Posted September 4, 2013

     In his classic work, The Open Veins of Latin America, Eduardo Galeano comments on the impact of the liberal reforms and the development of coffee production in Central America.  “As everywhere, the cultivation of coffee discouraged, in its expansion without limit, the cultivation of food destined for local markets.  These countries as well were condemned to suffer a chronic scarcity of rice, beans, maize, wheat, and beef.  A miserable agriculture of subsistence scarcely survived, in high and broken lands where the plantations had corralled the indigenous population, having appropriated the lower lands of greater fertility.  In the mountains, cultivating in miniscule parcels the maize and beans necessary to survive, the indigenous people lived a part of the year providing labor, during the harvests, to the plantations.  They are the labor reserve of the world market.  The situation has not changed: the plantation and the small parcel of land constitute together the unity of a system that is based upon the ruthless exploitation of indigenous labor” (2004:140-41; 1997:106).

     In the case of El Salvador, with the expansion of the global market for coffee, the elite converted their indigo haciendas into coffee plantations in the latter half of the nineteenth century.  In addition, the Liberal government acted to ensure that more lands would become available for coffee production.  In the 1870s and 1880s, indigenous communal ownership was abolished, and much of this land was converted into coffee plantations.  Many of the new plantation owners were foreign, but they married into and merged with the traditional elite of indigo estate owners to form a single class of coffee plantation owners.  Due to the population density, the acquisition of indigenous land by coffee plantations created many landless people.  The desperate circumstances of the people made unnecessary the use of coercive labor measures.

      In Guatemala, the Liberal government abolished indigenous communal ownership of land in the 1870s, paving the way for the acquisition of indigenous land by individuals seeking to develop coffee plantations.  By displacing indigenous people from their land, the government was helping to make labor available for the new plantations.  The government also made labor available by rounding up people and requiring them to work at low wages on public works projects (such as roads and buildings) and on privately owned plantations.  The government also had military conscription, and exemption from military service was granted to persons in debt to a landholder, thus stimulating a system of labor based on debt peonage. 

     In Nicaragua, coffee emerged as the most important export activity in the second half of the nineteenth century.  However, Nicaragua also had significant mining activity in the North and East and cattle ranches and sugar plantations in the South.  Thus Nicaragua was characterized by competing elites with somewhat different interests, giving rise to political conflict within the elite class.  Moreover, due to the low density of the indigenous population, elites in all sectors had difficulty acquiring necessary labor, in spite of the efforts of the liberal state, which utilized measures of labor coercion common in Central America, such as alienation of indigenous communal land and debt peonage.

      Coffee production also was developed in Brazil during the nineteenth century, utilizing both slave labor and European immigrant labor.  After the abolition of slavery in 1888, a system that combined feudal-like servitude with salaried work was developed and continued to exist in the twentieth century.  The land in the Brazilian river valley of Paraíba “was rapidly annihilated by this mortal plant that, cultivated in a destructive system, left in its wake devastated forests, exhausted natural reserves, and general decadence” (Galeano 2004:129-30; 1999:97).

      Like sugar, coffee illustrates fundamental structures of the world system:  forced labor in the periphery; the production in the periphery of raw materials for export; and peripheral elites that act decisively to promote its particular interests, without concern for the consequences for the nation.  These structures promote underdevelopment and poverty in the periphery and contribute to the development of the core.

      The semi-colonial Latin American republics of the nineteenth century would evolve in the twentieth century to a more sophisticated form of domination: neocolonialism.  And neocolonial structures of domination would give rise to popular anti-neocolonial movements, such as the Frente Farabundo Martí de Liberación Nacional (FMLN) in El Salvador and the Frente Sandinista de Liberación Nacional (FSLN) in Nicaragua.  The Latin American popular anti-neocolonial movements today have reached their most advanced stage, as we will discuss in future posts.

 
References

Booth, John A. and Thomas W. Walker.  1993.  Understanding Central America, Second Edition.  Boulder:  Westview Press.

Galeano, Eduardo.  1997.  The Open Veins of Latin America: Five centuries of the pillage of a continent, 25th Anniversary Edition.  Translated by Cedric Belfrage.  Forward by Isabel Allende.  New York: Monthly Review Press.

__________.  2004.  Las Venas Abiertas de América Latina, tercera edición, revisada.  México: Siglo XXI Editores.

Weaver, Frederick Stirton.  1994.  Inside the Volcano:  The History and Political Economy of Central America.  Boulder:  Westview Press.


