiteness by mowing down a racialized surplus humanity on the gravel roads of rural Missouri.

I heard this fantasy many times growing up in such hyper-masculine spaces, in which it is taught that the man of the house has to be prepared to defend his home(stead) from perceived criminal (racial) threats and maintain order in his home . True men are providers and protectors; anything less, and you're an emasculated loser. In this way, the property holder was simply being a good patriot and male leader by preparing for the moment when, in his eyes, he would use guns in self-defense against the racialized poor. From this perspective, all the patriots out there that day sharpening their firearm skills claimed to be doing so for reasons of self-defense. Each saw himself as a Josey Wales , John Wayne, or Dirty Harry, or (more recently) anAmerican Sniper or Rick Grimes, neutralizing racialized criminal threats encountered on the Indian frontier or spilling out from the Black ghetto.

People will often say hunting is the reason they own firearms, but the underlying structural reason, whether acknowledged or not, has more to do with white settler fears of racial rebellion. Indeed, the NRA-the most politically influential gun organization-isn't powerful because it has a lot money to spend, but rather because it markets gun ownership as a means of reinforcing white settler sovereignty. Gun ownership is about staving off the loss of the white settler's power, honor, and privilege, which the global economy no longer respects and the state, it is believed, tramples in its accommodating of the marginalized. Despite the rhetoric, gun ownership has never been about hunting or defending democracy against authoritarianism, which white settlers are ready to embrace if it maintains their power.

In other words, the fear of the dispossessed challenging their subjugation drives gun ownership and gun culture among white settlers in the United States-not hunting, a tyrannical government, or, as I argue, reasons of self-defense. American gun ownership has its structural roots in the desire to uphold and reproduce colonial and racial hierarchies and to maintain the power and benefits received from such hierarchies, putting guns in the hands of white settlers with fantasies of nostalgic redemption through violence. Make America Great Again, indeed.

At its core, then, gun ownership for white settlers is about using tools of violence to defend the political category of white settler sovereignty, which is to say, using guns to harm, kill, or terrorize colonized and racialized people in order to keep them unfree-as their freedom means the dissolution of these categories of power and honor. Historian Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz's recent book Loaded (2018) argues that the history of the Second Amendment and the right to bear arms was fundamentally the state-granted right of settlers to arm their households and form voluntary militias in order to seize Native land and/or police enslaved Black people. Gun ownership today maintains what Dunbar-Ortiz contends was the founding vision of the settler state to distribute its monopoly of violence to its settler-citizens in order to carry out campaigns of dispossession and secure white property against threats of rebellion:

"Settler-militias and armed households were institutionalized for the destruction and control of Native peoples, communities, and nations. With the expansion of plantation agriculture, by the late 1600s they were also used as 'slave patrols,' forming the basis of the U.S. police culture after enslaving people was illegalized."

In fact, joining a militia was less of a right than a requirement of settlers; in some cases, particularly at the state level in the South preceding the Constitution, service in the militia or arming one's household was required by law. Dunbar-Ortiz explains this history:

"European settlers were required by law to own and carry firearms, and all adult male settlers were required to serve in the militia. Militias were also used to prevent indentured European servants from fleeing before their contracts expired, in which case they were designated 'debtors.' [. . .]. In 1727, the Virginia colony enacted a law requiring militias to create slave patrols, imposing stiff fines on white people who refused to serve."

These state laws fed into the Second Amendment to enshrine the imperative of gun ownership at the federal level. Requiring participation in counterrevolutionary violence was thus written into the law directly. Today this duty to defend settler dominance continues not through state laws requiring militia membership but through informal gun ownership. The Second Amendment deputized settlers to use violence to steal land and people-in short, to expand empire.

Building on Dunbar-Ortiz's analysis of the Second Amendment, I want to suggest that we understand gun ownership as a material practice through which white settlers engage directly in the work of counterrevolutionary violence that consolidates and maintains U.S. liberal democracy. It is a way of strengthening settler democracy that promises empowerment and redemption. Firearms are the tools and symbols of a larger counterrevolutionary policing that binds settlers together despite contradictions of class in their mutual support of upholding colonial and racial hierarchies. Through gun ownership of today-what was, earlier, participation in militias-the white settler defends the state that in turn ensures his sovereignty and superiority.

In this way, the settler state depends on deputizing its settler-citizens to be the police of dispossessed populations, just as the settler relies on the state upholding his rights of property, or his "pursuit of life, liberty, and happiness." This is why gun ownership is seen as fundamental to liberal freedoms. The Second Amendment is upstream from the other amendments precisely because counterrevolutionary policing maintains the public order of civil society in which liberal freedoms can flourish.

There are three conclusions, then, I would like to discuss that follow from the claim that Second Amendment-sponsored gun ownership in the United States is counterrevolutionary violence harmonizing intra-settler relations. The first is that self-defense belongs to the oppressed and never to the oppressor. From a structural prespective, there is no such thing as white settler self-defense. The second is that gun culture from the 1960s onward serves as an important site at which settlers organize politically across class and gender lines to protect whiteness in response to marginalized peoples' demand for freedom and neoliberalism's attack on labor. The third is that the practice of community self-defense among those targeted by colonial violence radically undermines the ideology of white victimization through which counterrevolutionary violence is legitimated.

Guns and White Victimization

Perhaps the best example of how counterrevolutionary violence is coded as white settler self-defense is the now iconic Gadsden Flag. From its inception during the American Revolutionary War to its revival and proliferation in right-wing gun culture in the years following 9/11, the Gadsden Flag, with its image of a rattlesnake and phrase "Don't Tread on Me," illustrates how the effort to maintain white settler power in the face of marginalized peoples' demand for freedom is branded as self-defense. The coiled rattler signifies a defensive and victimized position, but one that is deadly if provoked. The Gadsden Flag serves as an important symbol for those identifying as patriots, law-abiding gun-owners, and defenders of the Constitution because it supports a larger ideology that holds that white America is under attack by minorities (and the federal government taken over by minorities in the post-Civil Rights era) whose commitments to equality have turned into the discrimination against, exclusion of, and attacks on whiteness.

Some of the earliest versions of the Gadsden flag, as many patriots will mention, is Benjamin Franklin's drawing of the colonies as a snake divided into sections underwritten by the ultimatum of "join, or die." Yet the tyranny the colonies were fighting against wasn't simply taxation without representation, but more broadly the right to expand its own empire rather than remain merely another exploited colony-to form a state strong enough to defend the colonists' pursuit of wealth from Native and Black rebellion. Indeed, Jefferson makes this clear in the Declaration of Independence when he argues that the Crown had prevented the colonies from clearing the lands west of the Appalachian Mountains of "merciless Indian savages" and encouraged slave insurrection in the colonies.

The rattlesnake represents a white settler body politic that feels continuously threatened and anxious about defending its power over conquered and subjugated populations. It claims to take up a position of self-defense when this position is actually one of stopping the efforts of marginalized people to free themselves from structures of violence. The fetish of Franklin's coiled rattler as the iconography of settlers coming together through counterrevolution suggests there is unity and strength precisely through this position of shared white victimization. If disjointed by cleavages such as class or gender, they will be overrun by the dispossessed, but if unified in their mutual opposition to the dispossessed, white settlers will flourish despite such intra-settler contradictions.

This fear of insurgency-from-below justifying the use of counterrevolutionary violence helps explain the emergence and proliferation of right-wing gun culture in the years following the 1960s to the present. As theorist Sylvia Wynter has argued, the global anti-colonial rebellions of the mid-20th century that empowered and inspired national liberation struggles in the United States sent shocks throughout the white-settler body politic. These rebellions ended in the settler state granting concessions to colonized and racialized groups in the form of civil rights legislation, the dismantling of legal forms of racial apartheid, and the overall turn away from overt, codified forms of white supremacy to new forms of colorblind racism. Black, Brown, and Native militancy terrified settlers, compelling concessions as a means to pacify their militant struggle.

It was these attempts of federal government to conditionally include marginalized groups that led white America, using a zero-sum logic, to feel betrayed and abandoned. As a result, white middle- and working-class settlers gave up defending the welfare state as long as it was also going to include nonwhites. In this moment when the state seems to accommodate nonwhites-an act that failed to respect, in the eyes of white America, the colonial and racial divisions binding together settlers-gun ownership became much more meaningful for white settlers looking to hold the line of these divisions where the state had, it was believed, given up doing so.

During Obama's presidency, this fear that the state had abandoned white settlers by catering to marginalized people had a resurgence. Gun purchases were at an all-time high and patriot community-building became widespread, which is to say, gun ownership and patriot communities were seen as necessary measures for saving the original and founding vision of a white settler republic from a federal government that was believed to have sided with the very people whose demands for equality would unravel the sovereignty and power of white settlers.

Militias such as the Oathkeepers and Three Percenters emerged during these years and embodied the view that it is the job of "true patriots" (white male settlers) to save white America from a state that has gone rogue in its perceived embrace of "open-borders" multiculturalism. The Constitution and the Second Amendment are sacred for such groups because they authorize freedom-loving citizens to form militias to restore the founding colonialist vision of the United States.

For all the wrong reasons of preserving their power, such groups actually have a perceptive understanding of the Second Amendment as a law authorizing counterrevolutionary violence. For them, guns are not about hunting or even self-defense, but about the right to ensure colonial and racial rebellion is controlled and that state power is recaptured in ways that it abandons neoliberal multiculturalism for more direct forms of settler-colonial white-nationalist capitalism. Indeed, it is not surprising that Oathkeepers and Three Percenters show up to police Black rebellions or put down antifascist counterdemonstrations. They see themselves as an extension of the police, the National Guard, and border patrol. Like the KKK of yore, these militias, filled with current and former police and military, believe they fulfill the original function of the state-under the Obama years seen as liberal and weak-in putting down racial rebellions. Gun culture, then, serves as a symbolic yet very material compensation for the state's support of neoliberal multiculturalism and the dismantling of welfare capitalism. Just as credit is offered in place of decreased wages, gun culture supplies compensatory ammunition to bolster the value of whiteness in the face of deindustrialization, increased intra-settler inequality, and globalization's attack on U.S. nationalism.

Arming the Police, Arming White Supremacy

It is important not to forget that support for counterrevolutionary violence extends far beyond patriots and right-wing gun culture. Liberals who call for gun regulation but fully support the police and military and their work of upholding mass incarceration at home and imperial violence abroad support the same structures of violence celebrated by the gun-nuts such liberals love to disparage and against whom they define their commitments to nonviolence. The difference is a choice between a monopoly of state violence in repressive state apparatuses or the distribution of state violence among individual settlers and citizen militias. In other words, patriots believe the violence should be democratized and liberals believe it should be concentrated in the hands of state institutions. While one wants to stand alongside the police and military, the other wants the bloody work to be accomplished without getting their hands dirty. Avowed and disavowed to varying degrees, both support counterrevolutionary violence to protect settler democracy. In this way, liberals, despite their pacifist posturing, are not any less supportive of colonial violence than their gun-nut counterparts because they call for a strengthening of the settler state and a disarming of the populace, which will only make marginalized people more vulnerable to killings and incarceration.

This is a view that has the audacity and class privilege of asking marginalized people targeted by state violence, and its extended forms of vigilante violence, to appeal to the same state for protection. While patriots take up actual weapons to target marginalized people, liberals weaponize gun control policy to the same ends of putting people of color in body bags or cages. The only gun control that would reduce gun violence would be disarming the police, the military, domestic abusers, and anyone with ties to white nationalist and misogynist political groups, along with demilitarizing schools and campuses. Whether they are appealing to the Second Amendment or asking people to trust the authority of the police and military, white settlers on the Left or Right demonstrate that the violence they commit, fantasize about committing, or have no problem with the police and military committing for their protection is necessary for their redemptive vision of liberal democracy. It matters not if this vision is a return to when liberal democracy more forcefully upheld colonial and racial hierarchies, or some future point at which this violence and policing ensures genuine equality of opportunity for people believed to be formerly colonized and enslaved.

Community Self-Defense

While it may be easy to oppose right-wing white victimization and liberal support for state violence, it's still very hard for many to accept the premise that marginalized peoples, those targeted by such violence, have the right to use any means necessary to defend themselves and their communities. Yet we have to see, as Malcolm X made very clear, that the only people who have the moral authority to lay claim to the use of force as a means of self-defense are the people targeted by colonial violence in first place. The struggle to get free, gain control over one's life, and have a say in the governing of one's community is always a struggle of self-defense rather than aggression or provocation. The meanings of self-defense in settler society are purposely inverted to legitimate counterrevolutionary violence and to discredit the self-defense actions of communities struggling to get free.

Robert Williams emphasized this point over and over again while organizing armed community self-defense to protect the Black community against KKK violence in Monroe, South Carolina in the 1960s. In Negroes with Guns , Williams explains:

"The Afro-American militant is a 'militant' because he defends himself, his family, his home and his dignity. He does not introduce violence into a racist social system-the violence is already there and has always been there. It is precisely this unchallenged violence that allows a racist social system to perpetuate itself. When people say that they are opposed to Negroes 'resorting to violence' what they really mean is that they are opposed to Negroes defending themselves and challenging the exclusive monopoly of violence practiced by white racists."

When a relationship between people is asymmetrical, meaning it is structurally impossible to rectify or reconcile, the violence that defends this power imbalance appears legitimate while anything that would take power away from the oppressor or build power for the oppressed registers as illegitimate and irrational violence.

With the same force, then, that we can acknowledge the illegitimacy of the notion of white settler self-defense, we should recognize the legitimacy of marginalized peoples' right to self-defense. As theorist Chad Kautzer argues, "our understanding of self-defense must, therefore, account for the transformative power of self-defense for oppressed groups as well as the stabilizing effect of self-defense for oppressor groups." What this looks like is, on the one hand, disempowering, delegitimizing, and disarming institutions of white settler violence such as the police, patriot, and other white-nationalist gun culture groups, and on the other, using a diversity of tactics to create and maintain community self-defense networks among marginalized communities. Community self-defense, as a theory and praxis, can help produce identities, relationships, and habits necessary not only to deter and prevent violence and build/protect power, but also to delegitimize the ideology of white victimization so crucial to white settlers' use of violence to defend their power. This framework reveals who is fighting a war of counterrevolution and who is fighting a war of liberation, whose fight is legitimate and whose is illegitimate.

In this way, community self-defense helps clears the way for matters of seeing where allegiances lie in a war that has been ongoing for over 500 years. For those picking up a gun to defend property that sits on stolen land and that has value through an economy built by and through stolen people, it becomes clear they are arming themselves to kill and die for colonialism and anti-Blackness. For those calling for peace between the oppressor and oppressed, community self-defense forces their hand, exposing where their allegiances actually lie: in support of colonial and racial violence. For those told that their struggle to exist, to be free, to control their own lands and bodies is irrational and illegitimate, they prove through community self-defense that it is irrational, let alone careless, to think that the structures of violence holding them captive or targeting them for elimination will be destroyed through peaceful negotiation and compromise.

This was originally published at Pyriscence .

Oliver Baker is an Assistant Professor at Penn State University.

A Better History Will be Decided by Ending the Rule of the Rich and Powerful

By Jeremy Cloward

"Had I so interfered … [on] behalf of the rich, the powerful … or any of that class … it would have been alright."

- The "Old Man" John Brown, shortly before he was hanged on December 2, 1859.

In a Virginia courthouse in 1859 John Brown was declared insane by his own attorney and sentenced to death for attempting to start a nation-wide revolt to bring an end to the most brutal form of capitalism to ever have existed - slavery. Two years after his execution, a bloody civil war began in the United States which finally brought an end to that barbaric system that had torn apart the lives of millions of men, women, and children. The cost for doing so was the death of some 750,000 soldiers-a total higher than all US lives lost in all other 270 US wars combined-as well as the crippling, maiming, and injuring of 500,000 more.[1] Yet, why was the war fought at all? Because the rich and powerful of the South were unwilling to give up their class privilege and rule. Instead, they engaged in treason by ordering their fellow Southerners to take up arms against the United States government and forced millions of their countrymen, North and South, to pay a steep price-one they were often unwilling to pay themselves [2]-to try to maintain their position atop the existing politico-economic order of the day.

Class power in the South was based on control of the productive forces of society (i.e., farms, factories, etc.) by the rich or what we have come to know as private property. It is the fundamental component of capitalism that allows for wealth, power, and inequality to develop into enormously disproportionate dimensions throughout the world. Those that control property are able to determine what will be produced, how much will be produced, at what cost, and for what wage. Through ownership of the means of production of society, great wealth is produced for the owning class which often translates into great political power as well. While the idea of private property in the West has its roots in Ancient Greece and Ancient Rome, its most recent conception comes to us from the Enlightenment and is best understood through the political philosophy of liberalism and the economic doctrine of capitalism. Or more specifically, liberal-capitalism.

Liberal-capitalism holds up individual rights, limited government, reason, and private property as virtues. In fact, John Locke, one of the most notable thinkers of the Enlightenment and for many the father of liberalism, considered property rights to be so important (as well as nearly every framer of the US Constitution [3]) that he argued "the preservation of property [is] the end of government." [4] However, even Locke recognized that "where there is no property, there is no injustice." [5] Thus, in two brief statements Locke made clear the truth about private property. The truth is that private property creates such inequality that any society that introduces it into its social relations will need the full force of the state to "protect" owners of property from those who are the victims of property ownership. Indeed, if private property creates injustice then the state will be needed to both legitimate its existence and suppress any kind of dissent against the privilege and power that comes from its possession. Still, in the end, economic inequality-including slavery-and all the injustices that come from it were not a problem for Locke nor most of the Enlightenment thinkers. Instead, these men helped bring into existence a world where political equality was a necessity (for white men with property anyway) but any notion of economic equality was simply beyond the reaches of human civilization.

Neoliberalism

So, it has been left to those who have come after the Enlightenment to create a social order that is rooted in political and economic equality as the foundation of a just society. While there is no formal name to this post-Enlightenment period that is now emerging, the most recent historical chapter that has been written by liberal-capitalism has been the problematic age of neoliberalism. Neoliberalism might be thought of as an extreme variant of state-regulated (or deregulated) capitalism. The idea of neoliberalism was first developed by the so-called "Chicago Boys." The Chicago Boys were a group of Chilean economists who received their Ph.D.'s in economics primarily from the University of Chicago and were trained by the neo-conservative economist Milton Friedman. They later played high-ranking roles as economic advisors in the military dictatorship of Augusto Pinochet in Chile in the 1970s and 1980s. Neoliberalism is essentially a two-pronged approach to political economy and consists of: (1) the reduction or elimination of government spending on social programs such as education, health care, and programs for the poor, and (2) the deregulation of private industry and the transferring of government services such as electricity, water, and oil into corporate hands. The purpose behind the system is to allow capital to move around the globe unhindered by the state in its never-ending pursuit of profits. Many times, this system of capital accumulation is reinforced by state power, including by a nation's military.

Neoliberalism (as is true with capitalism itself) places into motion the most basic law of wealth accumulation and poverty creation through a simple formula: the owning class pays the working class less than the value of the commodity or service that they produce . Even if there are different degrees of wealth distribution between companies and countries, there are no exceptions to the relationship between the owning class and the working class. The more capital the owning class takes for itself the less there is for everyone else. To not see this is to be awake but not see the sun. However, when the relationship between those that own and those that work is not taught in our schools and universities, revealed by our news media, nor whispered in the once hallowed institutions of our government then it is clear that a conspiracy of silence in understanding power has reached our culture. In so doing, our society has lost its ability to generate fundamental truths about itself from the very institutions that are supposed to provide them. Nevertheless, global capitalism (and one of its recent modifications-neoliberalism) with its opposing classes, remains the dominant economic system embraced or imposed upon nearly the whole of the world. Aside from its unequal distribution of class power, this system of capital accumulation has caused a whole series of national and planetary concerns. Consider just a few:

Responsible for Near Endless Wars Around the World

While many nations fight wars for one purpose or another, no nation behaves quite like the United States on the world stage. In examining the United States and its involvement in war, we can more clearly understand the forces at work within neoliberalism. The United States is the world's empire and its history makes it clear that war is very much a part of the American character. In fact, in its more than 240-year existence the US has been at war for more than 90 percent of the time. Since the end of World War II, the United States has engaged in more than one-hundred separate military "interventions" with more than thirty of them initiated after the turn of the twenty-first century. With none being formally "declared" as required by the Constitution, these often-brutal and long-lasting wars have resulted in the death and dislocation of millions of people around the world. It should not come to us as any surprise then, that from the millions of lives obliterated by the arithmetic of what are the ever-expanding American wars that the United States is now considered by a fairly wide margin, according to global public opinion polls, to be "the greatest threat to peace in the world today." [6]

Still, the massive size of the military, the military budget, and the reasons for military intervention across the planet are rarely questioned or investigated in any genuine way by the corporate press or discussed in any real detail by the United States government. In fact, the US enters one violent conflict after another with virtually no institutional debate, no declaration of war by congress, and virtually no understanding by the American people. Likewise, at almost no time whatsoever is the military budget placed into any meaningful context or even put into question by either the media or the US government. Indeed, the actual US military budget stands at some $1.2 trillion and is greater than all other 194 countries combined but is never even discussed by either the media or the United States government. [7] Rarely do the corporate press or the US government ever identify the hundreds of US corporations and industries located in any of the more than 150 countries where there are United States military forces. No real connection between capital extraction and the need for a military presence is presented, explored, or considered in the media and government or framed as a part of the larger economic system. Instead, questions about the US military in the world tend to be viewed through the prism of the "War on Terror," similarly to how military questions were once viewed through the viewpoint of "anti-Communism" or the Cold War.

Aside from the failings of government and media in explaining the causes for war, mainstream academia and international relations scholars will provide every answer under the sun why two countries go to war except for what is often the truth. The truth is that war is many times driven by a want by the powerful to take from the powerless. Or more specifically, in the case of the United States war on Iraq: the rich bribing the state to kill the poor and then steal from them . This is one of the most basic features of the political economy of neoliberalism. And, it was laid bare for anyone with eyes to see when US economic elites "influenced," through campaign contributions and lobbying dollars, the US ruling class to wage war on the Third World country of Iraq resulting in the deaths of at least one million Iraqi citizens so the oil industry might further increase its already enormous corporate profits. [8] In fact, these cultural thought leaders who often occupy prestigious chairs in our centers of higher education (e.g., Madeleine Albright of Georgetown and Larry Diamond and Condoleezza Rice of Stanford, to name just a few) regularly fail to come to this most obvious of all conclusions for multiple reasons. They do so because either they can't see it, don't want to believe that there are deeper systemic causes for war, out of concern for their own role in the "war crimes" against the targeted country, or out of fear of being labeled a heterodoxic thinker or scholar (or worse still, a Marxist) and as a result have their analysis brought into question by being identified as such.