Key words: Third World, revolution, colonialism, neocolonialism, imperialism, democracy, national liberation, sovereignty, self-determination, socialism, Marxism, Leninism, Cuba, Latin America, world-system, world-economy, development, underdevelopment, state, coffee, open veins of Latin America, Galeano

Posted September 5, 2013

​     In the case of Honduras, the central figure in the liberal reform was Marco Aurelio Soto, who became chief of state in 1876.  The Soto government used the state apparatus to remove obstacles to economic development and to promote sustained capitalist development, especially the development of mining and agricultural production for export.  Obsolete Spanish laws, incompatible with capitalist economic development, were replaced with new laws that stimulated credit, agriculture, commerce, and industry and which encouraged foreign investment.

     The Soto government adopted a number of policies to promote the production of coffee, sugar, indigo, and cocoa for export.  An 1877 law granted free land to agricultural producers.  According to the law, enterprisers wanting to form a plantation on national lands were able to solicit the government to obtain free title to the land, with the size of the grant to be judged according to the importance of the enterprise.  In regard to common lands of villages, which were legacies of pre-conquest Native American societies, villages were required to sell or lease any land not being cultivated permanently.  In addition, the law exempted agricultural producers from payment of taxes on tools, machinery, fertilizer, seed, and housing construction materials.  It defined an agricultural producer as someone who had enclosed land with a drainage system and who cultivated at least five manzanas of coffee, ten of sugar, eight of indigo, or eight of cocoa.  In order to facilitate the sale of these products in the world market, the government constructed systems of transportation and communication.  Moreover, the Soto government took measures to ensure the availability of cheap labor on agricultural plantations:  it forced the rural masses to work by requiring villages to provide day laborers to agricultural plantations.  In order to ensure control over the rural population and the coerced labor force, the government modernized the army and increased its size.

     As a result of liberal policies, Honduras experienced a tremendous growth in the production of coffee in the 1870s and 1880s. 

     The liberal reform also facilitated a revival of mining activity in Honduras, which had declined after an initial growth during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries.  The 1880 constitution eliminated restrictions that had prohibited foreigners from owning and exploiting mines.  In addition, concessions and privileges to national and foreign companies were granted.  These included free rights of exploitation of silver, gold, copper and other minerals; exemptions from taxes and tariffs on machinery, equipment, and any material necessary for the exploitation of the mines; the free use of wood and water on national and common lands; the construction of highways; and coerced labor that villages were mandated by law to provide.  As a result of these policies, mining exports comprised fifty-five percent of Honduran exports during the 1880s, with silver being the most important.  By 1888-89, Honduras had become the most important exporter of minerals in the region.  There were 300 silver, gold, lead, and copper mines in Honduras, with silver being the most important.  The silver mining companies were almost entirely North American owned.  In the 1890s, the international market for silver declined, due to the fact that most countries abandoned silver as a base for the monetary system.  This decline in the world market, in conjunction with the relative inaccessibility of the mines due to the undeveloped transportation system and the mountainous terrain, led to a decline in the production of silver, such that by 1900 it virtually came to an end.

      The liberal reform in Honduras at the end of the nineteenth illustrates what would become a fundamental characteristic of peripheral and semi-peripheral regions in the neocolonial world-system of the twentieth century: a government policy of attracting foreign investment by giving away the natural resources of the country.  This policy was not only demanded by the core, but it also was actively supported by the peripheral elite, which took decisive action in defense of its particular interests, at the expense of the interests of the nation.  The anti-neocolonial Third World movements of the twentieth century would seek to end this give-away of natural resources, and they would seek to develop policies that protect the natural and human resources of the country from the avaricious forces of the core, seeking to promote the true independence and the economic and social development of the nation.


Bibliography

Booth, John A. and Thomas W. Walker.  1993.  Understanding Central America, Second Edition.  Boulder:  Westview Press.

Meza, Victor.  1982.  Honduras: La Evolución de la Crisis.  Tegucigalpa: Editorial Universitaria, Universidad Nacional Autónoma de Honduras.

Molina Chocano, Guillermo. 1976.  Estado Liberal y Desarrollo Capitalista en Honduras.  Tegucigalpa: Banco Central de Honduras.

Murga Frassinetti, Antonio.  1978.  Enclave y Sociedad en Honduras.  Tegucigalpa: Editorial Universitaria, Universidad Nacional Autónoma de Honduras.

Weaver, Frederick Stirton.  1994.  Inside the Volcano:  The History and Political Economy of Central America.  Boulder:  Westview Press.


Key words: Third World, revolution, colonialism, neocolonialism, imperialism, democracy, national liberation, sovereignty, self-determination, socialism, Marxism, Leninism, Cuba, Latin America, world-system, world-economy, development, underdevelopment, state, coffee, silver, open veins of Latin America, Galeano, Honduras, liberalism

Posted September 10, 2013

     In 1917, Imperialism: The Highest Stage of Capitalism by Vladimir I. Lenin was published.  It became a classic work, influencing labor and anti-colonial movements and intellectuals connected to them during the course of the twentieth century.  The book by the leader of the Russian Revolution described important new dynamics in the development of capitalism.  

Concentration and monopolization.   By the beginning of the twentieth century, the old form of capitalism had given way to a new form of capitalism.  The old capitalism was characterized by free competition among a variety of enterprises of various sizes.  The new capitalism is characterized by the concentration of industry and the tendency toward the formation of monopolies in the form of combines, cartels, syndicates, etc. (Lenin 1996:11-23).  “This transformation of competition into monopoly is one of the most important – if not the most important – phenomena of modern capitalist economy” (Lenin 1996:12).
     
      The concentration of banking also occurs. The big banks provide credit for industrial production.  Close ties are established between the big banks and the biggest industrial and commercial enterprises.  This is the stage of “finance capital” (Lenin 1996:27-59).

The export of capital.  During the stage of finance and monopoly capitalism, capitalists find that the most profitable investment is not in the domestic economy, but in “backward countries,” where the prices of land and wages are low, raw materials are cheap, and profits are high (Lenin 1996:62).  So there emerges the exportation of capital, in which big banks and big industry invest surplus capital in profitable enterprises in the peripheral and semi-peripheral regions.  “Under the old capitalism, when free competition prevailed, the export of goods was the most typical feature.  Under modern capitalism, when monopolies prevail, the export of capital has become the typical feature” (Lenin 1996:61).

     In the “backward countries,” the capitalist investor or creditor receives advantages of a commercial-political nature, including stipulations that the borrower use the loan to purchase manufactured goods from the country of the creditor.  Thus the export of capital becomes a means for the export of manufactured goods to the countries and colonies of the periphery and semi-periphery (Lenin 1996:64-65).

The division of the world market among capitalist combines.  In the stage of monopoly capitalism, the major combines and cartels arrive at agreements which divide among themselves the world market.  For example, General Electric Company (USA) and General Electric Company (Germany) agreed that the former would have the markets of the United  States and Canada and the latter would have the markets of Europe.  Similar agreements are found in the oil, shipping, railroad, and steel industries (Lenin 1996:67-75).

The division of the world among the great powers.  In the last quarter of the nineteenth century, the occupation and division of the earth by the European colonial powers was completed (Lenin 1996:77-82). Colonial possession gives monopolist combines control over the raw materials of the colonial territories (Lenin 1996:83-85).  The division of the world into colonizer and colonized is an important feature of capitalism in its finance and monopoly stage (Lenin 1996:86).  
 
     Lenin’s penetrating analysis of the imperialist stage of capitalist development enables us to understand that at the dawn of the twentieth century there had emerged a new form of capitalism, characterized by the concentration of industry and banking, in which large corporations and banks would become increasingly transnational, and they would have access to raw materials and influence over the political processes of the nations of the peripheral and semi-peripheral regions.  The transnational corporations would become in the twentieth century an important mechanism of core domination.  They would have such force that they would make direct political control unnecessary. Thus, they would render outdated the formal structures of colonial domination, and they would make possible a new form of domination, apparently but not actually consistent with democratic values, which came to be known as neocolonialism.  


References

Lenin, V.I.  1996. Imperialism: The Highest Stage of Capitalism. Introduction by Norman Lewis and James Malone.  Chicago:  Pluto Press.