Yet, the truth remains. And, the truth is that war is good business. Indeed, the provisions of goods and services to the military is a massive source of capital accumulation in the United States and is fundamental to the functioning of the nation's economy. In fact, it is not too much to say that the United States maintains a "permanent war-time economy" as the nation has been at continuous war since September 11, 2001 (if not from its inception) and the military is fueled by nearly every sector of the US economy. For sure, when we think specifically in terms of political economy and examine the top ten donors to the Democratic and Republican parties we see that every single donor comes from a sector or industry within the national economy that is directly tied to military spending, including (but not in rank order): (1) health, (2) communications and electronics, (3) energy and natural resources, (4) transportation, (5) agribusiness, (6) defense, (7) labor, (8) construction, (9) lawyers & lobbyists[9] and (10) finance.[10] Through their massive-sized donations, each industry ensures that it will receive contracts from the United States government including some of the most profitable ones that exist-the contracts for war. In filling their war contracts, one powerful and large-scale industrial center of our society after another more fully embeds itself in the military political economy of the United States and further deepens the nation's dependence on war to sustain the nation's economic system. Thus, again and again since the 1980s, the starting point of neoliberalism, we have watched the state reduce funding for the republic while expanding it for the empire-one of the most basic principles of neoliberalism.

Global Warming and Climate Change

The universe is fourteen billion years old. In it are some two trillion galaxies. One of those galaxies is our galaxy, the Milky Way. It contains at least one billion planets and, at minimum, the same number of stars. Nine billion of those planets are estimated to be in the "Goldilocks Zone"-meaning they are neither too far away nor too close to the star that they are orbiting to prevent life from developing. However, so far, the only planet that we know has life on it is our own-Earth. Of all fifty billion species that have existed on our planet, 99% are now extinct. Human beings have already walked the planet for some 200,000 years-100,000 years longer than the average species. Yet, with all of that knowledge at hand, human beings remain the only species to have ever planned their own destruction. Second only to the terrible power of nuclear weapons-there are now enough to kill everyone on Earth many times over-global warming and climate change are the most immediate long-term threat to the continued existence of the human race.

Global warming and climate change are a product of the Industrial Revolution which is itself a development of global capitalism. The industrialization of global society began just 200 years ago and was brought into existence to make the rich, richer still. It allowed for all kinds of goods and services to be produced at an ever-faster pace which translated into more profits and new markets for an emerging international owning class. In time, industrialization gave rise to powerful cross-country locomotives and the automobile industry which were fueled by coal and oil. As time passed, fossil fuels would come to heat, cool, and power our homes and workplaces.

However, the burning of oil and coal releases carbon dioxide or CO2 into the atmosphere. An excess of CO2 in the atmosphere upsets the Earth's natural chemical balance and creates warmer global temperatures which in turn leads to climate change. In burning fossil fuels for a relatively short period of time, human beings have fashioned a state of affairs where the Earth now has more carbon dioxide in the atmosphere than at any other time in the last three million years. [11] Yet, with the whole world already experiencing the harsh effects of global warming and climate change, the real concern is that it may, as the great cosmologist Stephen Hawking noted, become permanent. For certain, he writes that:

"The danger is that global warming may become self-sustaining, if it has not done so already. The melting of the Arctic and Antarctic ice caps reduces the fraction of solar energy reflected back into space, and so increases the temperature further. Climate change may kill off the Amazon and other rain forests, and so eliminate once one of the main ways in which carbon dioxide is removed from the atmosphere. The rise in sea temperature may trigger the release of large quantities of carbon dioxide, trapped as hydrides on the ocean floor. Both these phenomena would increase the greenhouse effect [and further heat the temperature of the Earth]." [12]

Whatever the case may be, the United Nations has concluded that all countries must take "rapid, far-reaching and unprecedented changes in all aspects of society" to avoid increasing the Earth's temperature by 1.5 degrees Celsius (or 2.7 degrees Fahrenheit) above pre-industrial levels by as earlier as 2030.[13] If not, then the world risks more extreme weather including more intense droughts, wildfires, floods, and food shortages impacting billions of people across the globe. With that call to action in the background, the United Nation's Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES) later explained that climate change and "the relentless pursuit of economic growth" [14] has created a situation where one million species (or one in eight species known to exist on Earth) are now faced with extinction. With the planet already moving into the sixth mass extinction period (or what is known as the "Holocene extinction"), many of these species will begin to disappear within decades if nothing is done to slow the increase in the level of CO2 in the atmosphere. [15] Yet, how did we get into this situation in the first place? Through the non-stop pursuit of capital by capital, irrespective of its impact on the physical environment or the Earth's people.

Created A Massive-Sized and Expanding Global Poor

Neoliberalism and global capitalism have allowed those who own to accumulate wealth at heights almost never seen before in history. Rockefeller, Vanderbilt, Carnegie, Ford, and Gates rank behind only a handful of emperors and kings (and one of the most brutal warlords in history in Genghis Khan) whose wealth has been unmatched in world history. As a consequence of this ongoing "Gilded Age" for the very rich, today 80 percent of the world's population, or more than six billion people, live on $10 or less a day, amounting to just $3,650 a year. While troubling enough, according to the anti-poverty organization Oxfam International (founded by Quakers and Oxford scholars) not only is the majority of the world poor but "seven out of ten people live in countries where economic inequality has increased" from 1980 and 2012. [16] In fact, any humane definition of global poverty indicates that not only has economic inequality increased, but so too has the number of people who are poor grown in size as well.[17] Conversely, from 1980 through 2012, Oxfam found that, "the richest one percent increased their share of income in 24 out of 26 countries" that the organization inspected[18] with this trend continuing right through 2018. Though rarely noted in the corporate press or discussed by almost any capitalist-government, if the richest 1 percent are getting richer, then someone else is getting poorer. In the United States and throughout the world, that would be almost everyone else. In fact, not only has poverty increased but it has become so extreme that in the richest country in the world today more than "five million people [are] living in Third World conditions" in the United States.[19] In other parts of the world, poverty has become so entrenched that some people have been forced to consider doing things that many of us would rather not imagine. For example, in Haiti, the poorest country in the Western Hemisphere and in a country where 80 percent of the population already lives on $2 or less a day, some people have been left so far behind by the virtues of neoliberalism that they have, at times, turned to eating "mud-cookies" (a mix of dirt and water sunbaked on the cement) [20] to ward off their hunger. Yet, in spite of some Haitian's attempts not to starve, hunger is still the number one cause of death in the world, killing more than HIV/AIDS, malaria, and tuberculosis combined each year. [21]

Still, in 2014 it was almost shockingly reported that a mere eighty-five people possessed more wealth than the bottom half of the Earth's population, combined.[22] While a clear sign of massive wealth inequality and all of the problems that come with it, today, depending on whose numbers are correct, possibly as few as eight men control more wealth than the bottom half of the world combined. [23] As the merciless logic of global capitalism continues to place all of the world's wealth into the hands of a few exceedingly rich individuals, neoliberalism's predictable end of also creating and further expanding a massive-sized global poor remains the present state and future trajectory of the world economy. Whatever the outcome, the increased ranks of the global poor as a consequence of the increased concentration of wealth into the hands of the few runs contrary to the common argument made by the ruling classes and the wealthy few the world over that all people are "better off" as global capitalism spreads around the entire planet. [24]

Narrowed Our Sources of Public Information

In a democracy, the news media is responsible for investigating public officials and political institutions to ensure that each is working on behalf of the people or, more generally, the "public good." The investigation of the political arena by the news media is to occur from a variety of independent and unconnected sources which are based upon a variety of ideological viewpoints. In the United States, the airwaves are supposed to be publicly owned which would allow for, at the very least, a not wholly corporate-based telling of the news. Yet, when we examine the American media, we find that this is not always the case.

As recently as 1983 fifty separate corporations owned 90 percent of all the United States' news media-print, TV, and radio. However, as neoliberalism concentrates economic power into the hands of fewer people, today just six large global corporations control 90 percent of everything that people read, watch, or listen to in the United States. Notably, four of the six media corporations are controlled by individuals who are billionaires, and three of the six companies are owned by just two people. By definition, then, the American news media does not include multiple diverse interests but is instead an oligopoly-a market that is controlled by a very small group of for-profit companies.

If the media is controlled by very wealthy members within the global elite, it is reasonable to ask whether or not the news media has an identifiable political and economic ideology. Liberal scholars regularly argue that there is no discernible politico-economic ideology of the news media, or that Democratic and Republican issues are given roughly the same attention in the media. However, this argument is undermined by the fact that mainstream news media focuses almost exclusively on conservative and liberal concerns. If the news media did not have some identifiable ideological value-system, then a whole range of individuals and issues and a whole series of political and economic questions would either be discussed in the corporate press or at the very least, not attacked, such as: the virtue of public ownership in all of its forms, the value of unions and collective bargaining for working people, the reality that the majority of left-leaning Third-party platforms align with the majority of the American people's interests, a thorough and highly critical critique of the exploitation of the Third World by international capital (including by the American owning class), and the nature and massive size of the US military and military spending, including a questioning of why US troops are stationed in more than 150 countries around the globe. Yet, this is not the case. Instead, the corporate press is either silent on each of these issues or is, in fact, hostile toward them.

For certain, it is not correct to say that the news media in the United States is unbiased or does not hold any political or economic ideology. In general, liberal scholars' argument that the mainstream media pays equal or almost equal attention to liberal and conservative concerns is likely correct. However, that misses the point. What is most alarmingly true is that the media ignores, downplays, or places a negative connotation on virtually any issue, person or idea that is in contradiction to the class interests of those that own the corporate media or criticizes the capitalist economic system itself. Instead, the corporate press overwhelmingly tends to see social reality in the United States-and around the world-through the eyes of the class that owns it.

Concentrated Political Power in the Hands of the Wealthy Few

Irrespective of the founders' intentions, today the United States is a plutocracy. Plutocracy is an Ancient Greek word that means: "a society ruled by the rich where wealth is valued over goodness." As wealth accumulates in any society, the owning class, unless politically prevented from doing so, will eventually come to shape state policy. As the state is a reflection of class power, they will do so not on behalf of the bonum populi (i.e., "good of the people") but instead on behalf of their own class interests. This is done in the United States by the wealthy few spending hundreds of millions of dollars in campaign contributions and lobbying dollars to "influence" the state. Known as bribery in other countries, this arrangement (made worse by "corporate-personhood" [25]) has allowed powerful American trusts and wealthy individuals to essentially purchase the state for their own use. If this were not the case then we would see a whole series of issues debated and resolved by the government in favor of the people and not the rich. For example, today the United States would provide free health care and a free kindergarten through graduate school education to each of its citizens. All American wars would be brought to an end and US troops would be recalled from their many locations around the world. People throughout the country would be paid a living wage and housing and day care would be provided affordably, if not free. But this is not the current state of affairs in the United States nor is it the reality of daily existence for an enormous majority of the world's people. In the US (and often times throughout the world) it is because of a longstanding class advantage by the rich even if it is not recognized as such.

In the United States, through their massive-sized campaign contributions and lobbying dollars, the wealthy few are able to produce policy outcomes that provide for immense-sized tax-payer provided bailouts for their already giant-sized banks. How big are the banks? The top ten financial institutions in the United States have combined assets that are greater than the total GDP of China which is second only to the US. The amount each bank uses for "political influence" amounts to only a tiny fraction of their total assets and is often the best money they will ever spend. So too is the owning class able to ensure huge tax breaks for their class [26] yet at the same time make it more difficult for the working class to be released from heavy financial burdens or file for bankruptcy. [27] Through their class rule, the rich have been able to make sure the US wars in Iraq and Afghanistan have continued for more than fifteen years even though the majority of the nation's people have been against them since less than two years after the start of each war. And, the wealthy few are able to ensure that healthcare remains private and highly lucrative for their class though70 percent of the country favors a state-funded healthcare system. [28] Thus, when we examine national policy in the United States it becomes quite clear where real class power resides-with the wealthy few.

In Sum: Neoliberalism & Future Generations

As today turns into tomorrow and future generations begin to write the history of our time, they may look at the physical world that has been ravaged by neoliberalism and unrestrained global capitalism and may point to Native American culture with its respect for the Earth and ask why it wasn't paid attention to more closely. Or upon considering the horrible conditions created by poverty, they may ask why we did not better follow the example left by Martin Luther King Jr. Or in thinking about the terrible destruction of war they might wonder why we didn't take John F. Kennedy's position about war more seriously when he said, "Mankind must put an end to war or war will put an end to mankind." Or to our horror they may have a more sympathetic view toward people like Ted Kaczynski and his critique of the "techno-industrial system" than the one that we currently possess.[29] In fact, in due time, as global capitalism and an ever-increasing technological-neoliberalism continues its stampede across the globe, creating great wealth but generating planetary-sized concerns, Kaczynski may well someday be viewed more as a modern-day prophet than a historical pariah. Whatever the case may be, capitalism marches on, with the rich and powerful continuing to provide every reason under the sun why the system that so richly benefits their class is the only one possible and is, irrespective of the evidence to the contrary, beneficial to all.

Consequences of Confronting the Rich & Powerful: The Case of Chile in the 1970s

Dating back to the Ancient Roman gladiator and slave Spartacus and continuing right up until the present day in countries such as Venezuela and Cuba, those that have opposed the rule of the rich and powerful have often paid a heavy price. They have opposed the class rule of the privileged few not out of greed but instead out of a want of ending the inequities and injustices that come with it. Dr. Salvador Allende and the nation of Chile are a case in point. One of the best and most thoughtful men to have ever graced the political stage, Allende tried to breathe life into a new conception of government and society in his country. After becoming the first democratically elected socialist president in the history of the world in 1970 he began to transition the Chilean economy, which was controlled by the international owning class, into a socialist economy that would be presided over by a democratic-socialist state and Chile's working class.

With more than one hundred US corporations in Chile at the time, key sectors within the United States' owning class stood to lose billions of dollars under a man and government that had every intention of nationalizing industries and corporations for the benefit of the Chilean people. Once in power he did exactly that. One of the largest and most profitable sectors brought under national control was the mostly US-owned copper industry. After expropriating Chile's mines from US corporations, Allende provided relatively little money in return. His argument for doing so was based on the American companies past exploitation of Chilean workers and the damage that they had done to the country. Allende's government also seized control of the utilities sector which was owned by American capital and nationalized US and internationally owned banks. Not stopping there, in its move toward a more equal society, Allende's government imposed heavy state regulation on or nationalized the iron, coal, and steel industries. And, if that was not enough for the owning class, he began to increase wages for workers and impose price freezes on goods and services throughout the country. Finally, Allende's government focused on an agrarian reform program not unlike the one undertaken by Fidel Castro in Cuba. [30] A program that was popular in Latin America at the time for its ability to redistribute wealth amongst a nation's poor and unpopular in the United States for the same reason.

By early September of 1973 the Chilean oligarchs and key members within the American ruling class had enough. Daring to call themselves patriots, and with the full support of the United States government and many of Chile's rich, a clique of Chilean generals and admirals conspired to overthrow the Allende government. The events that followed made up one of the most tragic chapter's written about democracy during the twentieth century. Indeed, the future military junta that was now forming in close alliance with the United States government ordered the Chilean Air Force to bomb the presidential palace, La Moneda-Chile's White House-with Allende and members of his government still inside. In his final hours, Allende chose to end his own life (for some, rather valiantly) instead of falling into the hands of what would become the murderous General Augusto Pinochet regime. After the coup and Allende's death, and fully reinforced by the United States government, the military junta allowed Chile's rich and the American owning class to regain control of industries and factories that had been nationalized by Chilean workers and the state just a few years earlier.

Later, the Pinochet military dictatorship would go on to torture and "disappear" (i.e., murder and vanish from the face of the Earth) thousands of Chilean citizens from 1973 to 1990 who were considered to be opponents of the regime or supporters of Allende. This again was done with the full support of key members of the US ruling class. [31] In time and with the Chicago Boys fully entrenched in Pinochet's government, any chance of a return to a working-class republic disappeared from Chile's foreseeable future as did any sign of democracy for almost two decades. In destroying this once promising socialist-democracy, the US and Chilean owning class made it clear that when their class power was threatened, they would use violence and unconstitutional measures to restore their class privilege atop the social order of Chile. While Pinochet's rule eventually came to an end and he was later indicted for hundreds of human rights violations (though he was likely guilty of thousands more), his dark legacy remains that of introducing "the gun" into Chilean politics to resolve the class conflicts that are so elementary to the system of capitalism and capital accumulation on behalf of the rich and powerful.

Yet, the case of Chile is just one example of the same brutal history lesson taught many times over by the United States government in the past 75 years. As popular movements and government leaders who have attempted to nationalize their country's resources, redistribute wealth, or keep US multinational corporations from exploiting their nation's riches have so bitterly learned, they have often been the target of US-backed assassinations and government overthrows. In fact, since 1945, the United States (via the CIA) has assassinated, attempted to assassinate, or played a role in the assassination of at least fifty foreign leaders or heads of state and tried to overthrow, through a variety of means, at least thirty separate foreign governments. [32] In spite of its public pronouncements to the contrary of "spreading" democracy" or "nation-building," not one time since 1945 has the United States government worked to protect a democratic government, improve the living conditions of the poor or working class, or assist a popular movement abroad. Instead, each time the US has "intervened" in a nation's affairs since the end of World War II it has been done to support or enhance the class position of a very specific class.

An American Caligula and a Troubled Republic: When the Rich Rule

The long and violent history of US involvement all around the world is a legacy that we will leave to future generations. In fact, they may well one day think of the US troops spread all around the globe, the ongoing deadly wars, the seemingly non-stop social violence throughout the country, the ravenous greed of the rich, and an increasingly corrupt government that is led by a man that resembles the Roman emperor Caligula (12 AD-34 AD) and view this time in history as the beginning of the end of the American republic. Like children wandering through the ruins of their ancestors and confronted with the vicious truth of a powerful empire that they have inherited, they may well wonder why those who came before them seem to have brought back into existence some of the darkest days of the Roman Empire.

In fact, the parallels between Rome under Caligula and the United States under the current American president might be quite striking for them. The historical record is in almost complete agreement that Caligula was insane, self-obsessed, cruel, a tyrant, and a sexual deviant. Or as Anthony Barrett writes, he was a "self-indulgent and unpredictable ruler devoid of any sense of moral responsibility. Totally unsuited to the task of governing, without training and with little talent for administration." [33] While his debased personality traits likely would have made him noteworthy in Roman history, his actual rule as emperor brought about or exacerbated a whole series of problems that Rome was already facing. In just four years, he further undermined the Roman notion of republican government and the rule of law and made it even more remote that this once promising city-state would ever return to its previous formulation as a republic.

Caligula's time in power included not only waging costly wars but also sending Roman troops on meaningless military excursions. He worked to increase the political power of the emperor to almost unlimited degrees and used state funds to build grand-scale and self-aggrandizing "public-works" projects. Never shy to enhance his own wealth and prestige, while emperor Caligula continued to build expensive residences for himself with it not always being clear if the money being spent came from the state or himself. After squandering much of Rome's money, Caligula tried to replenish the republic's treasury through a series of unpopular tax measures and legally doubtful and dishonest expropriations. With Rome knocked askew from his unscrupulous rule, Caligula announced that he was going to Egypt to be worshipped as a living god. After already making his horse a priest, this decision was apparently one step too far for the Roman elite. His announcement led to an assemblage of murderous-minded men to coalesce around him resulting in his assassination by the Pretorian Guard-the very men assigned to protect him. Though removed from the political scene, the damage Caligula had done to Ancient Rome cast a dark shadow over the once great city-state long after his death. Today, his rule echoes down through history as an example of the toxic mix of power and madness.

Yet when we think of the United States and consider the actions of the man leading the republic and empire today can we really conclude that the United States is so different than Rome was under Caligula? The American president too has debased personality traits, is self-obsessed, cruel (and ignorant), a sexual deviant, amoral, and appears to be of an unsound mind. With respect to his governing style, the president has pushed the limits of power of his once venerated office to bounds never before seen in American history and not intended by the framers of the Constitution. He has openly violated the Constitution and the rule of law as well as disrespected the republican principle of a separation of powers by trying to fund a "public works" project with money that has not been approved for it by congress and by ruling through his constitutionally questionable decrees. In so doing, he has undermined the very foundation of American government.

With a military already unrivaled in world history, he has further turned plowshares into swords by increasing the size of the military budget and then sent American troops on a meaningless military expedition to the US-Mexico border. In fact, some of his actions are more reminiscent of the grim character Fames in the Roman poet Virgil's Aeneid than they are of Caligula. Fames-or "Hunger"-loitered in front of the "Gates of Hell" urging people to commit crimes. [34] Yet in the United States, instead of loitering as the embodiment of hunger, the American president has given massive tax-cuts to the rich (including to himself and his family) while he and his party have made deep cuts to important social programs for the people and the poor. He has done this all the while requiring hundreds of thousands of federal employees to work without pay. Then the president and his wealthy cast of cabinet members wonder mindlessly why some federal employees can't "make ends meet" by simply taking out a loan, borrowing from their local grocery store, or relying on a food bank. Like a thief for the rich (and not unlike Fames), he tempts the American people to become like a modern-day Jean Valjean, an otherwise honest man who resorts to stealing bread so he might continue to live.

Whatever the case may be, perhaps worse than his debased personality traits and morally questionable policies, the current American president has tried to murdered Truth. In fact, "this man of the rich" (yet out for himself) has told more than 10,000 lies in just over two and one-half years. If there is such a thing as a national tragedy then it will be if he is successful in this pursuit. While obvious to many, it seems that nearly one half of our citizens, and many of them working class, seem not to notice or care about his dishonesty. Or worst of all, they have become like a collective Pontius Pilate-all quietly asking themselves, "What is truth?" as they and the Republican Party continue to support the "Father of Lies" irrespective of his daily dishonest, and many times, disrespectful public pronouncements. In reality, if the Republican Party had an ounce of self-respect, they would have voted to impeach the president the first day he took office for violating the emoluments clause of the Constitution. With interests in over a thousand businesses in more than one hundred countries when he took office, today it is impossible to know if he is working on behalf of the United States or on behalf of himself. But they did not. Now, too often in ruling unchecked it is hard not to read the daily newspapers about one of the president's delusions or lies and not wonder how far away his mind is from considering if not he too should be worshipped as a living-god, much like Caligula once did. If Caligula's rule was characterized by chaos and absurdity then minimally we too have moved to the reductio ad absurdum (i.e., reduction to the absurd) or the "Age of the Absurd" when, in addition to the above, a man who presides over the most powerful nation in the history of the world has also…

- 24 women accuse him of sexual assault

- Taken the side of two foreign leaders who are enemies of American democracy

- 100 plus documented instances of contact with a foreign power during his election

- Chronically denied the scientifically proven reality of global warming and climate change

- 15 plus ongoing investigations against him involving his businesses and politics

- 10 plus documented instances of what appear to be "obstruction of justice"

- Continued multiple "undeclared" wars abroad

…yet, the Democratic Party, which now controls the House of Representatives and was largely elected in response to the policies and personality of the current president will not even begin impeachment proceedings against him in that chamber. To their shame and ours, our children will likely only shake their heads and wonder why we didn't do anything. They will be right to do so and we will have no excuse. For in the final analysis, just as the "disaster that followed" the elevation of Caligula to the highest seat of power in Rome "was inevitable and of the Romans' own making" so too has the placement of the current American president in the most powerful seat in the world been done with the electoral blessings of the American people. [35]

Conclusion: Moving Toward a Better Tomorrow

In a just society Malcolm X would have been a senator and Martin Luther King Jr. would have been president. Instead, they were killed. Yet, their deaths reveal a basic truth about historical progress: "History moves slowly and it is unkind to those who try to make it move any faster than it is ready to move." However, today, the greed of the rich and the injustices visited on the people of the world by the powerful require us tomove history. The major task facing the world's people today is to change the nature of the political economy of the global system. While plutocrats never go easy, [36] to move the state and the world's economy away from the rich and powerful, the world's people only need to begin with their refusal to acquiesce to any social order other than one that is founded in true equality and justice. The whole notion of one person being more equal than another has "come and gone" in the world of political ideas. It died in political philosophy during the Enlightenment. Today, for an ever-growing number of people around the world, the notion of economic inequality as a worthwhile, much less moral, economic doctrine has died out as well. Thus, for more and more people around the world, any unequal social arrangement should only exist on the pages of history.