Key words:  Third World, revolution, colonialism, neocolonialism, imperialism, democracy, national liberation, sovereignty, self-determination, socialism, Marxism, Leninism, Cuba, Latin America, world-system, world-economy, development, underdevelopment

Posted September 18, 2013

     With the concentration of industry and the emergence of a few large companies that controlled the market in several key industries (see "Lenin on Imperialism” 9/10/2103), productive capacity in the United States reached a level that overextended the capacity of its domestic market to consume products.  This could give rise to a surplus of goods and a fall of prices.  Periodic crises of overproduction had been a pattern of capitalism, but the problem was deepened by the arrival of the system to large-scale and concentrated production.  Therefore, in order to maintain or increase level of profits, US companies would have to find new markets for their products beyond the frontiers of the United States.  
 
      In the 1890s, there was consciousness of the need for new markets among US producers, as a result of the economic crisis of 1892-93, which was widely interpreted as having been caused by overproduction.  This situation gave rise to the formulation of a new expansionist foreign policy by the US government.  The new foreign policy was called “imperialism” by its promoters.  The basic goal was to find new markets outside the United States for US manufactured and agricultural products.  Strategies for the attainment of this goal were proposed by the platform of the Republican Party in 1896.  They included: the expansion of the army and the establishment of military bases abroad; control of Hawaii and the purchase of the Danish Virgin Islands; support of Cubans in their war of liberation from Spanish colonial rule; and the construction of a canal across Nicaragua to connect the Atlantic and Pacific oceans.  Control of the Caribbean and the Far East were considered central, and thus the Philippines, Hawaii, and Cuba were viewed as having high strategic value as locations for US military bases.  The election of William McKinley in 1896 was a political victory for the promoters of the new imperialist policy (Arboleya 2008:35-37).

      The first practical implementation of the new expansionist policy was US intervention in Cuba in 1898, launching what US historians have called the Spanish-American War, Cubans call the Cuban-Hispanic-American War, and Lenin considered the first imperialist war.  The war resulted in Spain ceding to the United States the Caribbean islands of Cuba and Puerto Rico and the Pacific Islands of the Philippines and Guam (Arboleya 2008:37, 40).

      With the acquisition of these territories, the United States was becoming a colonial power like those of Western Europe.  However, in justifying the expansionist policy to the people of the United  States, the government obscured its colonial character and sought to present the policy as fulfilling a civilizing mission, consistent with the values of democracy, liberty and justice.  The discourse of the political elite was effective in convincing the people that the expansionist policies were defending freedom and were the fulfillment of a “new manifest destiny,” in contrast to the decadent European empires (Arboleya 2008:41-42).


Bibliography

 Arboleya, Jesús. 2008.  La Revolución del Otro Mundo.  La Habana: Editorial de Ciencias Sociales.


Key words:  Third World, revolution, colonialism, neocolonialism, imperialism, democracy, national liberation, sovereignty, self-determination, socialism, Marxism, Leninism, Cuba, Latin America, world-system, world-economy, development, underdevelopment, colonial, neocolonial, blog Third World perspective

Posted September 19, 2013

     The development of US imperialist policy took a significant step forward during the presidency of Theodore Roosevelt (1901-09). Although the United  States had intervened in Cuba in 1898 in response to the challenge to its interests posed by the Cuban revolutionary war of independence, non-intervention continued to be the norm that guided US foreign policy.  But “Rooseveltbroke with this tradition and promoted interventionism without reserve”(Arboleya 2008:73).  As the Cuban scholar Roberto Regalado has written:  “During Roosevelt’s term in office, Washington sponsored the forcible secession of Panama (1903), enabling it to refuse to recognize the Columbian Congress’s rejection of the proposal to construct the Panama Canal; intervened militarily in the Dominican Republic (1904), which led to control over that country’s customs policy (1905-12); occupied Cuba for the second time (1906-09); sent in the marines in order to obtain political dividends in the wars that broke out between Guatemala and El Salvador (1906) and between Honduras and Nicaragua (1907); and applied interventionist policies that led to the resignation of President Santos Zelaya in Nicaragua (1909)"  (Regalado 2007:116-17).

     The imperialist policies of Theodore Roosevelt continued under his successor, William Howard Taft (1909-13).  Taft adopted different rhetoric, replacing Roosevelt’s “big stick” with “dollar diplomacy,” thus promoting a policy of facilitating US economic and financial  penetration through the buying of politicians in the neocolony (Arboleya 2008:74-75).  But the military interventions and aggressive policy continued, with military interventions in Honduras and Nicaragua and threats designed to hinder the Mexican Revolution (Regalado 2007:117).