Once the world's people refuse to bow down to the rich and powerful, the only thing this hour in history needs is the simplest of all things-the Truth. If patience is the burden of thoughtful people, then thoughtful people need to patiently shine a light on the truth of the world. In doing so, it will be possible to bring forth the people and ideas that are needed to make a better tomorrow. In fact, the people and ideas that are needed are already emerging today. For example, in the United States, reparations for African Americans to address the cruel legacy of slavery are now being talked about by every major Democratic candidate in the 2020 presidential election. No longer can that atrocity and its many shocking brutalities be ignored. It was a "deal with the devil" that our founding fathers made and one in which the country would eventually reap a bitter harvest (i.e., the Civil War). Today, the long, dark shadow cast by slavery continues to haunt our nation's very soul. For many, a nationwide settlement of that issue is long past due.

"Economic rights" are now being discussed as human rights and merely as a continuation of the New Deal. Today, Establishment Democrats are quite removed from Franklin D. Roosevelt's conception of a "good society" and a return to his politics would be a step in the right direction for everyone in the country, including the rich. Economic rights for the people and the poor would prevent the rich from snatching up too much of the nation's wealth which could lead to social unrest and a diminishing of their class power to proportions that they may not be prepared to accept. Progressive lawmakers and people throughout the United States are taking global warming and climate change more seriously than at any time in the past. A threat to all the world's people, it is one of the most significant issues that our children will face. And, while congress will not move toward impeach of the president (for the time being anyway) there are right now some young, thoughtful women of color in congress that are very much progressive thinkers that seem to have the good of the nation and world in mind as they work within the halls of power in Washington D.C.

Outside of the United States, progressive movements in Europe are confronting a rising tide of extreme right-wing nationalism that pretends to be a kind of stern but still acceptable populism. Not only are these far-right politics on the move in Europe but so too in countries such as the Philippines which is led by an outright murderer and Brazil which is overseen by a neo-fascist. Still, popular movements have made historical strides. For instance, in the most recent European Parliament elections, the Green Party in Finland, France, Ireland, Germany, England, Wales, Portugal, and Belgium won high seat totals with multiple countries seeing the Green Party finish in second place. In fact, according to public opinion polls, in Germany, the Green Party is the most popular party in the whole country. [37] Other forward-looking individuals and groups have created international organizations to advance the concerns of all people of the world. One of those groups, the Progressive International, was specifically created to "transform the global order" and create "global justice" on an international scale. [38] At the same time, however, progressive nations such as Cuba and Venezuela are having their national sovereignty openly disrespected by much of the West and outright threatened with violence by the United States. One wonders how a country such as Cuba, which provides free education kindergarten through graduate school, free health care, and free food and housing to each of its citizens, is a threat to anyone. The fact of the matter is that it is not. Instead, because Cuba and Venezuela have the courage to control their own resources and have chosen to bow down to no one, they are targeted for harassment and destruction by the global ruling classes and the wealthy few.

Whatever the outcome of world history, the present moment in the American experience likely will be remembered as a troubled time. A period where the future of our nation may well hang in the balance. Only time will tell but there is no mistaking that in the last few years there has been a nastiness in the air. A graceless age, when a stupidity has run nearly unconstrained over our republic. In fact, if it is not the many bloody and unconstitutional wars that will come to symbolize our times, then it may just well be possibly the saddest incident to have occurred during this time. That was the day a two-year old girl was put on trial alone. All by herself, she wept heart-breaking but ultimately bitter tears in front of a judge to answer for her crime of coming to the United States-the land of the "tired, the poor, [and] the huddled masses"-to escape poverty and violence in her own. [39] A dream that was once offered to the world but has become a nightmare for an increasing number of people who have acted on the words engraved on the Statue of Liberty.

In empathetic wonderment, our children might look back and ask us, "Why did any of this happen?" Shuffling our feet, we know we will have no good answer for them. But, possibly the only response that we should give them is that all of this occurred because we and our political leaders forgot one of the most important teachings that Christ ever gave us and one that the American president never bothered to learn: "You shall love your neighbor as yourself."[40] Christ offered us a world without suffering. We rejected it. With it now clear to them that we had lost our way, our children may once again turn to Ancient Rome to try to understand our times. In looking back, they may well recall the words of the great Roman orator Cicero. Though he was speaking of Ancient Rome, our children may just as well conclude that he was speaking about us when he said, "You see, the Republic, the Senate, dignity dwelt in none of us."[41]

About the Author

Jeremy Cloward, Ph.D. is a political science professor and author living and working in the San Francisco Bay Area. He has taught at the junior college and university level for the past 13 years and is the author of three books and multiple articles that have been published in theOakland Post, the Hampton Institute, withSocialist Worker, Project Censored, and the East Bay Times. His college-level American Politics textbook, Class Power and the Political Economy of the American Political System , is now in its second edition and has been endorsed by the progressive author Michael Parenti, the director of Project Censored, Mickey Huff, and the professor and former central committee member of the Black Panther Party, Phyllis Jackson. The book is currently being marketed to a national audience of political science professors throughout the country. In addition, Dr. Cloward has run for public office on three separate occasions (Congress 2009, 2010, and City Council 2012) and has appeared in a variety of media outlets, including FOX and the Pacifica Radio Network (KPFA). Today, he remains involved in the politics of peace, justice, and equality for all. His website is located at: https://www.jeremycloward.org/.

Notes

[1] For a detailed list of all US wars and interventions abroad see: William Blum, Killing Hope: US Military and CIA Interventions Since World War II (Monroe, ME: Common Courage Press, 2004).

[2] During the American Civil War, the Confederate Congress passed the so-called "Twenty-Negro Law" as a part of the Second Conscription Act of 1862 which exempted from military service any white man who owned twenty or more slaves on a Confederate planation or who owned two plantations within five miles of each other.

[3] See the discussion about private property and government in James Madison's Notes of Debates in the Federal Convention of 1787 Reported by James Madison (New York, NY: W.W. Norton & Company, 1987), 244.

[4] John Locke, Two Treatises of Government, ed. Peter Laslett (Cambridge UK: Cambridge University Press, 1960), see for example pg. II, Section 3.

[5] See reference to the quote in Locke, Two Treatises of Government, 72.

[6] Eric Zuesse, "Polls: U.S. Is 'The Greatest Threat to Peace in the World Today,'" Global Research, August 9, 2017, https://www.globalresearch.ca/polls-u-s-is-the-greatest-threat-to-peace-in-the-world-today/5603342 .

[7] The United States "base budget" of $700 billion does not include other military spending that clearly involves the military such as appropriations for nuclear weapons, space defense, homeland security, and supplemental spending for the ongoing wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, to name just a few.

[8] For a full discussion of the political economy of the US war on Iraq, who drove the war, and who benefited from the it see Chapter 6 in my Class Power and the Political Economy of the American Political System (Redding, CA: BVT Publishing, 2018).

[9] See for example OpenSecrets.org: Center for Responsive Politics, "Ranked Sectors: 2014" OpenSecrets.org: Center for Responsive Politics, http://www.opensecrets.org/lobby/top.php?indexType=c&showYear=2014 and OpenSecrets.org: Center for Responsive Politics, "Sector Totals, 2013-2014" OpenSecrets.org: Center for Responsive Politics, http://www.opensecrets.org/industries/ . Note: similar results are located in the top Campaign Contributors to Congress by Sector (2013-2014).

[10] Thomas Jefferson once somewhat famously wrote, "I believe that banking institutions are more dangerous to our liberties than standing armies." Whether this is true or not depends on one's perspective. However, what is true is that private banks do have the power to help fund governments that, in turn, can fund standing armies. Standing armies can then open markets for finance capital (and capital, in general) to invest in newly opened markets abroad, which allows corporate interests to accumulate more capital to, among other things, further finance government. This, of course, leads to additional markets being opened by the state in a never-ending cycle of private capital funding the state so the state can open markets and help private capital exploit land, labor, and resources at home and abroad.

[11] Yale Environment 360, "CO2 Concentrations Hit Highest Levels in 3 Million Years," Yale School of Forestry & Environmental Studies, May 14, 2019, https://e360.yale.edu/digest/co2-concentrations-hit-highest-levels-in-3-million-years .

[12] Stephen Hawking, Interview, ABC News, August 16, 2006.

[13] The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, "Summary for Policymakers of IPCC Special Report on Global Warming of 1.5°C approved by governments," The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, October 8, 2018, https://www.ipcc.ch/2018/10/08/summary-for-policymakers-of-ipcc-special-report-on-global-warming-of-1-5c-approved-by-governments/ .

[14] Aljazeera, One million species to go extinct 'within decades,' Aljazeera, May 6, 2019, https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2019/05/million-species-extinct-decades-190506130910133.html .

[15] Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES), "Media Release: Nature's Dangerous Decline 'Unprecedented'; Species Extinction Rates 'Accelerating'," IPBES | Science and policy for people and nature, April/May 2019, https://www.ipbes.net/news/Media-Release-Global-Assessment .

[16] OXFAM Briefing Paper, "WORKING FOR THE FEW: Political capture and economic inequality," OXFAM, January 20, 2014, http://templatelab.com/working-for-the-few-research/

[17] Jason Hickel, "Bill Gates says poverty is decreasing. He couldn't be more wrong," The Guardian, January 29, 2019, https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2019/jan/29/bill-gates-davos-global-poverty-infographic-neoliberal .

[18] OXFAM Briefing Paper, "WORKING FOR THE FEW: Political capture and economic inequality."

[19] United Nations Human Rights: Office of the High Commissioner, "'Contempt for the poor in US drives cruel policies,' UN expert says," United Nations Human Rights: Office of the High Commissioner , June 4, 2018, https://www.ohchr.org/EN/NewsEvents/Pages/DisplayNews.aspx?NewsID=23172&LangID=E .

[20] For example, see Associated Press, "Haiti's poor resort to eating mud as prices rise," NBCNEWS.com, January 29, 2008, http://www.nbcnews.com/id/22902512/#.Uw0iGc7wqzw .

[21] The World Food Programme, "What Causes Hunger?," The World Food Programme, November 5, 2013, https://www.wfp.org/stories/what-causes-hunger .

[22] Michael Parenti, "85 Billionaires and the Better Half," Commons Dreams, February 18, 2014, https://www.commondreams.org/views/2014/02/18/85-billionaires-and-better-half .

[23] See for example: OXFAM International, "Just 8 men own same wealth as half the world," OXFAM International, January 16, 2017, https://www.oxfam.org/en/pressroom/pressreleases/2017-01-16/just-8-men-own-same-wealth-half-world .

[24] See for example: Bill and Melinda Gates, "Three Myths on the World's Poor: Bill and Melinda Gates call foreign aid a phenomenal investment that's transforming the world," Wall Street Journal, January 17, 2014, http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB10001424052702304149404579324530112590864 .

[25] Corporate personhood, a "legal fiction" created over time by the Supreme Court, has made it so corporations are viewed as "people" in the eyes of the law. In so doing, corporations now have the same rights under the law and Constitution as any other citizen. One of those rights is the right to a freedom of speech. The Court, importantly, has held that the freedom of speech includes the right to "speak" with money in support of political campaigns. The most serious consequence of that conclusion is that corporations can now give unlimited amounts of money to political candidates for their campaigns and being allowed to do so because of the 1st Amendment's free speech clause.

[26] For example, the 107 Congress (2001-2003) passed Public Law 107-16: The Economic Growth and Tax Relief Reconciliation Act of 2001 and Public Law 108-27: The Jobs and Growth Tax Relief Reconciliation Act of 2003 which were a group of tax reductions known as the "Bush-era tax cuts" for the rich and were extended by President Obama. While the tax breaks lowered federal income tax rates for all income earners, they also lowered capital gains taxes and the tax rate on dividends, prevented the elimination of personal exemptions for higher-income taxpayers, prevented the elimination of itemized deductions, and eliminated the estate tax, - all of which were a financial boon to the wealthiest members of US society. Later, President Trump signed off on his own tax breaks for the rich that resulted in the wealthiest 1 percent of the country receiving $1.9 trillion in tax cuts over a ten-year time period.

[27] For instance, Public Law 109-8: The Bankruptcy Abuse Prevention and Consumer Protection Act passed during the 109th Congress (2005-2007) made it more difficult for the vast majority of the American people to file for bankruptcy under Chapter 7.

[28] Letitia Stein, Susan Cornwell, and Joseph Tanfani, "Inside the progressive movement roiling the Democratic Party," Reuters Investigates, August 23, 2018, https://www.reuters.com/investigates/special-report/usa-election-progressives/ .

[29] While Kaczynski's crimes are difficult to excuse under almost any decent line of thought, his logic justifying his actions are very difficult to refute. His writings analyzing global society, whether agreed with or not, are illustrative of a truly sharp mind at work. For examples of his thought, see: Theodore J. Kaczynski, Technological Slavery: The Collected Writings of Theodore J. Kaczynski (Port Townsend, WA: Feral House, 2010) and Theodore John Kaczynski, Anti-Tech Revolution: Why and How (Scottsdale, AZ: Fitch & Madison Publishers, 2015).

[30] For an excellent film documentary of the Allende government filmed in the lead up to his downfall which chronicles the Chilean working class's movement toward control of the means of production and political power see Patricio Guzman's, The Battle of Chile (Icarus Films, 2009), DVD.

[31] For the best discussion of the Pinochet Regime and its support by the United States government see Peter Kornbluh's, The Pincohet File: A Declassified Dossier on Atrocity and Accountability (New York, NY: The New Press, 2003).

[32] For a complete listing of assassinations and assassination attempts by the CIA, see Appendix III in Blum, Killing Hope, 463-464.

[33] This quote is taken from the back flap of Anthony A. Barrett's Caligula: The Corruption of Power (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1990)

[34] For the whole poem see Virgil, The Aeneid trans. David West (London, UK: Penguin Books, 1990).

[35] Barrett, Caligula: The Corruption of Power, back flap.

[36] For example, see the historical instances of the slave Spartacus leading a slave rebellion against the Roman Republic (73-71 BC); Haitian slaves rising up against their colonial masters during the Haitian Revolution (1791-1804); the working class of France overturning the aristocracy during the French Revolution (1789-1799); workers in Russia overthrowing and executing the fabulously wealthy and autocratic tsar of Russia, Nicholas II, during the Russian Revolution (1917); the movement for Irish statehood organized and led by Michael Collins and Eamon de Valera which included their war for independence against the British (1919-1921); the Cuban people pushing the corrupt US-backed military dictator Bautista from power during the Cuban Revolution (1953-1959); or attempts by the American people to create a more just and equal society throughout their history such as those attempts made by the Black Panther Party in the 1960s and 1970s.

[37] Jochen Bittner, "The Greens Are Germany's Leading Political Party. Wait, What?," The New York Times, June 19, 2019, https://www.nytimes.com/2019/06/19/opinion/greens-party-germany.html .

[38] See The Progressive International: A Grassroots Movement for Global Justice website located at: https://www.progressive-international.org/ .

[39] Vivian Yee and Miriam Jordan, "Migrant Children in Search of Justice: A Two Year Old's Day in Court," The New York Times, October 8, 2018, https://www.nytimes.com/2018/10/08/us/migrant-children-family-separation-court.html .

[40] Mark 12:30-31

[41] As quoted by Joaquim Fest in his excellent study of Adolf Hitler, entitled Hitler (Orlando, Florida: Harcourt, 1973).

Orientalism and the Cultural Constructions of Modern-Day Mass Tourism

By John Nightengale

Orientalism is the most extreme form of cultural imperialism as it completely restructures the colony culture. Orientalism is arguably one of the most important theories in post-colonial study. This essay will unpack and explain the nuances of the theory first developed by Said in his famous work "Orientalism," published in 1978, then later expanded upon in "Culture and Imperialism," published in 1993. In short, Said sought to explain how, through the relationship between knowledge and power, cultural representation was used to create the discursive binary between the "east" and "west" which placed the west as superior (Gilbert-Moore, 1997). The construction of knowledge was a form of cultural hegemony which facilitated the colonising of the mind, which is argued to be a prerequisite for colonial control (Burney, 2012). While formal colonisation has ended, it is argued that Orientalism is still widely seen in modern time. The second part of the essay will explore how the tourism industry has been plagued with culturally constructed narratives that seek to homogenise host countries through repetitive reduction (Bruner, 2005; Anderson, 2005; Shivani, 2006). By exploring discourses, the binary and otherness present in tourism is akin to that of colonial times (Carrigan, 2011; Bruner, 2005).

Said follows a post-structuralist model in an attempt to dismantle the binary established by imperial discourse; he tries to highlight the power structure that establishes the Occident as superior to the Orient. Said drew upon theorists of his time to construct his theory. One key theorist he drew inspiration from was Foucault; in particular his study of power (Gilbert-Moore, 1997; Lester, 2003). Foucault said that power and knowledge are intrinsically linked in that the creation of knowledge was an exertion of power (Foucault, 1991; Lester, 2003). The "Orient" was constructed through the systematic learning, discovery and practice from the west (Said 2003; Burney, 2012). Here it is seen through an imagined geography, the east was produced through travel writing, novels and poetry, which sought to bring the east into a realm of understanding (Abdul Janmohamed, 1985; Mostafanezhad, 2013). What is important to remember is that only the west was producing knowledge, the east was not able to produce literature and art about the west. This illustrates Foucault's idea that knowledge is power, in which the west has more power and therefore is producing more knowledge, thus directly demonstrating the dominance of the west over the east. The example Said (2003) gives is, Cromer referring to the Orient as "lethargic and suspicious", and "devoid of energy and initiative". This was the only representation that the people in England received of the Orient at this time (Said, 2003). This creation of "false knowledge" along with other examples of literature and art contributes to the social construct of the "east", in which meaning is ascribed onto people and place (Crang, 1998, Ashcroft, 2008). It is seen that the "real east" is reformed into the "discursive east", meaning that the east is now conformed into the imagination of west, in which the "discursive east" will always be the submissive (Moore-Gilbert, 1997).

The second key concept that Said draws from is Foucault's theory of discourse. In discourse, power is both constituted and exercised through the flow of knowledge and representation to produce objects of truth (Moore-Gilbert, 1997; Lester, 2003). Here it is seen that what is the truth, or rather the constructed knowledge, can be linked to who has power, in that, power controls what narratives are formed or blocked (Young, 1995; Bruner, 2005). Rather than the discourse forming and reforming knowledge through passive powers, it is seen that knowledge was first constructed by specialists, often bourgeoisie men, then the knowledge becomes fact and is later reinforced by society (Said, 2016; Lester, 2003). This explains how the view of the Orient as timeless and unchanging was upheld; the idea was produced and reproduced within the Western mind (Crang 1998; Burney, 2012). Western discourse representations of the Orient have been homogenised and totalized reducing the Orient to tropes and stereotypical tropes being produced as "western knowledge" (Moore-Gilbert, 1997). This in term reinforces the binary between the Orient and Occident (Said, 2003).

Orientalism through the construct of knowledge and Orientalist discourse has resulted in the binary between Orient/Occident; creating the contrast of developing/developed, promiscuous/noble (Ashcroft, 2008). Kissinger wrote of binary opposition which viewed the Orient as "lagging" behind due to the Orient retaining a pre-Newtonian view of the world as " internal" whilst the superior Occident views the word as "external" (Kissinger, 1966; Crang 1998; Erikson and Murphy, 2017). Through the production of knowledge through literature, the Occident was placed as dominant over the east, placing the western world at the centre and the Orient in the periphery (Maddox, 2014). Cromer said that Orients "acts, speaks, and thinks in a manner exactly opposite to the European"; this illustrates how the binary was represented at the time (Said, 2003). The process of ordering is said to control all aspects of the discourse (Wodak, 2005). Gramsci adds to this, with the theory of cultural hegemony, which explains how dominant ideologies are controlled by the hierarchal class to maintain control (Lears, 1985, Crang, 2013). This is done by assigning the subordinate the role of subject which in turn creates "docile bodies" which conform to normalisation (Foucault 1998; said, 2003; Woodak, 2005). The creation of the subordinate also removes their ability to speak. This silencing effect is seen by the spread of popular writing of the era which "writes out" the Orient (Aitchison, 2001). In doing so, this reinforces the Orientalist discourse as the "true east" narrative is blocked and western knowledge prevails (Young, 1995).

This cultural hegemony is an extreme case of imperialism which colonised the mind of the Orient. Creating the viewpoint of the west as superior compared to the subordinate and silenced east led to the creation of thought, in both the Orient and Occident, that the east needs to be colonised and controlled (Lears, 1985). It is widely accepted that the process of Orientalism allowed the colonisation of the east. This is expressed by a quote from William Blake "Empire follows art and not vice versa as Englishmen suppose" (cited in Said 1993).

Orientalism is seen today in tourism, the power dynamics in the representation of the "east" mimic that seen in colonial times. Before delving into the theory, it is important to acknowledge that tourism in the modern day is laden with power inequalities from its first appearance. Mass tourism was spurred on by neoliberal organisations post-World War Two as a way for welfare states to develop (Higgins-Desbiolles, 2006; Carrigan, 2011). International financial institutes offered exploitative loans in exchange for adopting tourism development strategies (Higgins-Desbiolles, 2006). Britain helped establish the "Atlantic Charter" which sought to develop the Caribbean tourism industry, however with vested interest as the UK traded 50 destroyers for a 99 year lease on seven Commonwealth islands (Carrigan, 2011). The tourism industry is also plagued with a "leakage" in that money is commonly siphoned off from the host state following a similar pattern to colonial times (Carrigan, 2011).