     The foreign policy of Woodrow Wilson “was equally expansionist in relation to the Caribbean and Central America, and he developed a policy as interventionist as his predecessors” (Arboleya 2008:82). Although he was critical of “dollar diplomacy” due to its ethical implications, he expressed a similar view when he affirmed that dollars “ought to be reserved for the ministers of the state, even if the sovereignty of the reluctant nation is mistreated in the process” (quoted in Arboleya 2008:82).  In addition, military interventions continued, consistent with the policies of Roosevelt and Taft.  Between 1913 and 1921, under the pretext of “promoting democracy” and “stopping German intervention,” the US government interfered in Mexican international affairs, occupied Haiti (1915-34) and the Dominican Republic (1916-24), intervened in Panama (1918), and supported coups d’état and dictatorships  in Central and South America (Regalado 2007:117).

     Wilson, however, developed a more advanced ideological formulation of imperialism.  Roosevelt and Taft had proclaimed imperialist policies to be consistent with the values of democracy and freedom, but in the implementation of the policy, the emphasis was on the application of military force (the “big stick”) and economic pressure (“dollar diplomacy”).  But Wilson sought to establish a new international order on a foundation of US political values, thus facilitating greater global acceptance of US intervention and economic penetration and reducing the need for the application of force and pressure.  As Arboleya has written, Wilson believed that US national interests would be served best by “the establishment of an international order that would universalize North American political values.  A mixture of divine mission, democratic crusade, and expansionist will constituted the ingredients of this international project, which in reality was no more than a modernized version of ‘manifest destiny’” (2008:82).

     However, national and international conditions had not yet arrived at a point that would enable the implementation of the Wilsonian vision. Following World War I, Wilson encountered opposition from Britain and France, who objected to those components of Wilson’s policy that would involve a reduction of their spheres of influence. The United States was not yet able to impose international rules of conduct on the nations of Western Europe.  At the same time, Wilson’s goals for the post-war era also encountered opposition in the United States.  US capitalism and political culture had not yet developed sufficiently, and important sectors of the capitalist class were not convinced that the “new world order” proposed by Wilson would provide sufficient guarantees for the protection of their capital.  The US government therefore did not enter the League of Nations that had been promoted by Wilson (Arboleya 2008:82-86).

     The presidential administrations of Warren Harding (1921-23), Calvin Coolidge (1923-29), and Herbert Hoover (1929-33) continued US imperialist policies toward Latin America, supporting military dictatorships in order to constrain popular struggles in opposition to the neocolonial system, and initiating new interventions in Panama, Honduras, and Nicaragua  (Regalado 2007:118).

     We are beginning to see a phenomenon that is emphasized in the Third World perspective: the continuity of US foreign policy during the twentieth century, regardless of shifts in rhetoric or changes in political party, as an interventionist imperialist policy, in violation of the internationally accepted principle of the sovereignty of all nations.


References

Arboleya, Jesús.  2008.  La Revolución del Otro Mundo.  La Habana: Editorial de Ciencias Sociales.

Regalado, Roberto. 2007.  Latin America at the Crossroads: Domination, Crisis, Popular Movements, and Political Alternatives.  New York: Ocean Press.

Key words:  Third World, revolution, colonialism, neocolonialism, imperialism, democracy, national liberation, sovereignty, self-determination, socialism, Marxism, Leninism, Cuba, Latin America, world-system, world-economy, development, underdevelopment, colonial, neocolonial, blog Third World perspective, Theodore Roosevelt, Woodrow Wilson

Posted September 20, 2013

     As early as 1919, the British economist John Maynard Keynes (1883-1946) had argued for strong state intervention in the economy.  In the aftermath of the stock market crash of 1929, Keynes argued that the principal cause of the crisis was a collapse in investment, and that state spending would give a boost to the economy and to employment.  Higher wages and full employment are desirable, he argued, because they increase consumption and thus strengthen the market.  National economic policy should be orientated above all toward attaining full employment and distributing income equitably throughout the society (Toussaint 1999:179-80).