It is seen that tourism seeks to commodify culture by packaging "the other" for consumption by the west (Behdad, 1994; Jamerson, 2017). This commodification of tourism is spurred on by western corporations by the production of knowledge about the host country (Mostafanezhad, 2013). What is important to understand here is that the tourist destinations are always written about, not written by; and in doing so the "native" population is silenced. Using the Caribbean as an example, their image is created through western lenses by western corporations and tourists who define the islands by comparing the differences between "east" and "west" (Shabanirad, 2015). This is done by the tourist's gaze which explains how images and stereotypes of the country are distorted and homogenised by tourists to bring the world of "other" into comprehendible reality, much like Cromer in colonial times (Katan, 2012, Urry and Larsen, 2011). This distorted reality is furthered when portrayed in the media due to repetitive reduction, seen in travel writing such as "Lonely Planet" and review sites such as "TripAdvisor" (Andreasson, 2005; Simpson, 2005). On a larger scale companies reproduce this "distorted reality" through brochure discourse by using the same rhetoric phrases and imagery to sell the destination (Carringan, 2011). Holiday destinations often evoke an image of idyllic landscapes, inscribed with emotions and feelings; this is a result of imagined geographies of the place caused by the culturally constructed narratives (Hottola, 2014). This is a result of advertisements summarising an entire nation's culture into a set of descriptors (Hottola, 2014). In doing so, it plays out a "racist fantasy" in which the "east" is homogenised and given the role of inferior; seen as feminised and backwards in relation to the western world (Carringan, 2011). A prime example of this is Thomas Cook, who advertise "Africa Holidays" as cultural experiences in which you'll be "greeted by tribal elders" and "experience life the way locals have lived for generations" (Thomascook.com). This echoes the narrative that Africa is primitive and backwards, positioned beneath the west.

Many tourists seek an "authentic experience" which Mkono (2012) critiques as upholding the "Eurocentric grand narrative". Seen through Bruners (2005) theory of "questioning gaze" travellers question if constructed sites and performances are true representations of the culture. However, by seeking "authenticity" the tourist is merely projecting their pre-understanding of place (Maddox, 2014; Bruner, 2005). Tourists that search for authenticity uphold an imagined geography of a romantic, unspoilt place which is "frozen in time" and in doing so they "define India according to their own needs" (Korpela, 2010). This upholds a binary between India and the west, which defines India as ascetic compared to the consumerist west (Maddox, 2014). The creation of binary through tourism places the west as the "norm" and defines India in comparison to the west, in that it views Indian culture as a retreat from the normal, hectic western life. In doing so they deny agency of the local population by ignoring their modernity (Philip, 2009; Korpela, 2010; Maddox, 2014).

So far, it has been seen how writing and media have created a binary between the consumerist west and the homogenised east. In order to fully illustrate Orientalism in tourism, it is important to understand how the writing and portrayal of the east affects actions of the host country and the tourist. This can be explained by exploring how narratives have produced a discourse, which in turn gives meaning to space and establishes accepted practices and norms (Bruner, 2005; Carringan, 2011). Firstly, it is seen that cultural hegemony occurs within tourism; host countries often find themselves forced to adopt the culture imposed upon them (Lears, 1985). Looking at Bali, the country is dependent on tourism and therefore upholds the enforced stereotypes (Carrigan, 2011). Secondly, through media, tourists are exposed to the imagined geography of the place, which affects their expectations of the place, which in turn affects how they experience the place (Gregory, 1999). For example, tourists are controlled where they go when they travel within a place. Travel writing "stages" places constructing them as culturally significant and in doing so signposts tourists from sight to sight. (Gregory, 1999)

To conclude, Said's theory of Orientalism highlighted the power structures that create the binaries responsible for positioning the west as dominant over the subaltern east. It was seen that through literature, narratives were created by the Occident about the Orient, which resulted in the creation of "western knowledge" which was imposed upon the Orient through cultural hegemony. Using Said's theory, this essay has highlighted how the same practices used in imperial discourse are being used in modern mass tourism. Through advertising, travel writing and reviews, cultures in host countries have been homogenised and limited to a set of descriptors. It can also be seen that this practice is intrinsically linked with power through the vested interest of IFIs and corporations based in the west. Lastly, it is important to highlight power structures so that they can be dismantled.

References

Aitchison, C. (2001). Theorizing Other Discourses of Tourism, Gender and Culture: Can the Subaltern speak (in Tourism)? Tourist Studies, Vol.1, no.2, p.133-147.

Andreasson, S. (2005). Orientalism and African Development Studies: the 'reductive repetition' motif in theories of African underdevelopment. Third World Quarterly, Vol.26, no.6, p.971-986.

Ashcroft, B., Griffiths, G. and Tiffin, H. (2008). The post-colonial studies reader. (Routledge, Abingdon)

Behdad, A. (1994) Belated travellers: Orientalism in the age of colonial dissolution . (Duke University Press, Durham)

Bruner, E. M., (2005) The role of narrative in tourism. Berkeley conference October 7-8, 2005.

Burney, S. (2012) CHAPTER ONE: Orientalism: The Making of the Other. Counterpoints, vol. 417, no.1, p. 23-39

Carrigan, A. (2011). Postcolonial Tourism: Literature, Culture, and Environment. (Routledge, Abingdon)

Crang, M. (1998) Cultural geography. (Routledge, London)

Erickson, P. and Murphy, L. (2017). A history of anthropological theory. (University of Toronto Press, Toronto)

Foucault, M (1998) The History of Sexuality: The Will to Knowledge . (Penguin, London)

Foucault, M. (1991) Discipline and Punish: the birth of a prison. (Penguin, London)

Gregory, D. (1999) Scripting Egypt. Orientalism and culture of travelin Duncan, J., Gregory. D., Writing of passage: reading travel writing. (Routledge, New York)

Higgins-Desbiolles, F. (2006). More than an "industry": The forgotten power of tourism as a social force. Tourism Management, Vol.27, no.6, p.1192-1208.

Hottola, P. (2005). The Metaspatialities of Control Management in Tourism: Backpacking in India. Tourism Geographies, Vol.7, no.1, pp.1-22.

Jamerson, T. (2017) Digital Orientalism: TripAdvisor and Online Travellers' Tales. in. Daniels, J., Gregory, K., & Cottom, T. Digital sociologies. (Bristol University Press, Bristol)

JanMohamed, A. (1985). The Economy of Manichean Allegory: The Function of Racial Difference in Colonialist Literature. Critical Inquiry, Vol.12, no.1, p.59-87.

Katan, D. (2012). Translating the tourist gaze: from heritage and "culture" to actual encounter. PASOS, Vol.10, no.4, p.83-95.

Kissinger, H. (1966). Domestic Structure and Foreign Policy. Daedalus, vol.95, no.2, p.503-529.

Korpela, Mari. (2010) "A postcolonial Imagination? Westerners Searching for Authenticity in India." Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies, Vol.36, no.8, p.1299-1315.

Lears, T. (1985). The Concept of Cultural Hegemony: Problems and Possibilities. The American Historical Review, vol.90, no.3, p.567-593

Lester, A., (2003) Constructing colonial discourse In Blunt, A, McEwan, C, & Blunt, LIGA (ed.) Postcolonial Geographies, (Bloomsbury Publishing PLC, London).

Maddox, C. (2014). Studying at the source: Ashtanga yoga tourism and the search for authenticity in Mysore, India. Journal of Tourism and Cultural Change, Vol.13, no.4, p.330-343.

Mkono, M. (2012). Authenticity does matter. Annals of Tourism Research, vol.39, no.1, p.480-483

Moore-Gilbert, B. (1997). Postcolonial theory. (Verso, London).

Mostafanezhad, M. (2013). The Geography of Compassion in Volunteer Tourism. Tourism Geographies, Vol.15, no.2, p.318-337.

Philp, J. (2009). Yoga, Inc.: A journey through the big business of yoga. (Viking Canada, Toronto)

Said, E. W., (1993) Culture and imperialism. (Vintage, London)

Said, E. W., (2003) Orientalism. (Penguin, London)

Said, E. W., (2016) Orientalism: western conceptions of the orient , (Penguin, London)

Shabanirad, E., Marandi, S. M., (2015) Edward Said's Orientalism and the Representation of Oriental Women in George Orwell's Burmese Days. International Letters of Social and Humanistic Sciences. Vol. 60, no.1, p.22-33

Shivani, A. (2006) Indo-Anglian fiction: the new Orientalism. Race and Class. Vol 47. no.3

Simpson, K. 2005. Dropping out or signing up? The professionalisation of youth travel. Antipode, Vol.37, no.3, p.447-469

Thomascook (2018). Africa Holidays & Luxury Breaks. Online. https://www.thomascook.com/holidays/signature/africa/ Accessed 14 Nov. 2018

Urry, J., Larsen. J., (2011). The tourist gaze 3.0. (Sage, London)

Wodak, R 2005, Discourse analysis (Foucault). in D Herman, M Jahn & M-L Ryan (eds), Routledge encyclopaedia of narrative theory. (Routledge, London)

Young, R. J. C. (1995) Foucault on Race and Colonialism. New Formations, Vol.25, no.1, p.57-65

Students, Peasants, and Communism in Colombia: An Interview with Oliver Dodd (Part Two)

By Devon Bowers

This is Part Two of our interview with Oliver Dodd, a PhD student at Nottingham University, where we expand upon his April 2019 article in the online edition of the Morning Star.

What is the current political and economic situation in Colombia?

Since the early 1990s Colombia engaged on a process of neo-liberal restructuring, largely to finance the counter-insurgency war against the powerful Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC). In return for economic and military aid, the United States and the International Monetary Fund, demanded neoliberal reforms that entailed economic privatisation, liberalisation of foreign trade, financial deregulation, and reduced tariffs. As a result, Colombia's economic model today is largely extractivist and its capitalist accumulation strategy is dependent on those multinational corporations based in the core of the international political economy.

In terms of production of revenue from exports, Colombia's traditional export - coffee - which in the 1980s produced more than half of the country's export revenue, now represents only around 5% of export revenue. Currently, coal, oil and gas, make up more than 60% of export revenue. These economic changes have led to political changes. The multinational corporations invested in extractivism are overwhelmingly based in the capitalist core. The majority of the profits generated in Colombia's economy are put into the pockets of the finance capitalists, based outside Colombia. Furthermore, relative to other sectors - manufacturing (around 10%), services (around 35%), oil, coal and gas generates significantly higher profits. This trend puts multinational corporations in a stronger economic position vis-à-vis Colombia's declining national bourgeoisie. Nationally based companies are increasingly being bought out by multinational corporations, further extending foreign based influence over Colombia's economy and making the country more vulnerable to social forces organised at world order levels.

The peace accord signed with FARC in 2016 is under severe threat. Paramilitary killings of social activists since the signing of the peace agreement have increased, thousands of FARC combatants have either remobilised or refused to demobilise because of what they perceived as betrayal on the part of FARC's leadership, or the danger of paramilitary killings - more than 85 FARC ex-combatants have now been murdered since November 2016. FARC dissident leaders that have taken the hard-line position of refusing to demobilise basically argue that armed struggle is the only path to transform Colombia's political economy. In short, the 2016 peace accord has not brought peace.

However, I would argue that "peoples war" is no longer an applicable strategy in the historically specific conditions of Colombia today. The overwhelming majority of citizens live in urban areas and many of the insurgent social structures formed in the countryside have become corrupted and bureaucratised. The so-called "revolution in military affairs" (RIMA) has allowed the armed forces, notably in the form of air-power, to increasingly put the leftist insurgents on the defensive. Today satellite technology can be employed to detect guerrillas based in the mountains, let alone the countryside - where peasants, especially the youth, are increasingly departing for the towns and cities. This is not to suggest that guerrilla warfare cannot play any useful role as part of an overarching political strategy, but a military-centric strategy is becoming more difficult to implement effectively. Colombia's state, largely due to Plan Colombia and the military technology and intelligence capabilities it provided, has shown a consistent capacity to target even the most protected and important of guerrilla commanders. Until 2008, not a single member of FARC's 7-person secretariat had been killed, but since then, at least four have been successfully targeted and significant numbers of FARC's and ELN's medium level command have been killed. I know of some highly capable and politically educated leaders within the ELN, who were made "High-Valued-Targets" and very swiftly killed. This suggests to me that RIMA is changing the balance of forces in favour of the Colombian military and its main sponsor - the U.S.

There is also a significant shortage of intellectuals within both FARC dissidents' groups and the ELN, largely because they were successfully targeted by the Colombian military. This means that "militias" - those responsible for recruitment and upholding law and order in rural villages and towns, which are usually organised some distance from the more disciplined and politicised structures of the armed guerrilla units - sometimes tend to act without discipline and bring the organisations into disrepute among the civilian population. There is then, the realistic possibility that following another peace accord, these "conflict entrepreneurs" will continue to function as strictly criminal entities, thus leading to no practical end in the conflict.

ELN's strategy however, as already mentioned, does not entail a "military solution" to the conflict. Armed structures are understood by ELN as permanent, unless the conditions of class struggle within Colombia's periphery change to undermine guerrilla struggle completely - this conception of armed struggle is distinct from the more military-centred strategy of people's war, based on surrounding the cities from the countryside. The ELN's strategy implies that armed force has a utility in class struggle, not that political power will necessarily come through the barrel of a gun. This has been one of the fundamental differences in strategy between ELN and FARC for decades.

Regarding Colombia's trade-union structures, neoliberalism is making it more difficult for the labour movement to organise. On top of having a significant and dispersed informal sector in Colombia, repeated right-wing governments (I include the Santos administration here) have favoured economic growth along neoliberal lines rather than extending the political and economic rights of workers; this has amounted to government policies and a political economy that makes it harder for the trade-unions to organise, in the midst of paramilitary violence. At the same time, recent changes to agricultural economic policies have made it more difficult for peasants to earn a living, thereby increasing displacement and opening up land for capitalist investment. It is important to note that such rural-to-urban migration, of the constant supply of formerly rural labours desperately looking for work in the cities, enables urban based capitalists to benefit from the increased competition for work and therefore to keep wages low.

Even the peace agreement seems to have been conceived, to a large extent, as part of a neoliberal economic growth strategy. By signing the peace accord with FARC, multinational corporations have been able to access territories, wealthy in natural resources, which were previously governed by the FARC. Indeed, a key motivation for the accord, unveiled by the former President, Juan Manuel Santos, was that "A Colombia in peace will attract more investments that will create more and better jobs" - in other words, the neoliberal capitalist accumulation model will be strengthened because there will be no leftist insurgent forces to put pressure on international investors.

Still, the fact that Gustavo Petro placed second in the 2018 presidential elections is significant. The last time a leftist candidate in Colombia's political system challenged for president, he was assassinated - Jorge Gaitán in 1948. As such, we have seen the rise of a left-wing surge in Colombia, like in other countries - Bernie Sanders in the U.S., Jeremy Corbyn in Britain, Podemos and Syriza in Spain and Greece respectfully. The current right-wing president, Iván Duque, who employed populist discourse to get elected, is being unmasked as no different from the establishment. This may create some opening for the left in the next elections, enabling it to open up some political space for the labour movement to organise a fight-back.

In what ways does the US supporting anti-guerilla efforts in Colombia linked to a larger, regional strategy push back against leftist movements in Latin America?

U.S. support for the Colombian state goes back many decades. Colombia borders five countries and, with ten U.S. military bases, permits the U.S. to effectively project its military power into Central and South American countries. Also, Colombia's economy is potentially very balanced, and benefits from several natural resources and has very fertile land for agriculture. There exist the resources to develop powerful industrial and manufacturing sectors, moving away from what is currently an economic strategy of extractivism.

A socialist state in Colombia, supported by a powerful labour movement, could have a transformative impact on Latin America and change the correlation of social class forces in favour of the socialist movement. It would be possible for a socialist government in Colombia to pursue a relatively independent political economic strategy, while focusing on economic and political independence for the region as a whole. The experience of the small and economically impoverished island of socialist Cuba on Latin America's left and labour movement - situated only ninety miles from the U.S - is an example of what a revolutionary state in the much wealthier Colombia could achieve, in terms of potentially shaping the future of the region. In other words, a left-wing or socialist-led Colombia could represent a major defeat for U.S. imperialism.

Additionally, Colombia's capitalist system is difficult to transform constitutionally, and the country boasts of having one of the longest surviving liberal-democratic systems in Latin America, although state terrorism employed against workers and peasants has remained constant throughout the twentieth and twenty first centuries. Historically, the two dominant political parties, the Liberal and Conservative party, solidly represented capitalist interests, and rarely disagreed over fundamental questions relating to economic change. These trends make Colombia a reliable ally for the U.S. in its "backyard".

For these reasons, the Colombian state has been a consistently reliable ally of the U.S. Having only ever had pro-capitalist governments, a free-trade agreement is in place, Colombia's economy is dominated by U.S. multinationals, and the state has loyally followed the U.S. government's policy of open hostility to the so-called "Pink-tide" - the surge of South American based, left-wing, anti-imperialist influence over the last two decades. In its fight against the leftist rebels, Colombia opened up its economy to U.S. corporations in return for economic and military aid. And currently, Colombia is being used as the main proxy to further aggravate the political and economic crisis in Venezuela. The dominant capitalist classes in Colombia will benefit enormously from regime change in Venezuela.

Initially, the U.S. drew on the pretext of combating drugs to justify intervention into Colombia. The U.S. State Department insisted that Plan Colombia, the U.S. military and economic initiative implemented at the start of the 1999-2002 peace negotiations with FARC, was about tackling the drug-trade. In reality, Plan Colombia was employed as a counter-insurgency measure that upgraded and restructured Colombia's armed forces and was used largely to target the leftist rebels, as opposed to the drug-cartels and right-wing paramilitaries. It also led to the major expansion of U.S. military influence in Colombian society, including the building of several U.S. military bases. In other words, the pretext of anti-drug activity, and then anti-guerrilla activity, was exploited by the U.S. to establish a base of political, military and economic influence in a strategically located country of South America.

Where can people learn more about ELN and your own work?

There is a momentous amount of work on the armed conflict and the insurgent groups published in Colombia. Unfortunately, very little of this work has been translated from Spanish into English. This needs to be rectified, and I am surprised that so little effort has been put into this process of translation, as it would allow international audiences to learn about Colombia's complicated history - Colombia is understood as an "outlier" in politics and international relations scholarship. Indeed, the depth of Colombian scholarship on the armed conflict is strong.

Regarding the ELN in the Spanish language, "La Guerrilla Por Dentro" by Jaime Arenas, a former ELN guerrilla gives an insider perspective on the first stages of the movements' formation. Darío Villamizar has also published, in Spanish, one of the key histories of the several insurgent movements in Colombia. Carlos Medina, in addition to other important works on the ELN, has just written a history of ELN's ideas from 1958 to 2018, in Spanish, where he talks about the worker-peasant-student alliance. Carlos Medina's works are very detailed and significant; relatively little has been written on the ELN in any language. I haven't come across a book dedicated to understanding the ELN's trajectory in English, but the journal article by Gruber and Pospisil, entitled "'Ser Eleno': Insurgent identity formation in the ELN", vigorously contests some of the significant misconceptions about the movement.

I am in the first year of my PhD at Nottingham University working on Colombia's 2016 peace agreement with FARC, which analyses the underlying dynamics from a historical materialist perspective. My MA dissertation, slightly modified, was published in the Midlands Historical Review and can be found online. I have also written two journalistic pieces on the ELN in the Morning Star newspaper. I am currently working on a journal article relating to the "political" inside the ELN - challenging the narrative that the ELN has "lost its way" and merely become a criminal entity - based on my five months of ethnographic research in 2015. My blog about armed conflict in Colombia can be found online at http://www.colombianconflict.com

US Puppeteering and the Philosophy of Chavismo: Nicolas Maduro as a Symbol of Venezuelan Sovereignty

By Canyon Ryan

On January 23, 2019, President of the Venezuelan National Assembly, Juan Guaidó, at an opposition rally in Caracas proclaimed himself President of Venezuela. Quickly, the United States (U.S.) and lobbied allies announced their recognition of Guaidó as the legitimate President and denounced the elected president, Nicolás Maduro, as a usurper and dictator.

Before that day, Guaidó was largely an unknown figure to much of Venezuela. Polling prior to Guaidó's self-proclamation suggested approximately 80% of Venezuelans had never even heard of him (Ciccariello-Maher, 2019). Ignoring the absence of such a mandate, as of July 2019, reportedly 54 countries support Guaidó as the interim-President of Venezuela.

As Guaido asked for China's support while painting a picture of a country grappling with "90% food and medical shortages, a population in which 87% live below the poverty line and an inflation which exceeds 2,000,000%," it appeared to Washington and Venezuelan elites that the "Bolivarian Revolution" was on the brink of collapse. Instead, as the last seven months passed so too has Guaidó's legitimacy within Venezuela, the U.S. and the international community.

"The Bolivarian Revolution"

In 1998, famed Venezuelan revolutionary Hugo Chávez won a sweeping electoral victory six years after leading a failed coup attempt. Chávez, an ardent socialist, believed in the utilization of Venezuela's national resources to benefit the country's poorest citizens. This movement would come to be known as "The Bolivarian Revolution", a reference to revolutionary Simón Bolívar, who liberated numerous Latin American countries from the Spanish Empire, including Venezuela.

The Revolution faced its first substantial obstruction in 2002 after a coup that ultimately found Chávez reinstated within 2 days. The coup was led by business lobbies, reactionary trade unions, and a unified political opposition rallying behind Pedro Carmona; all of whom felt that Chávez was acting in an undemocratic manner which also threatened their commercial interests.

Immediately following the coup and during the subsequent military detention of Chávez, the U.S. recognized the Carmona government and attempted to lobby international support for the legitimization of the government which overthrew a President elected with nearly 60% of the vote just two years earlier. Less than two weeks later it was understood that the U.S. had met with the coup plotters and both knew of and supported their ambitions (Vulliamy, 2002). In the end, the coup failed as tens-of-thousands Chávistas took to the streets, flipping the military high command to support the reinstatement of Chávez.

"Chavismo" is the espoused economic and social philosophy of President Chávez who in 1998 inherited a country in which two thirds of the population subsisted on less than $2 a day (Cooper, 2002). In the years following the 2002 coup attempt, Chávez lowered the Gini Coefficient by 54%, reduced poverty from 70.8% (1996) to 21% (2010) and extreme poverty from ~40% to 7.3% (2010), with 20,000,000 benefitting from the anti-poverty programs (Muntaner & Benach & Paez-Victor, 2002). It is for these reasons that Venezuelan elites so much feared and despised the President.

Acquired Economic Crisis

In 2013, Chávez passed away after a two-year battle with cancer. His Vice President at the time Nicolás Maduro, in accordance with the Venezuelan Constitution, held a presidential election within 30 days of a sitting President's death. Maduro won the election, narrowly edging out opposition candidate Henrique Capriles by a 1.5% margin, much less than the 11% victory attained by Chávez over Capriles seven months earlier. Despite having Chávez's public endorsement, Maduro lacked the charisma and connection attained by Chávez after almost 20 years of public admiration. Among the primary polling concerns at the time were a retracting national economy, increasing crime rates, and land ownership rights.

2013 was also a high point for global oil prices, with a barrel of crude selling on the market for $105.87. With the largest oil reserves in the world, Venezuela benefited dramatically during this period of rising prices, and began promoting numerous socialist programs both domestically and abroad. As early as 2006, the Chávez Administration was financing eye surgeries for the poor in Mexico and subsidizing heat for struggling homeowners in the U.S. Approximately 30 countries benefited from Venezuela's assistance in the form of generous debt and bond purchasing, discounted oil sales through the PetroCaribe program, and numerous development programs throughout the overexploited world. These projects were managed while considerably investing in the poor of Venezuela.

However, critics have noted the spending and centralization throughout the Chávez era to be reckless and attuned to economic mismanagement. Toppled with an imposed currency control which overvalued the Venevuelan bolivar and the complex multi-tiered exchange rate system which encouraged corruption through bolivar sales on the black market, the Venezuelan economy had reached a point of extreme insecurity which the Maduro Administration has had difficulties solving.

Accentuating the economic crisis, by 2015 a barrel of crude oil sold for less than $50 on the global market. With a 50% decrease in value, the Maduro Administration faced serious challenges in restoring an economy that was already in recession. Moreover, Venezuela is a single resource economy with 95-99% of its export earnings coming from oil sales, meaning it relies heavily on imports due to the lack of resource and commodity diversity. It is important to note that this is not solely the blame of the Bolivarian Revolution. That Venezuela is a single resource export economy is a problem that has existed since Spanish colonization, and every government since has been tasked with attempting to diversify the national economy while suffering from boom-and-bust cycles attached to the sale of oil. This renders the state fully reliant on oil sales, a product of colonialism and a symptom of the "resource curse". Additionally, the ongoing economic crisis has been heightened due to sanctions waged by the U.S.

In 2006, the U.S. Department of State began barring the sale of new military equipment and spare parts to Venezuela. In 2011, the U.S. placed sanctions against the Venezuelan state oil company PDVSA. In 2013, further sanctions were placed against the state-owned firearms manufacturer, CVIM. By 2015, President Obama sanctioned Venezuelan officials and declared ludicrously by Executive Order a "national emergency with respect to the unusual and extraordinary threat to the national security… of the United States posed by… Venezuela." Today, the U.S. Treasury Department has sanctions on 115 Venezuelans and hundreds of visas have been revoked by the U.S. State Department (Seelke & Sullivan, 2019). A 2019 report by the Center for Economic and Policy Research conducted by Mark Weisbrot and Jeffery Sachs found that sanctions imposed by the Trump Administration since August 2017 alone have resulted in the preventable deaths of more than 40,000 Venezeulans and have contributed to the suffering of millions due to restrictions on Venezuela's ability to import food and medicine. With continued sanctions placed on PDVSA in 2019, it is clear the U.S. intends to undernourish the nation.

Since 2013, the Venezuelan economy has contracted by more than 47% (according to the Venezuelan Central Bank) with hyperinflation reaching levels previously unseen. The goal of U.S. sanctions is clearly the polarization of Venezuelan society by a heightening of economic struggle afforded by the general populace. This is a multifaceted attack, including not just the governments of the West and their right-wing sycophants throughout Latin America, but also through disinvestment and deceitful marketing by numerous financial institutions. An example of such can be seen regarding Venezuela's risk-rating by J.P. Morgan Bank in 2017 which was listed at 4,820 points. Whereas Chile, despite having the same debt/GDP ratio as Venezuela, was ranked thirty-eight times lower (Ramonet, 2018). Throughout the years, U.S. sanctions against Venezuela have resulted in the government's inability to send and receive payments in the millions and prevented Venezuela from accessing billions from its own reserves overseas.

Maduro's Continuation of Chavismo

On August 4, 2018, President Maduro survived an assassination attempt after several drones carrying explosives flew toward him during a speech in Caracas. A month later it was reported that U.S. officials had met with military officers involved in the coup several times over the year preceding the attempt (Diamond & Labott & Stracqualursi, 2018). In June 2019, the Associated Press in Caracas reported that Maduro's spokesperson, Jorge Rodríguez, announced that the government had foiled an assassination plot designed by former Venezuelan military and police officers. Blame for this conspiracy was directed by Rodríguez at U.S. allies Colombian President Iván Duque and Chilean President Sebastian Piñera.

Since 2013, Maduro has accused the opposition, the U.S. and their regional subordinates of numerous assassination attempts and coup plots. In tradition with the Bolivarian Revolution, Maduro sees himself as a defender of Venezuela against imperialists intent on exploiting the people and natural resources of Venezuela. Instead of bowing to the pressures of the hegemon, Maduro has been unwavering in his commitment to Chavismo and Venezuelan sovereignty.

In 2016, Bolivarian government social spending amounted to 73% of the national budget while the Venezuelan Great Housing Mission constructed an additions 370,000 homes to be distributed to families living in the barrios, achieving the second lowest homelessness rate in the region (Boothroyd-Rojas, 2017 & Fúnez, 2017). Regarding social advancements, in 2016 Venezuela's Public Ministry announced that transgender people may request a new identification card according to their gender identity. Venezuela's government also founded and financed numerous ministries to advance several minority communities, including the Ministry for Women and Gender Equality, the Centre of African Knowledge, and the Ministry of Popular Power for Indigenous Peoples (Fúnez, 2017)

By the end of 2017, the government had expanded its free healthcare system to cover over 60% of the nation, while increasing the salaries of all doctors working in the public sector by 50% (Fúnez, 2017). In the realm of education, Maduro's government continued the policies of Chávez which have resulted in Venezuela ranking sixth in the world regarding primary education enrollment, with 73% of the population enrolling in secondary education and a literacy rate of 95.4% (Fúnez, 2017). In order to circumvent the banking blockade, the country also launched its own cryptocurrency known as the Petro. Meanwhile, the Local Committees of Supply and Production (CLAP) program expanded to reaching more than four million people, supplying them with government subsidized goods that are otherwise difficult to afford for the impoverished due to economic speculation.

The 2018 presidential election was largely boycotted by a fractured opposition who had requested the U.N. not send international observers so not to legitimize an election they otherwise were likely to lose. Despite the intended boycott not all of the opposition abstained from participating, resulting in a Maduro victory with 67% of the vote.

By the end of the year, Venezuela's Great Housing Mission had constructed over 2.5M dignified homes for distribution to those in need. As a result of this achievement, in May 2019 the U.N. Habitat Assembly recognized Venezuela as a world leader with regard to right-to-housing.

"The Making of Juan Guaido"

Investigative journalist Max Blumenthal, in an article titled "The Making of Juan Guaidó," delineates through an extensive review how Guaidó became a prominent figure of the opposition.

After graduating from Andres Bello Catholic University, a leading private university in Caracas, he enrolled at George Washington University in Washington D.C., where he studied under former International Monetary Fund Executive Director Luis Enrique Berrizbeitia. In 2007, Guaidó and allies led an anti-government rally after Chávez refused to renew the broadcasting license for Radio Caracas Televisión (RCTV). The refusal was primarily due to RCTV's role in the 2002 coup, where the station promoted the anti-government rally and then manipulated significant events during the coup (Blumenthal, 2019), quite literally spreading "fake news" to delegitimize the Chávez Administration.

In 2010, Guaidó and others traveled to Mexico for a secret five-day training session directed by "Otpor" (Blumenthal, 2019), an NGO created in Belgrade largely credited with leading removal of President Slobodan Milošević following the 2000 Federal Republic of Yugoslavia elections. Otpor is ostensibly a regime change arm of the National Endowment for Democracy (NED) whose reputation has blurred the lines between being a provocative pro-democracy NGO and being a subversive soft-power entity used by foreign governments hostile to alleged autocracies across the world.

Guaidó also participated in the "guarimbas", which were often violent anti-Maduro roadblocks notorious for killing at least 43 people in 2014. Since deleted, that same year Guaidó tweeted a video of himself wearing a helmet and gas mask, surrounded by masked guarimberos who has shut down a highway, proclaiming to be the "resistance" (Blumenthal, 2019). In February 2014, Guaidó joined opposition figure Leopoldo Lopez on stage where they led a crowd of protestors to Attorney General Luisa Ortega Diaz's office which armed gangs later attempted to burn down (Blumenthal, 2019).

Is this what democracy looks like?

NGOs and Disingenuous "Development"

From 2002-2007, the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) granted 360 "scholarships" in what amassed to $11,575,509 for social organizations, political parties, and political projects through Development Alternatives Incorporated (DAI), a company contracted by USAID to work in Venezuela (Golinger, 2011). During the December of 2002, DAI paid for numerous radio and television advertisements on behalf of the opposition, calling for a general strike to halt operations until Chávez stepped down (Golinger, 2004).

The "labor rights" branch of the NED, known as the Solidarity Center, had members in Venezuela in 2002 meet with Otto Reich, then Assistant Secretary of Western Hemisphere Affairs, and an individual who was implicated in cooperating with anti-Chávez groups in destabilization campaigns prior to the coup attempt in 2002 (Cox, 2012). The Center also financed unions such as the Confederation of Venezuelan Workers, which organized with the National Business Confederation of Venezuela, a group complicit in working with the opposition and supporting the 2002 coup (Cox, 2012). These revelations emphasize the coercive nature of the NED as their labor rights arm operates with the U.S. Department of State in destabilizing Venezuela by organizing labor against the state.

Opposition parties and organizations have also been financed by USAID, the National Democratic Institute and the International Republican Institute (each U.S. party's branch of the NED), totaling over $7M between 2002-2011 (Golinger, 2011). Between 2013-2014, the NED and USAID collectively sent $14M to opposition parties organizing protests in 2014, of which Guaidó was a participant. In 2013 alone, of the $2.3M sent to Venezuela by the NED, $1.7M was sent directly to opposition parties (Golinger, 2014).

Given the U.S. recognition of the self-proclaimed President of Venezuela Juan Guaidó, it should be clear that preserving democracy is not the intent of President Trump's Administration. Unlike both Mr. Guaidó and Trump, Maduro was elected by a majority of the Venezuelan population to be President of the country, twice. If the U.S. actually cared about the Venezuelan people, it would relinquish the sanctions and send reparations for the havoc it has created.

Instead, the war drum continues to beat. U.S. Senator Marco Rubio in February 2019 tweeted a photo of the corpse of U.S. adversary Muammar Gaddafi as an apparent threat against Maduro (Rahim, 2019). Moreover, the appointment of Elliott Abrams as U.S. Special Envoy to Venezuela should serve as explicit evidence that "democracy and human rights" are not the U.S. goal for Venezuela. Abrams himself has links to the Venezuela 2002 coup attempt, and in 1991 plead guilty to misleading the U.S. Congress following the Nicaraguan Contras funding scandal that engulfed President Reagan's Administration. Abrams also misled the U.S. Senate concerning the El Mozote massacre during the 12-year El Salvador Civil War, a massacre whose perpetrators were funded and trained by the U.S. (Al Jazeera, 2019). Thus, as Guaidó has pledged and John Bolton proclaimed, the goals in Venezuela for the U.S. are the opening of markets, the privatization of state assets and U.S.-owned multinational corporations' access to oil reserves.

In July 2019, the Los Angeles Times reported that a USAID memo sent to Congress noted that the Trump Administration would be diverting over $40M, initially intended for Guatemala and Honduras, to the Guaidó faction in Venezuela. This more than $40M redirection accounts for more than 10% of the allocated $370M for the region. Moreover, it is important to note that just a month earlier, it was reported that the Guaidó faction had spent over $165,000 on luxury goods and personal expenses which had been sent to them in the form of humanitarian aid (Cohen, 2019).

The Conflict is The Contradiction

Guaidó alone is no standout figure. It is said that the day before the self-proclamation, U.S. Vice President Mike Pence personally called Guaidó and asserted U.S. support for his declaration. Many in attendance at the rally were caught off guard, and even fellow stage members showed bewilderment at the announcement. Still, minutes after the announcement the U.S. and lobbied allies legitimized the proclamation.

The conflict for the U.S. is the outright contradiction of a foreign powers' selection and international lobbying of support for a character who proclaimed themselves President without grasping any control of Venezuela. Without the military abandoning the Bolivarian Revolution, Guaidó has the world's attention and nothing to show for it. This has only been highlighted by the forced occupation of the Venezuelan Embassy in the U.S. (where occupiers were evicted by siege) and Costa Rica (which was denounced by the Costa Rican government) by Guaidó appointees. Another example of Guaidó's foreign inabilities is Germany's refusal to recognize Otto Gebauer as an ambassador of Venezuela, instead regarding him a "personal representative of interim president Juan Guaidó".

Meanwhile, the Maduro government remains committed to Venezuelan sovereignty and Chavismo. With the U.S. constantly reminding that "all options are on the table", it appears the truth is that the coup attempt has ultimately failed and the only flex the U.S. is willing to display are twitter threats accompanied by starvation sanctions. What the future holds remains a mystery, but from what the history of Chavismo has shown us, the people of Venezuela are unwilling to submit their independence to the U.S. in exchange for commercial contracts and austerity measures to resurrect the economy. While the country remains in deep struggle, Venezuela at least remains a sovereign Latin American state.

References

Al Jazeera. (2019, February 12). Who is Elliot Abrams, US Special Envoy for Venezuela. Retrieved from https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2019/02/elliott-abrams-special-envoy-venezuela-190212012146896.html

Blumenthal, M. (2019, January 29). The Making of Juan Guaido: How the U.S. Regime Change Laboratory Created Venezuela's Coup Leader. Retrieved from https://thegrayzone.com/2019/01/29/the-making-of-juan-guaido-how-the-us-regime-change-laboratory-created-venezuelas-coup-leader/

Boothroyd-Rojas, R. (2017, January 16). Venezuela's Maduro Highlights Social Achievements in Annual Address to the Nation. Retrieved from https://venezuelanalysis.com/news/12886

Ciccariello-Maher, G. (2019, January 25). Venezuela: Call It What It Is- A Coup. Retrieved from https://www.thenation.com/article/venezuela-coup-guaido-maduro/

Cohen, D. (2019, June 17). From Coup Leaders to Con Artists: Juan Guaido's Gang Exposed for Massive Humanitarian Aid Fraud. Retrieved from https://thegrayzone.com/2019/06/17/from-coup-leaders-to-con-artistry-juan-guaidos-gang-exposed-for-massive-humanitarian-aid-fraud/

Cooper, M. (2002, September 11). The Coup That Wasn't. Retrieved from https://www.thenation.com/article/coup-wasnt/

Cox, R. W. (2012). Corporate Power and Globalization in US Foreign Policy. London: Routledge

Diamond, J., Labott, E., & Stracqualursi, V. (2018, September 08). US Officials Secretly Met with Venezuelan Military Officers Plotting a Coup Against Maduro. Retrieved from https://www.cnn.com/2018/09/08/politics/trump-venezuela-officers-secret-meetings-maduro-coup/index.html

Fúnez, R. (2017, April 13). 4 Gains that Maduro's Venezuela Made that Mainstream Media Ignored. Retrieved from https://www.telesurenglish.net/analysis/4-Gains-Maduros-Venezuela-Made-That-Mainstream-Media-Ignores-20170413-0026.html

Golinger, E. (2004, November). The Adaptable U.S. Intervention Machine in Venezuela. Retrieved from http://www.labornet.org/news/0305/venez.htm

Golinger, E. (2011, February 17). USAID in Bolivia and Venezuela: The Silent Subversion. Retrieved from https://venezuelanalysis.com/analysis/2600

Golinger, E. (2014, April 25). The Dirty Hand of the National Endowment for Democracy in Venezuela. Retreived from https://www.counterpunch.org/2014/04/25/the-dirty-hand-of-the-national-endowment-for-democracy-in-venezuela/

Guaido, J. (2019, April 14). Why China Should Switch Sides In Venezuela. Retrieved from https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2019-04-14/why-china-should-shift-support-to-guaido-in-venezuela

Mutaner, C. & Benach, J. & Paez-Victor, M. (2012, December 14). The Achievements of Hugo Chavez. Retrieved from https://www.counterpunch.org/2012/12/14/the-achievements-of-hugo-chavez/

Norton, B. (2019, January 19). US Coup in Venezuela motivated by Oil and Corporate Interests- Militarist John Bolton spills the beans. Retrieved from https://thegrayzone.com/2019/01/29/us-coup-venezuela-oil-corporate-john-bolton/

OPEC, Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (2019). "Venezuela." Retrieved from www.opec.org/opec_web/en/about_us/171.htm .

Rahim, Z. (2019, February 25). Venezuela Crisis: Marco Rubio posts image of bloodied Colonel Gaddafi in apparent threat to Maduro . Retrieved from https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/us-politics/marco-rubio-tweet-muammar-gaddafi-libya-venezuela-nicolas-maduro-a8795071.html

Ramonet, I. (2018, January 2). The 12 Victories of Venezuelan President Maduro in 2017. Retrieved from https://www.telesurenglish.net/opinion/The-12-Victories-of-Venezuelan-President-Maduro-in-2017-20180102-0009.html

Rios, B. (2019, February 5). EU Leaders Recognize Guaido In Venezuela. Retrieved from https://www.euractiv.com/section/global-europe/news/eu-leaders-recognise-guaido-in-venezuela/

Seelke, C., & Sullivan, M. (2019, July 5). Venezuela: Overview of U.S. Sanctions. Congressional Research Service, 21.

Vulliamy, E. (2002, April 21). Venezuela Coup Linked to Bush Team. Retrieved from https://www.theguardian.com/world/2002/apr/21/usa.venezuela

Weisbrot, M. & Sachs, J. (2019, April). Economic Sanctions as Collective Punishment: The Case of Venezuela. Center for Economic and Policy Research. Retrieved from http://cepr.net/images/stories/reports/venezuela-sanctions-2019-04.pdf

Decolonial Resistance in Hip Hop: Re-Colonial Resistances, Love, and Wayward Self-Determination

By Joe Hinton

Although many forms of black expressive culture contain elements of political resistance, hip hop is a form that has been recognized by numerous scholars for its unique, complex, and nuanced forms of offering political discourse. As Damon Sajnani notes, the origins of hip hop are inherently political, specifically rooted in the politics of the "decolonization of local urban space". Hip Hop today, the most popular genre in the United States (if not the world), is quite disconnected from these political roots in a radical anti-colonial politic built through creating livelihood out of structure-based psychological pain.

What is the nature of resistance in hip hop, and what do scholars have to say about its current status? Many note that hip hop has been co-opted by a white-controlled market and has been manipulated so as to promote limited narratives of Blackness, many of which are derived from minstrel tropes. Sometimes, these tropes can be manifested as partial resistances to white-supremacist, capitalist, patriarchal settler-colonialism. Sometimes, when they rely on European notions of political resistance that are either inherently capitalistic or statist/nationalist, they reify colonial structures and are thus re-colonial. Sometimes they flip the narrative of oppression or expose it for what it is, as Tricia Rose notes, but do so in a way that constitutes a solid first step to resistance but does not completely answer the question of how one wants to exist and live in a world beyond the reality of this oppression.

In my eyes, the only types of resistant expressive culture that can actually spur Black liberation must create alternative visions that denounce resistances that rely on other closely related forms of oppression and toxic psychologies. Building off the ideas of Cornel West, Zoe Samudzi, and William C. Anderson, these visions must be centered in both collective love and individualist, wayward, and deviant lifestyle choices. By wayward and deviant, I mean prone to reject the boxes imposed by American culture and its depictions of Blackness. I draw on the idea that Black and indigenous people in the United States exist liminally, not as citizens. This means that as the state is functioned to precipitate our extinction and/or suffering and to prevent our full integration into the benefits of society, and that our existence as colonial subjects, regardless of socioeconomic advancement, renders our status perpetually ambiguous and subject to a constantly uncertain chaos and threat of violence that reinforces a spiritual feeling of collective subordination. This chaos can be overcome by a moment of creation and establishment of what the state deprives us of and excludes us from: self-love. Hip Hop originally sought to achieve this, but it has been co-opted by the market and the limited narratives it promotes, with some notable exceptions. Once based in love, and dedicated to the creation of love-based communities, these forms of culture can help spur mobilization against white-supremacist, capitalist, patriarchal settler-colonialism (WSCPSC) to defend ourselves against it and eventually overthrow it; or, more immediately, find a way to create communities that employ social rules and customs that promote Black and indigenous love, rather than relying on the false promises of liberal reformism and partial resistances.

Although it remains true that hip hop has been co-opted by a powerful white media establishment, it also remains true that hip hop is an inherently resistant genre in that it constantly engages with the "politics of having fun," a framework that can be perceived as seemingly apolitical, but is actually quite focused on the psychological effects of socio-political hierarchies. Where songs can be differentiated in their political efficacy is the degree to which they promote a liberational Black politic. As Cornel West notes, a truly liberational Black politic is committed to fighting racism at its root: capitalism. And is also determined to end all associated forms of oppression that result from capitalism and colonialism: homophobia, sexism, ableism, and transphobia. Within hip hop, although the 80s and 90s featured a number of artists for whom the legacy of Black Power reigned eminent, the modern mainstream genre is primarily full of either market-driven resistances, partial resistances, or their associated re-colonial resistances.

Partial resistances vary as to the terms to which they reify colonial resistances, but most do to one extent or another. N.W.A's "Fuck tha Police" emphatically decries the historically biased and anti-Black prosecuting tendencies of the City of Los Angeles quite creatively while also reifying the colonial oppression of gay people by using homophobic slurs. The sexual domination narratives promoted by Cardi B and Nicki Minaj take a step towards a less subordinate position for Black women and do promote positive narratives that Black women can be proud of their sexuality, but also reify the objectification and exploitation of the Black female body by offering limited options for how a famous Black women is to present herself and her body. This is not to say that other options are not presented by other Black females; to do so would be myopic. I am rather emphasizing that the female rappers with the most prominence do not fit these narrow images, coincidentally; they are approved by a white-controlled media elite that has never shied away from aligning Black female exploitation and lucrative profits. In the wake of the death of Nipsey Hussle, an LA rapper known for his generosity and devotion to community uplift, Jay Z exclaimed that Black people should look to gentrify their own neighborhoods before white people can. Given that gentrification is fundamentally aligned with the same ideologies of settler-colonialism and economic exploitation that hip hop was founded on alleviating and eliminating, suggesting such a notion is especially re-colonial. All of these are examples of when artists in hip hop use their platforms to promote the advancement of an oppressed group, but somehow reify a hierarchy that exists to make Black people and Black women suffer.

Then how can hip hop be completely resistant and neither partial nor re-colonial? As Sajnani notes, the diasporic nature of Black nationalism is an effective liberational alternative to the pain of WSPCSC, a nationalism distinct from its European analog. This nationalism has been referred to vaguely by scholars such as Bakari Kitwana, specifically to his conception of a Hip-Hop Generation, and was cited positively by West in his analysis of Morrison's Beloved. Many arguments regarding Black self-determination usually rely on this statist conception. Sajnani's analysis of the Black national bourgeoisie, of which Jay Z is a prominent member, is particularly revealing. He claims that partial resistances are often performed by prominent Blacks as a means to receive compensation from the white cultural gatekeepers while Black exploitation is upheld by the national order. To Sajnani, to support the American Dream is to ignore economic stratification, which in the US is always a racial topic. Black capitalists, especially in hip hop, engage in the rhetoric of the American Dream quite regularly, relying on a misguided bootstraps ideology. But even if Black capitalism can't be a true form of resistance to WSPCSC, can diasporic nationalism constitute a more complete resistance? As Zoé Samudzi and William C. Anderson propose in their powerful novel on the anarchism of Blackness as Black as Resistance,

"attempting to reclaim and repurpose the settler state will not lead to liberation, and it will not provide the kind of urgent material relief so many people desperately need, though electing empathetic officials sometimes can arguably mitigate against harm. Only through a material disruption of these geographies, through the cultivation of Black autonomy, can Black liberation begin to be actualized."

As such, a legitimate response to WSPCSC must not consider the future of Blackness as reliant on a statist solution. Although Sajnani's support of a somewhat re-colonial nationalism, no matter if distinct from European nationalism, is misguided, his emphasis on "resisting the appropriation of Hip Hop and elaborating its original mission" (I would replace appropriation with misappropriation) is quite relevant to establishing a liberatory Black politic through hip hop. What is the next step?

While resistance in Black politics today often calls for criminal justice reform instead of radical restructuring of the industrial-prison complex, 2018 saw some powerful forms of resistance enter the mainstream, most notably Childish Gambino's "This is America." Gambino's Grammy-award-winning song and video effectively criticizes the current state of hip hop and minstrel tropes. As Frank Guan notes, "It's a tribute to the cultural dominance of trap music and a reflection on the ludicrous social logic that made the environment from which trap emerges, the logic where money makes the man, and every black man is a criminal." Gambino's work helped bring a critical element of reflection into the mainstream of pop and hip hop: that the limited, minstrel-reproducing narratives of Blackness in popular culture contribute to past and present forms of social subordination. It is a crucial step towards finding a liberatory politic and is quite close to a complete form of resistance. Where it falls short however is along two fronts: an explicit embrace of a collective love ethic, and a moment of creation that accepts the reality of Black liminality and becomes devoted to a deviant determination of one's self that allows for the complexity of Blackness to live freely and waywardly, away from the psychological boxes imposed on us by WSCPSC.

I have come to learn that hip hop has an extremely high potential for being politically resistant to WSCPSC, but it is going to take a lot of work to return it to what it once accomplished. Very few forms of hip hop are directly engaged with a love ethic nor with an explicitly deviant rejection of WSCPSC based in self-determination. Two legacies of Black expressive culture will serve as my examples for such a cultural politic in this section: Toni Morrison's Beloved, as cited and analyzed by West, and the work of Prince, a genre-less Black artist whose influence on and connections to hip hop are understated. These forms of culture are committed to examining how Black people can create their own worlds under oppression, and even as they strive for radical changes, they are pragmatic and understand that a complete rejection of WSCPSC would constitute a violent revolution. As such, they utilize Black art as a means of peaceful resistance and alleviation of colonial pain, as hip hop once did. West noted that Morrison's Beloved was an active buffer against the pain of Black nihilism derived from WSCPSC, stressing that "Self-love and love of others are both modes toward increasing self-valuation and encouraging political resistance in one's community."

Black literature's emphasis on self-love and reflection must be replicated in hip hop. Prince understood that "Transcending categories however is not synonymous with abandoning ones' roots." After his death, Alicia Garza, a BLM founder noted that he "was from a world where Black was not only beautiful, but it was nuanced and complex and shifting and unapologetic and wise." Prince does not allow the chaos of Blackness (as constructed by WSCPSC) to render him a slave to reifying some form of colonial oppression, rather he recognizes that "it's about being comfortable in an unfixed state while improvising the topography of your life and music as you go along." Such a mindset and perspective are directly derivative of African religious culture. Thus, a liberational politic must be Afrofuturist. It must avoid the categorical labels offered by WSCPSC because of how much they limit us and function to constrict us. Perhaps a contemporary example of such a wayward, liberational politic comes in Saidiya Hartman's Wayward Lives: Beautiful Experiments, in which she reimagines the deviant and radical lifestyles and love-ethics of early 20th century upper-middle-class Black women. When Black people have the socioeconomic privilege to be able to transcend the limits of WSCPSC's social construction of race using a collective Black love ethic and staying true to the root cause of Black uplift, a promotion of a more plentiful array of types of Black existence can proliferate. And the commodification of Black art can start to dissipate, pushing more and more colonial subjects to reimagine their humanity away from internal colonialism.

This is the future I see for hip hop, one that returns it to its political roots. I understand that the pull of the market is strong, and that hip hop's decolonial future will require some serious changes in cultural discourse. Hip hop must return to its basis as a means of cultural self-defense, of engaging with the politics of having fun in a way that is more cognizant of decolonial motives. Taking down WSCPSC will require both explicit and implicit resistance, most of which will be anti-capitalist. Black expressive culture and its dynamism, specifically with regard to hip hop, have extreme potential for creating radical Black communities in the United States that are neither re-colonial nor based in the European need to monopolize violence, and embrace the duality of Black liminality, the complex nuances of double consciousness, and consider Blackness on one's own determined set of terms.

Notes

Berman, Judy. "'This Is America' 8 Things to Read about Chidish Gambino's New Music Video." New York Times, May 2018, https://www.nytimes.com/2018/05/08/arts/music/childish-gambino-this-is-america-roundup.html.

Gordon Williams, James. "Black Muse 4 U: Liminality, Self-Determination, and Racial Uplift in the Music of Prince." Journal of African American Studies, vol. 21, no. 3, Sept. 2017.

Rose, Tricia. Black Noise Rap Music and Black Culture In Contemporary America. Wesleyan University Press, 1994.

Sajnani, Damon. "Hip Hop's Origins as Organic Decolonization." Decolonization: Indigeneity, Education, and Society, 2015, https://decolonization.wordpress.com/2015/04/02/hiphops-origins-as-organic-decolonization/ .

Samudzi, Zoe, and William C. Anderson. As Black as Resistance. AK Press, 2018.

Sehgal, Parul. "An Exhilarating Work of History About Daring Adventures in Love." New York Times, Feb. 2019, https://www.nytimes.com/2019/02/19/books/wayward-lives-beautiful-experiments-saidiya-hartman.html.

West, Cornel. "Nihilism in Black America." Race Matters, Beacon, 1994.

Black Feminism and the Rap/Hip-Hop Culture: I Don't Want the "D"

By Asha Layne

"I was born to flex (Yes)
Diamonds on my neck
I like boardin' jets, I like mornin' sex (Woo!)
But nothing in this world that I like more than checks (Money)
All I really wanna see is the (Money)
I don't really need the D, I need the (Money)
All a bad bitch need is the (Money)"

- Cardi B

With the advancement of technology, more specifically social media platforms, the plight of women of color has been widely discussed thanks to the Me Too and Say Her Name movements which challenged and revolutionized the thinking of dominant culture. Of profound importance, the inclusion of Black women and women of color in these social movements contested the sweeping generalizations of 'traditional' feminism. This would later lead to a widespread rejection of popular feminism ideologies, thus making way for a new wave of neo non-conservative ideologies on feminism.

This deviation between traditional and non-traditional feminism can be traced back to the Women's Liberation Movement in the late 1960s. During this period, the conditions and concerns of White middle-class women took center stage and addressed issues that inhibited their (White women) ability to live fully free lives rid from patriarchal oppression. This perspective would continue to serve as the backdrop on a series of feminine-related issues such as equal pay, sexual harassment, sexual violence, and violence against women. Not surprisingly, given the US's racially contentious history, it (Women's Liberation Movement) shamelessly ignored the different culturally-significant spaces that Black women (and women of color) occupied, leaving Black feminists to repeat Sojourner Truth's riveting question: "Ain't I a woman?" This essay explores the evolution of Black feminism through the lens of female rappers, who I argue add to the discourse of feminism, and more specifically Black feminism.

As a theoretical construct, feminist theory claims of being woman-centered historically has ignored the narratives and standpoints of women of color. Despite the popular question, "What about the women?" that has long served as the impetus behind the development of feminist theory, the answers to this question have traditionally focused their attention solely on the experiences of White women. Anchoring this sentiment is the emergence of Black feminism and Black feminist thought, which both sought to place the experiences of Black women at the center of its analysis, therefore offering a starkly different knowledge from that of mainstream feminism. According to Collins (2000), Black women in the United States can stimulate a distinctive consciousness concerning their own experiences. Collins, like other Black feminist scholars, understood that this knowledge produced by the narratives of Black women would transform how feminism is defined and understood by Black women (and women of color). Similarly, Kimberle Crenshaw also understood that the experiences of Black women could not be explained by race and gender alone but should also include the intersecting identities that shape their identity as a Black woman. This is best demonstrated by Black women (and women of color) in the rap/hip-hop industry.

Female rappers have (and continue) to take a melodic stance to verbally disseminate information on social issues and struggles that women of color face, such as: white supremacy, sexism, self-esteem, misogyny, patriarchy, sexual harassment, and gender-based violence. One can hear this in the music of both contemporary and non-contemporary female artists, who by applying Collins's theoretical framework share their narrative through standpoint theorizing. Standpoint theorizing is a sociological feminist framework which explains that knowledge of women's experiences is best understood from their social positions in society. In Yo-Yo's 1991 debut hit, You Can't Play with my Yo-Yo she explores what it means to be a woman in a male-dominated environment. She raps:

"If you touch, you livin in a coffin (word to mother)

I'm in the 90s, you're still in the 80s right

I rock the mic, they say I'm not lady like

But I'ma lady, who will pull a stunt though

I kill suckas, and even hit the block

So what you want to do?"

In listening to the words of female rap/hip-hop artists, the audience is able to recognize the nonconventional form of activism which has added to both the discourse of Black feminism and the music industry. In the above lyrics, Yo-Yo also explains that as a female in a male-dominated industry, gender often takes precedence over race and consequently adds to negative experiences Black female MCs in the industry often grapple with. Women of color in the rap/hip-hop industry have inarguably exemplify Collins's concepts of: standpoint theory, outsider-within, and matrix of domination, sidestepping any mention of scholastic sources or prominent experts in the field. One can easily identify these acts of black female activism in the rap/hip-hop industry in the work of contemporary artist, Cardi B. This is particularly well exemplified in Cardi B's debut album, Invasion of Privacy. In her song Be Careful, which explicitly examines infidelity and the double-standard concerns it raises, she raps, "I could've did what you did to me to you a few times. But if I did decide to slide, find a nigga fuck him, suck his dick, you would've been pissed." In Money, Cardi B colorfully explains that money and not a man's penis will meet her needs. She raps, "I got a baby, I need some money, yeah I need cheese for my egg." This album unapologetically proclaims that despite her (un)popular gender non-normative approach that she will be heard and respected regardless of anyone else's opinion. Therefore, demonstrating that, just like her female rap/hip-hop predecessors, she too unconventionally exemplifies black feminist activism.

Patricia Hill Collins's Black Feminist Thought explains that race, gender, and class are oppressive factors that are bound together. In relation to rappers, the commodification of female rappers in the industry and the hypersexual images of Black female rappers speaks to not only this intersection of race, class, and gender but also to the systemic cultural nature of exploitation that is inherent not only to the industry but also within dominant American culture. In both spaces (the industry and American culture), masculinity is directly related to power and violence, and reminds us of the pervasiveness of the White perspective in social institutions. In White-Washing Race, Brown et al. (2003) explains that the White perspective is not the product of salient characteristics, such as skin color, but of culture and experiences. The lyrical narratives shared by female rap/hip-hop artists demonstrates how women of color actively grapple with the many issues, concerns, and questions they experience culturally, socially, and politically.

Is the emergence of the outspoken, gender-bending, highly independent, and sexy female artist a new phenomenon for women of color? Collins highlights how the role of Black women always contradicted the traditional role of women in mainstream society. Collin states, "if women are allegedly passive and fragile, then why are Black women treated as "mules" and assigned heavy cleaning chores" (2000, p.11)? The placement of Black women as 'objects' and 'tools' for production under capitalism is intrinsic to the social, political, and economic arrangements of power in the United States. Black feminism deconstructs the established systems of knowledge and arrangements of power by showing the masculinist bias that frames these arrangements of power from a cultural lens.

The radical changes exhibited in the bodies of work of contemporary female rappers engenders the thesis of Black feminism through frequent displays of gender non-conforming behaviors while embracing the beauty of being uniquely deviant. No longer are women of color minimizing or editing their unique experiences, behaving in gender-conforming ways, or are ashamed of being labelled a 'bitch' for the sake of being accepted by mainstream culture and appeasing their male counterparts. Contemporary Black female rappers, similar to classic rappers such as MC Lyte, Queen Latifah, and Roxeanne Shante, continue to redefine not only gender identity but Black female identity in patriarchal structures.

Both gender identity and Black female identity are socially constructed through interaction and socialization. Following the tenets of symbolic interaction, gender and racial identities emerge out of social interactions which helps to define an individual's self. The formation of self is unique to women of color because of the location and situation they occupy in many faces of oppression. The marginalization, exploitation, and feelings of powerlessness are all too common in the tropes of women of color. Therefore, the gender-social identification of women of color does not examine solely "doing gender" but instead considers key factors that obfuscates women of color from "doing gender."

Women of color in the rap/hip-hop industry continue to demonstrate the spirit of Black feminism through nonconventional methods. Today, Black female artists (and women of color) have changed the way we define women's empowerment. The popularity of female MCs embodying androgenic characteristics through feminine appeal supports the narratives of many women who have mastered the proverbial quote, "think like a man." To condemn the hypersexual behaviors and language used by Black female artists is to ignore the historical truth that Black women (and women of color) were never defined by the traditional standards of being a 'woman.' Black female MCs have and will always continue to redefine what 'doing gender' is from a cultural standpoint, therefore adding to the Black feminism discourse.

Bibliography

B, Cardi. (2018). The invasion of privacy. CD. New York: New York. Atlantic Records.

Brown, Michael K., Carnoy, Martin, Currie, Elliott, Duster, Troy, Oppenheimer, David. B., Schultz, Marjorie, M., and Wellman, David. 2003. White-washing race: The myth of a color-blind society. Berkley and Los Angeles, California: University of California Press.

Collins, Patricia Hill. (2000). Black feminist thought: Knowledge, consciousness, and the politics of empowerment. (2nd ed.). New York: Routledge.

Yo-Yo. (1991). Make way for the Motherlode. CD. New York: New York. EastWest Records America.

The Nature of the Left: On the Question of Human Nature

By Corinne Hummel

There seems to be a shared cynicism among some members of the Left and the ideologues of liberal democracy: that sexism and racism belong to human nature. While the liberal may use this assertion to justify and necessitate the state, the anarchist may hold this assertion alongside a rejection of the state. In either case, the possible organization of society is restricted by the assumption of innate characteristics. It is unscientific to attribute these products of consciousness to biological determinism, and the implication in this attempt to apply positivism to the human lifeworld is cynical; where potential is limited by subjective observations of the anathema. Recognizing that such cynicism is incompatible with scientific socialism, I aim to explore the ideological genealogy of the Left, along with the topic of human nature. Because there have been many contributors to these theories, I will only name those necessary for the purpose of this discussion.

Beginning with Adam Smith, Wealth of Nations was such an apt observation of the activity of economic life that it catalyzed dozens of 19th -century successors in the realm of political and economic philosophy. Smith presented capitalism as moral and natural, and asserted that the state should not interfere in the liberty of the individual in the market. Hegel thereafter presented an ontological wedge between Smith's work and its influence, theorizing that liberty is achieved when the rational and universal principles of the self-determination of the individual become objectified in the laws of the state. Influenced by both Smith and Hegel, Proudhon became the "father of anarchism" as he argued for collective ownership of the means of production and insisted that individuals should have a right to the full product of their individual labor. He imagined a market society constituted of free-associating collectives, with the state reformed into a "regulating society" with the sole purpose of supporting this activity. As an associate of Proudhon, Bakunin rejected the idea of a reformed state, and instead advocated for a syndicalism which would end the state, as he declared the state to be inherently oppressive.

Bakunin's communist contemporary, Karl Marx, developed his theories of social phenomena and political economy through critique of Smith and Hegel. Marx noticed that Smith's depiction of capitalism as "natural" was scientifically unwarranted. Smith's methodology was teleological: he neglected to critically explain how capitalism emerged, as his "invisible hand" was expressly providential. And where Hegel concluded the human experience is decided by our consciousness, Marx added that our consciousness is informed by our material relations, an idea known as "dialectical materialism." Bakunin promoted collective ownership of the means of production, but disagreed with Marx over collective control of the means of production, as he believed that would result in oppressive hierarchies. Bakunin betrays himself in his declaration that Marxist communism would lead to a "parasitic Jewish nation." Marx was deeply critical of Bakunin, and the two were positioned as adversaries. An interesting turn occurred in Italy where Cafiero, a young advocate of Marxism, joined the more popular Bakuninist side, bringing with him significant influence from Marx. In 1880, Cafiero and his associates made a formal declaration that the individual appropriation of the products of individual labor leads to wealth accumulation based on merit, and that the state becomes necessitated and reinforced by this condition of inequality. So, the Italian Bakuninists, influenced by Marx, shifted the ideas of collectivist anarchists toward what became known as anarcho-communism.

Kropotkin, a naturalist, made significant theoretical contributions to anarcho-communism when he published a series of essays in 1890, which were later combined under the title "mutual aid: a factor in evolution." In these works, Kropotkin used examples from the animal kingdom to argue against survival of the fittest. Inspired by Darwin, he used the methodology of evolutionary biology to claim that cooperation is naturally selected for, as a consciousness. This means that anything not considered cooperation, such as violence, is an expression of consciousness belonging to an unfavorable evolution. Kropotkin faults the earliest formations of centralized states for enchanting humanity toward authority. The crux of this theory is that in the presence of hierarchies, biological tendencies for cooperation are suppressed in an alteration of consciousness. Kropotkin stated that it is only when all individuals' needs are met that the individual can be free, creatively, and for all individuals' needs to be met, there must be cooperation. According to his hypothesis, such cooperation prerequisites a higher consciousness. Kropotkin's empiricist methodology, when applied to sociology, was not immune to subjective idealism. He claimed to be logically outside the realm of metaphysics, yet he demonstrated Hegel's one-way dialectic in which consciousness decides existence. His conception of the naturally evolved consciousness presents a very agreeable outlook on the nonviolent potential of humanity, but it becomes overshadowed by a cynicism that collective consciousness cannot transcend its subjective perceptions of hierarchies.

Looking at non-human species to interpret human sociobiology will produce a variety of contradictory examples, until it becomes a pseudoscientific double-edged sword. Our view of ourselves as we see it in the world around us is subject to the most determined of biases. The reactionary cites the behavior of lobsters to justify class society, while the leftist claims that white supremacy is congenital. In a study of apes, all were given a banana except for one, and that one reacted violently. When looking at human history, we see those with accumulated wealth enacting violence, as conditions of perceived resource scarcity threatened the reproduction of wealth. Homo Sapiens have existed for roughly 200,000 years while capitalism has existed for no more than 700 years (including its precursors). Capitalism is distinct from the trading activities of ancient civilizations, just as you would not call primitive nomadic peoples "colonizers." The birth of capitalism is marked by the expropriation of the means of production, which was preceded by wealth accumulation. Natural disasters, presenting resource scarcity, were likely causes of the transferring of the commons into private ownership. In the work of Carl Nicolai Starcke, we learn that the emergence of patriarchy, first instituted within the family, was preceded by the establishment of private property. Patriarchy first emerged in those primitive societies which uniquely had a gendered division of labor in which private property became solely undertaken by men. Property, at this point in history, was the means of production: animals or land necessary for reproducing existence. This particular development depended on geography. In the harsh climate of Northern Europe, primitive societies were more dependent on herding animals than growing crops, and in these cases there was a gendered division of labor for biological reasons. Men came to inherit the herds because pregnant women could not care for the herds. The subordination of women occurred after their separation from the means of production, as it became the private property of men, but the original separation was not itself subordinating. Similarly, slavery in the Roman Empire was not based on race: the accumulation of wealth, requiring reproduction and protection, caused the state apparatus to develop a market for human labor as property. As capitalist production expanded, sexism and racism became ideological constructions, institutionalized in the service of entrenching support for continued expropriation of the means of production. The witch hunts and colonialism appearing in the late 15th century occurred 100 years after feudal crises had developed pre-modern capitalism.

Compelled by the lack of technical rigor in Wealth of Nations, Marx investigated what is unique to capitalism in its influence on human behavior. In addition to wealth accumulation and perceived resource scarcity, he theorizes that there is alienation occurring in the mode of production. The mode of production is the way in which society reproduces its existence: it is the material and social relations of labor. In capitalism, the instruments of labor, and the products of labor, do not belong to the laborer. To understand Marx's theory of alienation requires his concept of "base and superstructure" wherein the base is the mode of production; the relations of which are reproduced into the superstructure as societal norms and institutions. In the capitalist mode of production, the worker is estranged from the value of their labor while the capitalist is estranged from the labor of the value they extract. Performing these mechanistic roles alienates the individual from the self: from rationally knowing the fulfillment of need, as the only need becomes wages or profits. Marx was inspired by Darwin as well, in conceiving of history as a complex, yet quotidian, process of change and the response to change. Alienation is what the individual experiences when reality contradicts the rational motivation of the species-being: when the individual's labor is not for the self-determination of the individual, which is simultaneously unique and universal, as a being of a social species. This alienation is reproduced outwardly because material (social) relations inform consciousness, from which behavior cannot be isolated. In capitalism, the behavioral response precipitates evidence of humanity's spirit, though as a broken one, and the empiricist unjustly casts these behaviors as both irrational and belonging to human nature. It is from this cynical perspective that the ideologues of liberal democracy necessitate the utilitarian state to ensure civilization progresses. But for Marx, the ills of society are products of contractual agreements in which can be no real consent. The norms and institutions of the superstructure reinforce, through violence and ideological mystification, that which produces them.

For Kropotkin, capitalism is a byproduct of the state. For Marx, the state is a reproduction of the capitalist mode of production. Marx understood the historical emergence of the capitalist mode of production as preconditioned by rational responses to perceived resource scarcity in stateless primitive societies. The theories of Marxism and anarcho-communism were developed through distinctly different methodologies. When the mode of reproducing existence is not accounted for as an objective material reality of consciousness, observations will be subject to an idealism in which it is possible to misknow reality. For this reason, agreements found among leftists may only superficially bridge an epistemic divide. Marx said, "Proudhon does not know that all of history is nothing but a continuous transformation of human nature." He meant that one simply cannot say what is innate: behavior is the response to a changing material reality transmuted by the subjective consciousness. Marx contended that we should consider humanity apart from our conceptions of nature because history cannot be explained in the non-human natural world. Marxism is scientific socialism because of dialectical materialism: a process philosophy which overcomes the limitations of empiricism, rationalism, and subjective idealism. It is a more complete theory of social phenomena. By this method, the institution of science can be understood to be oppressive due to it being ideologically reinforced as a reproduction of the oppression in the base of society. When it is recognized, by the historical application of dialectical materialism, that capitalism is responsible for the environmental plunder of colonialism, it is possible to conclude that our societal conception of "nature" has been white supremacist. I conclude with the suggestion that the cynical perception of "human nature" is the result of ideological mystification producing an epistemic impasse.

"Ideology does not exist in the 'world of ideas' conceived as a 'spiritual world.' Ideology exists in institutions and the practices specific to them. Ideology represents individuals' imaginary relation to their real conditions of existence. Ideology has a material existence. There is no practice whatsoever except by and under an ideology. There is no ideology except by the subject and for the subjects. Ideology interpellates individuals as subjects."

- Louis Althusser

"There is No Straight Line to a Just Food System": What We Do with Our Bodies Until Then

By David Pritchett

Two Kinds of Farming

The summer of 2012 was hot in the Midwest. By the fourth week of temperatures over ninety degrees Fahrenheit, and over two months without rain, the grass was brown and many of our crops in Northeastern Indiana were not faring much better.

I lived on a twenty-six acre farm, three acres of which my friends and I were homesteading and vegetable gardening. Our farm - "Bluefield Farm," named after the abundant chicory with its blue blossoms - was an oasis in the middle of an industrial agriculture desert. The surrounding landscape, on the other hand, was filled with acres of corn and soybean. Most of the farm lay pastured with organic hay, but we planted market gardens on about one and a half acres of the landscape.

The work was hard but rewarding. Gardens require thoughtful soil preparation--compost or manure ensure proper nutrition for the plants, and manual tillage loosens the soil so that roots can take hold and take up crucial minerals, but unlike plows, does so without killing beneficial worms and fungal threads. Hand tillage and planting of even two acres can be backbreaking, but shared labor lightened the work, and even made it enjoyable. Mentors helped us to know when to start seeds, how and when to transplant, and offered tips and strategies for dealing with insects and weeds without utilizing chemicals. Late night research provided information on companion and succession planting, to negotiate plant tolerance and space. And always, the gardens humbled us with our amateur knowledge of how to grow enough to feed ourselves with a margin of extra.

The contrast between our farm and the surrounding agricultural practices was evident on a daily basis. Our small-scale gardens were planted with seedlings before the surrounding fields were dry enough for the tractors to till. Even in the heat and drought of 2012, we had some crops that survived. The diversity of our planting plan meant that although some of our vegetables did not tolerate the hot, dry weather, some did. Surrounding us though, were thousands of acres of soybeans and corn that desiccated into brown stalks without the water they needed. The large scale of those farms of hundreds or even thousands of acres was brittle and fragile.

But it was an event that summer - a disaster - that truly marked the difference between industrial food production and the small scale agroecology we practiced on Bluefield farm. Up the road just a quarter mile was another kind of farm. A chicken farm, but more properly just a collection of large industrial buildings. This was an egg production facility, alleged to provide all the eggs for all the Kroger grocery stores east of the Mississippi. I believed this to be true, because it consisted of four buildings, each a quarter mile long and one hundred yards wide. The factory boasted of two million hens, each housed in a cage constructed such that the daily egg born of their bodies was moved on a conveyor belt to be collected, cleaned, bleached, and packaged. Production was mechanized to facilitate as little human intervention as possible, but workers were still needed for various tasks - one of the inauspicious duties was the daily chore of collecting birds dead in their cages and throwing them out.

I was in town one scorching day when I heard the news from one of the locals - the giant fans, big as airplane engines, just couldn't keep up with the heat. Those big buildings became giant ovens, and three hundred thousand chickens died from hyperthermia.

When I got home from town, I rushed over to our small chicken coop, constructed of leftover odds and ends of wood and tin nailed onto a frame of two by fours. Our ten hens were fine, pecking away at the occasional insect, and fussing about as they generally did under the shade of a tree. For the rest of the day, though, I could hear the commotion of large machinery in the distance. I was told that they buried the dead chickens--all three hundred thousand--in a massive heap of feathers, flesh, and bones.

Three Pillars of White Heteropatriarchy

Scholar of Indigenous Studies, Andrea Smith, wrote a short but incisive analysis of the interconnected nature of racism in the United States. Her thesis was that while various racialized groups experience racism in different ways, their struggles for liberation are connected as each form of racism is a pillar in white supremacy.

The first pillar is the logic of slaveability/capitalism. The logic of slavery anchors capitalism and at its worst renders black bodies as nothing more than property to be used in the cotton fields, or, after the 13th amendment, to be put to work via Jim Crow laws. Despite eventual abolishment of Jim Crow laws, mass incarceration of black persons today continues the logic of slavery by corporate prisons and prison work for low wages.

The second pillar of white supremacy, according to Smith, is the logic of genocide/colonialism. This logic holds that native people must constantly be disappearing. The myth of the Americas as open landscape for the taking necessitated the genocide of indigenous peoples who had lived in relationship to the land for thousands of years. Religious rhetoric fomented this genocide, calling the "New world" a "new Israel," which of course meant that the colonizers had the right to murder the indigenous inhabitants of the land. The logic of genocide perpetrated the forced displacement of native nations onto reservations and continues today in the myth of the disappeared Indians, spoken of as the original inhabitants who are now vanished.

The third pillar of white supremacy is the logic of orientalism/war. This logic sees Oriental nations (inclusive of the Middle East) as perpetual threats to the superior civilizations of the West. While these exotic foreigners are not disappeared or owned, they loom on the horizon as a source of fear, and thus represent the reason for the creation of the military complex that takes over the national budget of the United States and perpetuates the control of the globe by Western nations. The "War on Terror" that allows everything from drone strikes to water-boarding and indefinite detention of brown bodies continues due to this logic of the foreign threat which justifies perpetual war.

Why discuss racism and white supremacy in an essay about agriculture? Food justice advocates already argue that the food system is inherently inequitable. Class and race have too much impact upon access to healthy foods. Fresh vegetables and less processed foods cost more, and food deserts exist in many urban neighborhoods dominated by people of color.

But analysis of food injustice often misses the explicit links between racial injustice and the manner in which white supremacist logic has affected the land itself. The heart of industrial agriculture extends the three-fold logic of white supremacy against nature itself: just as capitalism commoditized Africans into slaves, so too does profit enslave the soil to constantly produce; along with genocidal policies toward Native Americans came ecocidal land management that disappeared mature ecosystems; finally, the perpetual war against the foreign threat was directed toward pests and weeds. In what follows, I look more deeply into each of these pillars of white heteropatriarchy and how they affect the land community.

Slavery

Just a short walk down the road from Bluefield farm was an old graveyard, with some markers dating to the mid-1800's. Scattered elms and oaks shaded the cemetery, and it offered a quiet place to think. I went there often, sometimes in the heat of the day for a break from weeding, and other times at night to sit pensively under the moonlight. The last part of the ten-minute walk from the farm required a walk up the knoll atop of which lay the gravestones. I did not think much of this rise in the landscape until I heard a story regarding this phenomenon. As it turns out, old cemeteries like the one I frequented often sit higher on the landscape for a reason. These cemeteries were established in the early days of settlement by Americans in the Midwest. As farmers cleared land and farmed for over one hundred and fifty years, poor land husbandry led to significant soil erosion across the landscape. Areas immune to this loss were areas that had never been cleared and farmed--places like graveyards.

Slavery, the fundamental capitalist logic behind white supremacy that allows bodies to be monetized, extends in industrial agriculture against the soil itself. This story of slavery, mineral depletion, and soil erosion goes back to the heart of the European settlement of the Americas, to the earliest of colonies.

In 1606, a shipment of colonists funded by the Virginia Company, a group of wealthy London investors, landed in eastern Virginia. They founded the colony of Jamestown, but struggled to survive, much less to turn a profit for the Virginia Company. But soon the colonists discovered that tobacco grew well in the climate and began producing thousands of pounds to ship back to England. The crop was so profitable that farmers grew only the little food they needed to feed their families and utilized the rest of the land to grow tobacco. By 1617, the colonists were able to send twenty thousand pounds of tobacco in one year across the Atlantic.

But the crop depleted soil fertility at an unsustainable rate. A tobacco plant requires ten times the nitrogen and thirty times the phosphorus that most food crops need. This meant that soon tilled for tobacco soon had to be abandoned, and more land cleared for the crop. After a decade of exporting tobacco, Jamestown colonists petitioned for new land due to soil exhaustion. In addition to the problem of depletion, tobacco farming caused severe erosion. Farmers piled up soil in mounds by hand or with a plow around each plant and left bare. Rains of any significant amount thus washed much of that bare soil away.

The work of tilling and harvesting tobacco was hard, and land clearance was even harder. Land-owning colonists soon capitalized on black and white indentured servants to help with this difficult work, but by the mid-17th century, African slaves with no prospect of freedom were brought in for the task. Within a century, there were over a hundred thousand slaves in the Chesapeake Bay region.

Cash crop agriculture soon led to the rise of class in this New World for the colonists. Wealthy landowners who could afford slaves cleared new land, farmed it for tobacco or cotton until the land was depleted, and then sold the land to poorer farmers who could not afford to buy and clear new land. Once all the land had been settled, plantation owners continued to farm the same soil even with increasingly marginal returns so that they could keep their slaves occupied.

The devaluation of land meant that farmers with wealth did not need to properly tend the soil or care for the land. As soil health declined, the productivity gap was filled by the labor of enslaved black bodies. Because white supremacy deprecated the lives of Africans, the importance of healthy soil itself could be trivialized under slavery.

Although slavery was outlawed (but still exists in the form of prison labor), this same devaluation of soil persists in industrial agriculture. Healthy soil is a rich community itself, consisting of millions of microbes, mycelium, and insects that keep organic and mineral nutrients cycling in a way that benefits not only themselves, but plants as well. But constant tillage and application of fertilizers destroys the soil community and leads to erosive soil loss and the destruction of the microbial and insect community that creates healthy soil. Under slavery, the steady loss of soil productivity was made up for with slave labor that continued to eek out marginal returns. Today, the erosion of soil and fertility is replaced by large machinery powered by fossil fuels and chemical fertilizers that make up for loss of nitrogen, phosphorus, and potassium due to deprivation and depletion.

Ecocide

On Nov 13, 1838, Father Joseph Petit wrote the following description of the Potawatomi Trail of Death to Bishop Bruté:

"The order of the march was as follows: the United States flag, carried by a dragoon (soldier); then one of the principal officers, next the staff baggage carts, then the carriage, which during the whole trip was kept for the use of the Indian chiefs; then one or two chiefs on horseback led a line of 250 or 300 horses ridden by men, women, children in single file, after the manner of savages. On the flanks of the line at equal distance from each other were the dragoons and volunteers, hastening the stragglers, often with severe gestures and bitter words. After this cavalry came a file of 40 baggage wagons filled with luggage and Indians. The sick were lying in them, rudely jolted, under a canvas which, far from protecting them from the dust and heat, only deprived them of air, for they were as if buried under this burning canopy - several died thus."

For the year prior, Petit had been a missionary to the Potawatomi band near Fort Wayne, Indiana. He had been away from Twin Lakes, Indiana, when the Potawatomi Trail of Death began, but had petitioned his superior so that he could join the villagers with whom he had become acquainted. By the time he was able to join the forcibly displaced Potawatomi, many had already fallen ill.

Colonialism is the logic behind indigenous genocide; this same logic conflated indigenous people with their indigenous ecosystems. What were seen as unproductive, pristine forests, were actually tended landscapes that provided for Native American life. Nut-bearing trees provided staple calories. Open meadows provided browse for deer and other game animals. A wide range of encouraged herbs and woody perennials provided for basketry, medicine, and other crafts. Even tribes that were primarily farmers were not recognized as such, since their farms did not look like those of the European settlers. Because of this, Native Americans were displaced, killed, or otherwise marginalized, and at the same time, their native ecosystems deforested and cleared for European style farms. Thus, indigenous genocide and ecocide went hand in hand.

The United States government had made multiple attempts to assimilate the Potawotamis. President Jefferson, ever the champion of the farm, expressed his hope to integrate the tribe into European ways of farming. In a letter to Chiefs Little Turtle and Five Medals, he relayed the following: "We shall with pleasure see your people become disposed to cultivate the earth, to raise heards [sic] of useful animals, and to spin and weave for their food and clothing." (Edmunds, 160).

A few Chiefs had expressed interest in learning settler agriculture, but the overwhelming majority of Potawotami had no interest in the hard lifestyle. Attempts by Quakers to create a model farm to teach the Potawotami failed; the few men who started to assist with farm work soon lost interest, and the leader of the effort, a man by the name of Phillip Dennis, soon gave up.

While the Potawatomi did assimilate somewhat by adopting some of the textiles and goods that Americans sold, they maintained their own traditional lifeways. They continued to live in the wigwam-style house common to the region, and planted small gardens of corn, beans, and squash in the summer, supplementing their diet with hunting in the winter. Officials and missionaries agreed that the tribe had not made strides toward "white civilization." They "adhered with tenacity to the manners of their forefathers while everything around them has changed," according to one report (Edmunds, 227).

Potawotami lands were ceded piecemeal over a quarter century, starting in 1816. This process was complicated by the multiple Potawatomi chiefs involved, as well as the many federal agencies and agents. Population pressure from setters arriving from the east caused problems for the Potawatomi traditional lifestyle. Over hunting and trapping by fur traders and settlers had reduced the deer-herds and small game which the natives depended upon for winter food. Settlers were happy to hunt in Potawatomi lands, but were angered when the Indians encroached upon their farms and settlements.

A conflict in LaSalle county, Illinois, was paradigmatic of settler-indigenous relations in the area. A man named William Davis set up a mill and a blacksmith shop on Indian Creek. He dammed the creek to power the mill, which prevented fish from swimming upstream where a village of Potawatomis lived. This disregard of their food supply angered the villagers, and tensions grew. Davis refused to give in despite being warned by other Potawatomi chiefs who attempted to intervene, and he gathered more settler families around his homestead in an effort to dig in. Eventually, a group of forty Potawatomi attacked the settlement, killing Davis and other men and capturing some women and children.

American settlers continued to pour into the region. Even where Potawatomi had agreed to cede land or allow settlement, land was occupied and cleared for farming so quickly that Chief Metea complained, "the plowshare is driven through our tents before we have time to carry out our goods and seek another habitation" (Edmunds, 220). When new lands were opened for settlement after sale or treaty, often the land-hungry farmers would take up residence before surveyors had properly demarcated the sections belonging to Potawatomi and those open for settlers, creating tension and confusion.

Growing tensions and rising populations of settlers added to the "Indian problem." By the time President Jackson had signed the Indian Removal Act in 1830, the Potawatomi had already sold much of their land, and lost much of the land community that gave them food, medicine, and shelter due to the continual encroachment of white settler farms. Stipulations in the Indian Removal Act were that the relocation of tribes would be voluntary and would move them to land west of the Mississippi.

In 1836, Abel Pepper, commissioned to attempt to purchase the remaining reservation lands in Indiana, compiled a group of dubious Potawatomi leaders he called "the Chiefs warriors, and headmen of the Patawattamies of the Wabash." Although this group had little claim over the land or recognition from the villagers, the Senate recognized the treaty as valid and ratified it. Chief Menominee, one of the leaders who refused to sign or acknowledge the treaty, gave the following charge, worth quoting in full:

"The president does not know the truth. He, like me, has been imposed upon. He does not know that you made my young chiefs drunk and got their consent and pretended to get mine...He would not drive me from my home and the graves of my tribe, and my children, who have gone to the Great Spirit, nor allow you to tell me that your braves will take me, tied like a dog....the President is just, but he listens to the words of young chiefs who have lied; and when he knows the truth, he will leave me to my own. I have not sold my lands. I will not sell them. I have not signed any treaty, and will not sign any. I am not going to leave my lands." (Edmunds, 267)

But the President was not just. White settlers had already been promised the lands around Twin Lakes, Indiana, that Menominee refused to cede. Squatters came, intent on taking the best land before the crowds, and a Potawatomi party burned a squatter's hut, leading to retaliation from settlers, who then burned down a dozen Indian homes.

Pepper requested military assistance, and Senator John Tipton gathered one hundred volunteers for a militia to remove the remaining Potawatomi to land in Kansas. On August 30, 1838, Tipton had the remaining villagers gather, and his militia surrounded the villagers and at forced them to enroll for removal, giving them five days to gather their things. Five days later, the march began. Still, Menominee would not leave the village, and so was forced at gunpoint to go, and placed under arrest with two other chiefs who also resisted.

The march began on September 4, 1838 and concluded sixty-one days later after traveling over six hundred miles to the Osage river in Kansas. Of the forty-two people who died during the march, twenty-eight were children. Petit survived the march and much of what we know is recorded in his journal.

With the Potawatomie and other indigenous tribes largely displaced from their ancestral lands, American settlers were free to turn the landscape into the acres of corn and soybean so quintessential to the modern Midwest. Of the roughly twenty million acres of old growth forest that once covered the state, about two thousand acres remain. Settlers cleared the land for farms, and harvested timber for building, fuelwood, and railroad ties.

Indigenous removal leads to ecocide. Contemporary indigenous groups vocalize this in their advocacy for themselves and for the ecosystems with which they are in relation. The Baiga, who inhabit an area of jungle in India, declare, "the jungle is only here because of us." Similarly, a statement by indigenous peoples from the Amazon articulates their understanding of the deep interrelationship:

"We have used and cared for the resources of that biosphere with a great deal of respect, because it is our home, and because we know that our survival and that of our future generations depends on it. Our accumulated knowledge about the ecology of our home, our models for living with the peculiarities of the Amazon Biosphere, our reverence and respect for the tropical forest and its inhabitants, both plant and animal, are the keys to guaranteeing the future of the Amazon Basin, not only for our people, but also for all humanity."

War

Once the snow melted on the Indiana roads, I would often ride my bike from our farm to town. I learned quickly, however, that early summer was the spraying time. I pedaled past acres of corn and soybean down the straight county roads. When the tractors were out, pulling large tanks labeled "anhydrous ammonia," I had to hope the wind was blowing the fumes away from the road. When the breeze was not in my favor, I did my best to pedal furiously, holding my breath and hoping I could pass the cloud without inhaling too much of it. At other times, the chemical applicants were not labeled, or were dropped by prop plane, and so I could not know what noxious admixtures made it into my lungs. These various chemicals - fertilizers, herbicides, and pesticides - so crucial to industrial agriculture, were at the same time devastating to the community of creatures that tried to inhabit the same space as this technological system.

Summer evenings highlighted this. My friends and I could climb the roof of our barn and see our pastures and the night air above them glowing with the mating rituals of fireflies populating our land; in contrast, the farm fields around us were dark, bleak, and barren. This nightly event was a reminder that our insistence on working with spade and hand rather than by chemical mattered a great deal to the other creatures - insects, birds, and small mammals - who shared the land with us and whose interconnected lives led to a healthy ecology on our small farm. What Smith names as the third pillar of white supremacy, the logic of perpetual war, manifests itself in the war against pests and weeds.

The connection between war and agrochemical has been solid since at least World War I. Fritz Haber, a German chemist, revolutionized agriculture by finding a cheap way to convert inaccessible atmospheric nitrogen to ammonia, a form of nitrogen that could then be converted to explosives or to agricultural fertilizer. This discovery allowed Germany to continue producing both munitions and food despite trade blockage of traditional sources of nitrogen. In addition to his creation of the nitrogen fixation process, Haber became infamous by using his chemistry genius to invent weaponized chlorine gas.

Haber devised a system of pressurized canisters of chlorine which would release mist from the German trenches, needing only a steady but not too strong wind to blow the chemical fog toward Allied forces. On April 22nd, 1915, the German front in France had such favorable winds. After the release of the canister valves, a greenish-yellow cloud moved slowly toward the British and French forces in their trenches. British field marshal John French described the effect of the gas on soldiers: "smoke and fumes hid everything from sight, and hundreds of men were thrown into a comatose or dying condition." But what was for Allied forces a death cloud was to the German army a sight of beauty.

From the journal of German Lieutenant Becker:

"As the cloud rolled forward, it was yellowish-green, a hellish, sulphurous haze. As the sun broke from behind a cloud this new and monstrously beautiful image was lit up before us."

Wrote German Lieutenant Drachner:

"A poisonous green smoke drifted out of the fire trenches as far as the eye could see. One could see the landscape bathed in the most beautiful sunshine as though through a fine veil. It looked like the scene from a fairy tale."

In 1925, the Geneva convention banned the use of chemical weapons in warfare. However, chemicals were still used in creative ways in warfare activity. One of the most widely known of the herbicides used against enemies is Agent Orange. American forces employed this herbicide in Vietnam for a two-fold purpose: first, to defoliate jungle areas where Viet Cong hid, and second, to obliterate crops that could feed the Viet Cong. Over the course of nine years, the United States military sprayed almost twenty million gallons of the chemical over South Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia. The defoliant did its job and destroyed over five million acres of forest and crop land. "Only you can prevent a forest," joked American soldiers while deploying Agent Orange, in a sardonic nod to Smokey the Bear ads. In addition to wiping out the food systems of many peasant farmers, pollutants from Agent Orange persisted in the environment and continue to wreak devastating effects on the land and Vietnamese.

Insecticides have not been used explicitly in war but represent war against nonhuman life. The best-known synthetic pesticide, DDT, led to a Nobel Prize for its manufacturer, Paul Müller. Its toxicity for non-target species was detrimental and came under fire in the wake of Rachel Carson's Silent Spring. DDT is a persistent organic pollutant which can linger in soils for up to thirty years. The chemical is fat soluble, and thus accumulates up the food chain, especially in birds that depend on insects in their diet. In addition to its toxicity to aquatic and avian life, it has been associated with human cancers, and is known to disrupt hormones.

More recently, neonicotinoids have been used as pest control. However, this class of chemicals has been linked to loss of bees, in which it has been shown to impact foraging and navigation, reduce lifespans, and decrease reproduction in queens. Bees are responsible for the pollination of seventy percent of all flowering plants. It is from these bee-pollinated plants that humans get more than thirty percent of our food.

A case study of the Sichuan province in China heralds the problem. Pomme fruits - that is, apples and pears - are the primary crop of the mountainous Sichuan region, where the flowering trees must be pollinated within five days for the trees to fruit. Use of chemical pesticides grew rapidly with their introduction to the region.

By 1990, a fifty percent decline in the production of the orchards was noticed, a trend corresponding to the rise of pesticide use beginning in the 1970's and subsequent decline of native bees and other pollinators. Even commercial bees introduced later to the orchards died as a result of the pesticides. Now, every year during orchard bloom, people are hired by the thousands to hand pollinate around two hundred thousand trees within the five-day window.

An Apocalyptic Aside

In 1891, Oscar Wilde wrote a play elaborating on the story of John the baptist. The biblical account simply notes a dancer, the daughter of Herodias, who danced before King Herod and his friends. The dance was so remarkable that Herod promised her anything she wanted, up to half his kingdom, yet, what she requested--after consulting her mother--was the head of John the baptist on a platter. Her mother had her own grudge against the prophet John, who had criticized her for marital machinations. Salome, unnamed in the biblical account but known by historical sources, danced her way into the center of a conflict between prophet and power.

This short story inspired Wilde's play, "Salome and the Seven Veils." Wilde deepened the story, however, by adding the motif of the seven veils. The seven veils represent a departure from the biblical story but allude to the myth of the descent of Inanna. In the story of her journey into the underworld of the dead, Inanna encounters seven gates, and at each must remove a garment, until she stands naked at the throne of the goddess of the underworld, her sister Ereshkigal. For Wilde, the veils of Salome symbolize this movement toward the deathly realm. With the removal of each veil, death dances closer.

French artist Alphonse Allais took the story even further in its allegory of death. In his rendering, Salome removes the veils accompanied by the lusty cries of Herod. "Go on, go on," he says. Yet when the last veil falls, he continues to shout for more. Salome complies by ripping the skin from her body. And still, Herod says "go on," so she continues to flay fascia with her fingernails, layer by visceral layer, until nothing is left but bone.

Apocalypse means unveiling. Originally the word referred to the lifting of a bride's veil at a wedding but has since taken on symbolic meaning. In apocalypse, everything hidden will be revealed. But the face underneath the veil is not always good. Sometimes apocalypse is the lover who tells you they are leaving. Sometimes it is the cold calm of a doctor relaying a cancer diagnosis. Occasionally it is the brief moment before dusk when the light slants through the pines and the woods reveal a momentary beauty previously unknown. But mostly, apocalypse pulls back the fabric of cloth and skin to show the bone underneath.

For writers in the ancient genre called apocalyptic, the revealing is about power, history, and hope. Their prophetic imaginations pull back the veil on empires like Babylon and Rome to expose a view from the underbelly. This kind of apocalypse is not personal. It is as big as the arc of history. The subject is not people but powers. Kings become beasts, militaries their horns. Politics play out in the imaginal realm as the beasts vie for control. Within this imaginal realm, apocalyptic writing discloses the dreams of the disempowered. An end to oppression approaches. So many heads of so many beasts become decapitated. Magical scrolls foretell future vindication. Trumpets blast sounds of triumph. Lakes of fire and glittering cities signify the fate, respectively, of the damned and the delivered.

Just because apocalypse has creative imagery does not mean that it is fanciful. Apocalypse is an exercise of what anthropologist David Graeber calls "imaginative counterpower," which is to say, it helps the oppressed name the various powers that seem to control their lives, as well as to imagine an end to these powers. As oral stories, they inspire the hearer. As texts, they show the reader a view from the belly of history, from the people with a knife to their throats as the military raids the coffers and the granaries.

And always, apocalypse shows the skeletons. In the midst of kings shouting with lust, "go on" - more power, more money, ever more consolidation of resources - apocalypse pulls back the flesh and fascia to show the bone-dead trajectory of their desire.

The book of Daniel is one such apocalyptic text, written during the Antiochean rule of Palestine to aid the imagination of an occupied people. It reflects the memory of Hebrew people exiled and taken to Babylon, and thus operates in code--"we have been under the thumb of other rulers," the story seems to say, "and managed to find a way then, so we can do so now."

In the first chapter, the author sets the tone for the book in portraying Daniel and his friends as ones who-despite being captive to empire-attempt to live faithfully to their indigenous ways within it. The story introduces Daniel and friends as intelligent members of Jerusalem's elite taken into service for the king. This assimilation of members of the elite is an important imperial strategy: in the same way that if the urban grid represents a control measure for civilians, putting the social elite at the king's table essentially puts them under his thumb.

The renaming of Daniel and his friends reveals how their lives were meant to be reshaped according to the priorities of Babylon. Just as later nation-states developed surnames in order to track, and tax populations, so the renaming of newly acquired servants is a measure of the degree to which Babylon claimed authority over the lives of the political prisoners.

Daniel's refusal of the king's food constitutes the crux of the story. Patbag, the word at issue here, is the allotted meal taken from the royal coffers to meet the needs of his courtiers. Most interpreters take this refusal to be a religious one-Jews in antiquity often maintained their ethnic and religious distinction vis-a- vis food purity by observing dietary rules. In diasporic communities, food connects people to their culture. Even modern food sovereignty movements advocate for culturally appropriate food. An overlooked area of this issue, however, is that the royal court system depended upon an empire that extracted goods from the margins of empire to benefit the center. As scholar of the Ancient Near East, David Vanderhooft, notes, wresting resources from conquered periphery to the king's palace was commonplace:

"The procedure of funneling resources from the subject populations to the heartland through seizure and exaction was no less important to the Babylonians as it had been to the Assyrians…Nebuchadnezzar campaigned almost yearly in the west, in part to insure order, but also to fill the royal coffers."

The king's table would certainly be maintained by such imperial campaigns; meat and wine would be sourced from tribute from conquered nations, meat being transportable as livestock, and wine as an imperishable good which could travel distance without spoiling. Meanwhile, For the average urban dweller in Babylon, whose had a diet that was more likely grain-based, dependent on grain was transported from the surrounding countryside. Babylon's foodprint, according to one catalogue of grain imports, consisted of an area extending from the Sippa in the north to Sealand in the south, a length of 186 miles of irrigated land. In contrast, vegetables do not travel well, so must be grown nearby.

Daniel's requested diet of vegetables and water represents an alternative to the extractive economy of empire in favor of local fare that could not be stolen from distant places. The refusal of the king's table food, therefore, can be read not just a dietary preference but rather as an act of defiance. If acceptance of the king's food symbolized political allegiance, the alternative diet was an implicit rejection of the king. The four friends might have to live in the king's court, but they would find ways to resist the politics of plunder epitomized by the patbag.

What We Do With Our Bodies

Bodies lie at the heart of the food system. This system is built upon a long history of enslaved bodies, displaced bodies, and bodies maimed or killed by war. Bodies still labor in the sunny fields of California harvesting vegetables. Food goes into our bodies, and builds our bodies. Poisoned food corrupts our bodies with cancer. The very soil into which we plant and harvest is itself full of the composted bodies of so many plants, insects, and animals. That very soil is understood by many to be the outermost skin of the body of the earth. So, when we talk about food, we are really talking about what we do with our bodies, with the bodies of so many racialized people, and with the body of the earth.

The food system is swallowed up in white supremacy. A commonly advocated solution to the ills of the industrial agriculture complex is to "vote with your fork," but such logic will not undo the centuries of colonization, slavery, and war that leave their mark on the landscape of food. In this context of historic and ongoing white supremacy, we must rethink our actions against the food system. "Eating locally," does not mean we have completely removed ourselves from the industrial complex. Your local food is still grown on native lands. At its best, nearly all foods depend somewhere down the chain upon petrochemicals. Too often, even when we buy organic foods, much of the labor to harvest the produce has come from undocumented workers--the very cheapness of our foods relies upon the precarious status of the brown bodies of latinx workers in the fields. And even when we do have access to locally grown and fairly traded foods, we are still in other ways participating in a system in which gentrification and redlining drive black folk into ghettos that are at the same time food deserts. In prisons, where inmates earn between twenty-five cents and one dollar and fifteen cents per hour, companies make a windfall profit off of labor, and the food system benefits as well. For instance, the grocery store Whole Foods, so prized for its conscious consumption, sells artisanal cheese and fish sourced from companies that use prison labor.

When we eat, we must do so knowing that our food has been held up by the system of white supremacy. And because our bodies are made of the stuff we eat, our flesh, too, is maintained by a racist food system. So we come to our gardens and dig in our soil with humility. Because as much as we want to be, we are not free of the complex and all-consuming system of oppression that bell hooks calls white-supremacist-capitalist-patriarchy. But eat we must, so let our eating be an act of discipline and hope. The discipline lies in learning, step by step, seed by seed, carrot by cabbage, how to feed ourselves. Because we cannot be free if we cannot eat, thus we cannot liberate ourselves without taking care of our basic need for nutrition. The hope resides in imagining with each bite the day when people live on lands their ancestors called home, and know that when they take food from the soil they stand upon lands known and tended for millennia by indigenous people.

There is no straight line to a just food system. But by learning from the history of white supremacy in the food system, we can begin to imagine new ways of taking care of our bodies. That will have to include allying with native people who are advocating for land. It will involve rejecting a logic of war against bodies of people, against pests, against the earth herself. It will mean moving beyond a capitalist logic of profit that requires productivity at the cost of the depleted bodies of workers, at the annual loss of billions of tons of soil. This will require work at the level of the body politic. Those who want to change the food system, it seems, must work at once on an individual basis as well as on the larger forces that shape the system.

An ecological metaphor is helpful here. Most plants have what scientists call a root-shoot ratio. This is the ratio of roots and leaves needed respectively, to harvest nutrients from the soil and to harvest energy from the sun. The plant requires both of these sources for life, growth, and reproduction. This root-shoot ratio changes over the lifetime of the plant as it grows and puts energy towards making pollen or seeds. But despite the change, the plant still has ultimate need for both the damp minerals belowground and the sunny energy aboveground. While sunlight capture is largely an individualistic and sometimes competitive endeavor amongst plants, the underground scene is quite opposite. Most plants have a high degree of interaction with the soil community - indeed, most depend upon a variety of soil microbes and fungi to survive. In addition, many species, especially trees, connect to each other by mycelium that penetrate the roots of many individuals, linking them in an underground network of shared nutrients and information. Examples abound. Forester Peter Wohlleben found that an ancient beech tree, long past having leaves to supply its own energy, was fed via its connect to other beeches by its root system.

In the same way, food justice proponents will have to establish their own ratio of working for system change at a large scale and smaller scale, more personal food practices to support their own bodies. Like plants, we must grow in our ability to nourish ourselves. Where plants increase their leaf mass in order to eat the sun, for us this means supporting local food sources, growing our own foods, and learning sustainable wild harvesting techniques. And yet, that is only half the work. We must also go deep, like plants, networking ensures that the larger food system, like a forest ecosystem, is healthy and promotes systemic wellbeing. This may seem daunting, as if I am advocating for a back and forth pendulum of energy. But rather than a frenetic pendulum, let this be like the root-shoot growth of a plant--sometimes expending more energy in one direction, but always sustaining the growth that has occurred opposite. Let our hands stay soil-tarnished from the garden while our feet yet remain strong from the march of all our bodies together toward a system that tends more deeply to all of us. Grow together, grow alone. Feed your body, yes, but also feed the bodies of others, and feed the land that sustains you. This is what it means to be human and to live on the body of the earth. This is what we do with our bodies.

David Pritchett is a healthcare practitioner, ecologist, and activist who writes at the intersection of these interests. His articles have been featured in Permaculture Magazine , Permaculture Design Magazine , The Other Journal , Missio Dei Journal , and in Watershed Discipleship: Reinhabiting Bioregional Faith and Practice (Wipf and Stock, 2016).

The Capitalist Coup Called Neoliberalism: How and Why It Went Down

By Colin Jenkins

Rich people have always had class consciousness because... they want to stay rich. This collective consciousness led the "founding fathers" of the United States to set up systems of governance that would, first and foremost, protect them (the wealthy, landowning minority) from the landless, working majority (slaves, indentured servants, laborers). Since then, the rich have had undue influence on every aspect of US life: housing, food production and distribution, education, media, and politics. As capitalism has developed well into its late stages, this has led to large concentrations in wealth and power, and thus influence.

In order to maintain control, the rich have learned over time that minimal concessions must be given to the working class to avoid societal unrest. Marxist theorists like Antonio Gramsci and Nicos Poulantzas described this process as using the state to steady the "unstable equilibrium." This instability is produced by capitalism's tendency to pool wealth at the top while dispossessing the majority. For much of the 20th century, capitalists in the US were successful in maintaining an internal equilibrium, mainly due to their ravaging of the so-called "third world" through colonialism and imperialism. With this massive theft of resources throughout the global South (Africa and Latin America), a robust "middle class" was carved out from a mostly white sector of the US working class. This "middle class" consisted of workers who were provided a greater share of the stolen loot than their class peers, and thus awarded the "American Dream" that was widely advertised.

The US "middle class" was a crucial development for the rich because it provided a buffer between them and the masses. Due to the relative comfort they were allowed, "middle-class" workers were more likely to support and collaborate with capitalists, even at the expense of their fellow workers who were left struggling for scraps from below. After all, for there to be a middle class, there must be a lower class. Under capitalism, the lower class is the invisible majority by design. The capitalist class shapes dominant culture from above, the middle class serves as the standard bearer of this culture, and the lower class clings to survival mode in the shadows of society. The key for the rich is to keep the invisible majority in check. The "middle class" has always played a crucial role in this.

Despite this balancing act that was maintained for decades, capitalism's internal contradictions became predictably volatile heading into the latter part of the century, culminating into what economist Michael Roberts refers to as the profitability crisis of the 1970s . As the capitalist system was approaching this crisis, US society had already begun confronting social ills stemming from systemic white supremacy, patriarchy, and the Vietnam war. Naturally, this moved into the economic sphere, as workers and students began to successfully tie together the array of social injustices to the widespread economic injustice created by the capitalist system. The existence of an invisible majority, the victims of capitalism and its corollary systems of oppression, was uncovered. This scared the rich, enough to where they felt the need to fortify their previously unshakable privileges. After the groundswell of liberation movements that formed during the 60s, which was fueled by a wave of (working) class consciousness from below, the rich decided to organize and weaponize their own (capitalist) class consciousness to protect their assets, collectively, from the threat of democracy.

In examining what had gone wrong in the 60s and why so many people had the audacity to demand more self-determination, the notorious Trilateral Commission convened in 1973, bringing together economic and political elites from North America, Europe, and Japan. The Commission, as described by Encyclopedia Britannica , "reflects powerful commercial and political interests committed to private enterprise and stronger collective management of global problems. Its members (more than 400 in the early 21st century) are influential politicians; banking and business executives; media, civic, and intellectual leaders."

In 1975, Michel Crozier, Samuel P. Huntington, and Joji Watanuki published a report for the Commission, titled: "The Crisis of Democracy: On the Governability of Democracies." In assessing the various movements that gained momentum in the 60s (racial justice, economic justice, anti-war, etc.), the report determined that these "problems" stemmed from an "excess of democracy." Huntington specifically noted that, "the vitality of democracy in the United States in the 1960s produced a substantial increase in governmental activity and a substantial decrease in governmental authority." The solution to this, according to the report, was to reverse direction - decrease "governmental activity" and increase "governmental authority" to restrict democratic impulses from the masses and maintain the capitalist power structure internally, while retaining "hegemonic power" internationally. In other words, rather than government serving people and regulating capitalists, government should serve capitalists and regulate people.

Since maintaining a "middle class" had become such a fragile proposition, the capitalist class forged a new direction. Rather than rely on this historical buffer and continue the concessionary and fickle balancing act , they decided it would be more effective to simply take ownership of the legislative and judicial process. This process began when executive officers from several major corporations joined together to form private groups like the Business Roundtable, for the purpose of "promoting pro-business public policy." In other words, to make sure that the "excess of democracy" which occurred during the 60s would never return. Why? Because any such mass movement toward relinquishing power to the people is a direct threat to capitalist profit and corporate America's existence as a collection of unaccountable, authoritarian, exceptionally powerful, private entities. The Business Roundtable, which included executives from corporations like Exxon, DuPont, General Electric, Alcoa, and General Motors, gained instant access to the highest offices of the government, becoming extremely influential in pushing for corporate tax cuts and deregulation during the Reagan era.

Since the 1980s, the Business Roundtable has run roughshod over American workers by using the federal government to:

- reduce consumer protections,

- obstruct employment stimuli,

- weaken unions,

- implement "free trade" agreements that spur offshoring and tax havens,

- ease environmental protections,

- increase corporate subsidies,

- loosen rules on corporate mergers and acquisitions,

- open avenues of profit in the private healthcare system,

- privatize education and social programs,

- and block efforts to make corporate boards more accountable.[1][2][3][4] [5]

As political momentum developed within corporate America, additional players jumped aboard this strategic and highly coordinated capitalist coup. While groups like the Business Roundtable targeted legislation, the US Chamber of Commerce (CoC), a "private, business-oriented lobbying group" which had already served as a popular vehicle for turning (capitalist) class consciousness into action since 1912, shifted its focus onto the court system. Since then, the CoC has used its immense resources to influence US Supreme Court decisions that benefit big business, a tactic that has become increasingly successful for them over time. The CoC's business lobby had " a 43 percent success rate from 1981 to 1986 during the final years of Chief Justice Warren Burger's tenure," a 56 percent success rate from 1994 to 2005 (the Rehnquist Court), and boasted a 68 percent success rate (winning 60 of 88 cases) during John Roberts first seven years as Chief Justice. The CoC improved even more on its pro-corporate, anti-worker attack in 2018, winning 90 percent of its cases during the court's first term. As Kent Greenfield reported for The Atlantic ,

"One measure of the [2018 term's] business-friendly tilt is the eye-popping success rate of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, the self-proclaimed "Voice of Business." The Chamber filed briefs in 10 cases this term and won nine of them. The Chamber's victories limited protections for whistleblowers, forced changes in the Securities and Exchange Commission, made water pollution suits more difficult to bring, and erected additional obstacles to class action suits against businesses. Only the geekiest of Supreme Court watchers monitor such cases. But the Chamber pays attention, and it pays off."

Groups like the Trilateral Commission, Business Roundtable, and Chamber of Commerce have taken prominent roles on the front lines of the 40-year, capitalist slaughter of American workers, but if there was a single, powerful element that solidified this coup it was a memo written in 1971 by Lewis Powell. The Powell Memo, or Powell Manifesto, as it has come to be known, made its rounds among corporate, economic, and political elites during this crucial time. Powell, a corporate lawyer, board member of nearly a dozen corporations, and soon-to-be Supreme Court Justice, sent the memo to the Director of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, Eugene Sydnor, Jr., as a call to action for corporate America.

Powell's memo was a diatribe against any and all elements that would dare to question capitalism. While giving mention to "Communists, New Leftists and other revolutionaries who would destroy the entire system, both political and economic," the memo focused on what was viewed as the most immediate threat - the same "excess of democracy" referred to in the Trilateral Commission's report. "What now concerns us is quite new in the history of America," wrote Powell. "We are not dealing with sporadic or isolated attacks from a relatively few extremists or even from the minority socialist cadre. Rather, the assault on the enterprise system is broadly based and consistently pursued. It is gaining momentum and converts" throughout the working class. Powell took special interest in those "from the college campus, the pulpit, the media, the intellectual and literary journals, the arts and sciences, and from politicians" whom he regarded as small in size but "the most articulate, the most vocal, the most prolific in their writing and speaking."

Powell's memo laid out a blueprint for the capitalist coup that is now referred to as neoliberalism , including everything from identifying and listing the enemies pushing for self-determination, criticizing the business community for its apathy and lack of urgency in recognizing this growing threat, suggestions for how business executives and the Chamber of Commerce may proceed in obstructing these democratic impulses from below, and even laying out detailed plans on how to infiltrate campuses, the public, media, the political arena, and the courts with pro-capitalist action and propaganda.

Reclaim Democracy, an activist organization based in Montana explains,

"Though Powell's memo was not the sole influence, the Chamber and corporate activists took his advice to heart and began building a powerful array of institutions designed to shift public attitudes and beliefs over the course of years and decades. The memo influenced or inspired the creation of the Heritage Foundation, the Manhattan Institute, the Cato Institute, Citizens for a Sound Economy, Accuracy in Academe, and other powerful organizations. Their long-term focus began paying off handsomely in the 1980s, in coordination with the Reagan Administration's "hands-off business" philosophy."

At a time of monumental capitalist regrouping and coalescing against the "dangerous rise" of self-determination, the influence of Powell's manifesto is difficult to underestimate. It provided ideological fuel to the birth of a substantial corporate lobbying industry, which produced immeasurable pro-business and anti-worker legislation for decades to come. The memo also served as a wake-up call to capitalists throughout corporate America, supplementing the formation of groups like the Business Roundtable and urging forceful actions from the US Chamber of Commerce. The results, according to Jacob S. Hacker and Paul Pierson, were undeniable:

"The organizational counterattack of business in the 1970s was swift and sweeping - a domestic version of Shock and Awe. The number of corporations with public affairs offices in Washington grew from 100 in 1968 to over 500 in 1978. In 1971, only 175 firms had registered lobbyists in Washington, but by 1982, nearly 2,500 did. The number of corporate PACs increased from under 300 in 1976 to over 1,200 by the middle of 1980. On every dimension of corporate political activity, the numbers reveal a dramatic, rapid mobilization of business resources in the mid-1970s." [6]

The real-life effects of this capitalist coup have been disastrous for most. US workers have experienced declining or stagnant wages since the 1970s. As a result, many must rely on credit (if lucky enough to qualify) even to obtain basic necessities, which has resulted in skyrocketing household debt across the board. The debt-to-disposable income ratio of American households more than doubled from 60% in 1980 to 133% in 2007. Meanwhile, any hope of saving money has disappeared. While the household "savings rate roughly doubled from 5% in 1949 to over 11% in 1982, it looks like a downhill ski slope since then," and registered in negative territory by 2006. Conversely, as designed, the rich have benefited immensely, to the point where income inequality has increased to pre-Great Depression levels . Those who orchestrated the coup (the top 1%) claimed about a quarter of all wealth during the 1980s, and now own over 40% of all wealth in the country. To put this in perspective , the bottom 90% of all Americans combined account for barely half of that, claiming 21% of all wealth.

And, perhaps most importantly, the coup helped fund the growth of a massive capitalist propaganda machine to convince the working class to support our own demise. This includes everything from a co-opted and recalibrated liberal media, a rise of right-wing talk radio, and the birth of the Fox News network - all designed to do one thing: "inform and enlighten" workers on the wonders of capitalism and American exceptionalism, the friendly nature of big business, and the "excessive" dangers of self-determination.

As Powell noted in 1971, "If American business devoted only 10% of its total annual advertising budget to this overall purpose (of marketing and selling the idea of capitalism), it would be a statesman-like expenditure." And statesman-like it has become, running interference and garnering " manufactured consent" for a capitalist coup that has been cemented over the course of four decades, six presidential administrations, a Wall Street run amok, and a massive transfer of generations (including future) of public revenue into private hands.

Notes

[1] "The Business Roundtable and American Labor," a report by J. C. Turner, General President International Union of Operating Engineers, AFL-CIO (May 1979). Accessed online at http://laborrising.com/2013/07/union-organizing-and-the-business-roundtable-and-american-labor/

[2] "The Anti-Union Game Plan," Labor Notes (July 2, 2018). Accessed online at https://labornotes.org/2018/07/anti-union-game-plan

[3] Lafer, G. (October 31, 2013) "The Legislative Attack on American Wages and Labor Standards, 2011-2012," Economic Policy Institute. Accessed online at https://www.epi.org/publication/attack-on-american-labor-standards/

[4] Gilbert, D. (2017) The American Class Structure in an Age of Growing Inequality (SAGE publications)

[5] Goldfield, M. (1989) The Decline of Organized Labor in the United States (University of Chicago Press), p. 192

[6] Hacker, J.S. & Pierson, P. (2011) Winner-Take-All Politics: How Washington Made the Rich Richer - And Turned Its Back on the Middle Class (Simon & Schuster)