     Assuming the presidency at the depths of the Great Depression, Franklin Delano Roosevelt (1933-45) turned to Keynes’ prescriptions of strong state intervention to raise wages, reduce unemployment, and promote more equitable distribution of income (Toussaint 1999:171-72, 180).  This represented a significant change in the domestic policy of the United States.  US historian Howard Zinn (2005:392-96 & 401-3) has interpreted New Deal policies as state action to protect to some degree the social and economic rights of the people, with the principal intention of promoting political stability.  In a similar vein, Arboleya writes that “the goal of Franklin Delano Roosevelt was to save capitalism, but he had the vision and the sensibility to understand that this would lie in feeding the hungry, creating sources of work, and freeing the people from the misery in which they found themselves” (Arboleya 2008:104). “Roosevelt had the merit of understanding that the stability of the North American system was unsustainable under the presence of the inequalities and tensions resulting from the desperation of millions of persons.  He thus decided . . . to not leave them at the mercy of the market, which represented a significant change in North American political life” (Arboleya 2008:103).

      During Roosevelt’s administration, domestic political factors worked against the continuation of the military interventions in Latin America that had been central to U.S. policy since 1903 (see “US Imperialism 1903-32” 9/18/2013).  Keynesian economic policies made necessary a more humanistic discourse, placing ideological constraints on the capacity of the government to act aggressively in other lands.  Moreover, there had emerged a renewal of isolationist tendencies and a rejection of armed interventions, expressed in new laws on neutrality that limited the possible participation of the United States in future armed conflicts; armed interventions in Latin America came to be viewed as unconstitutional.  At the same time, there had emerged in Latin America during the 1920s an anti-imperialist popular movement, which had been able to develop popular nationalist consciousness in opposition to US interventions, requiring even elite sectors in alliance with the United States to adopt a nationalist rhetoric.  Such opposition to interventionism both nationally and internationally required the United States to adopt a non-interventionist foreign policy (Arboleya 2008:104).

      So the United States turned to a “Good Neighbor” policy of non-intervention, seeking to pursue its imperialist goals through means other than direct military intervention.  The strategy was to strengthen the military in the Latin American nation, in order that it could play a more active role in maintaining social control.  In some cases, this involved supporting military dictatorships that had been established through previous interventions during the period 1898-1926.  In others cases, it involved establishing military dictatorships through diplomatic maneuvering and economic pressure.  In still other cases, the system worked with constitutional and even progressive governments in power.  
 
      In addition, it was necessary to give more economic space to the figurehead bourgeoisie, so that this class would have a stronger commitment to the neocolonial system and a greater capacity to participate in the maintenance of social control (see “Neocolonialism in Cuba and Latin America” 9/12/2013).  
 
      These new policies represented the pursuit of an imperialist agenda through alternative means, and as such they signified a more advanced and sophisticated form of neocolonialism, under which US corporations continued to  control the labor, raw materials, the financial and productive structures, and the markets of the neocolony.  The Good Neighbor policy of the New Deal does not represent the abandonment of imperialist goals, but the adaptation of imperialist policies to new economic, ideological, and political conditions (Arboleya 2008:105-7; Regalado 2007:118).

     From the Third World perspective, even the most progressive US administration was imperialist.  It did not engage in direct military intervention, but it intervened indirectly in pursuit of its imperialist goals.


References

Arboleya, Jesús.  2008.  La Revolución del Otro Mundo.  La Habana: Editorial de Ciencias Sociales.

Regalado, Roberto.  2007.  Latin America at the Crossroads: Domination, Crisis, Popular Movements, and Political Alternatives.  New York: Ocean Press.

Toussaint, Eric. 1999.  Your Money or Your Life:  The Tyranny of Global Finance.  Sterling, VA: Pluto Press.

Zinn, Howard. 2005.  A People’s History of the United States: 1492 – Present.  New York: HarperCollins Publishers, Harper Perennial Modern
Classics.


Key words:  Third World, revolution, colonialism, neocolonialism, imperialism, democracy, national liberation, sovereignty, self-determination, socialism, Marxism, Leninism, Cuba, Latin America, world-system, world-economy, development, underdevelopment, colonial, neocolonial, blog Third World perspective, New Deal, FDR, Franklin D. Roosevelt, Keynes, Keynesianism

Posted September 23, 2013

      As World War II came to a close, Franklin Roosevelt had conceived of a post-war “new order” in which the United States would have hegemony, but in which there would be a balance of power and cooperation among the great powers, a vision that later was represented in the structures of the United Nations.  He saw the new world order as a neocolonial system, and he therefore advocated the dismantling of the colonial empires of the European powers.  He believed that political and social stability in the world was a fundamental prerequisite for the growth of U.S.commerce.  He believed in the persuasive power of capitalism, and he therefore viewed the Soviet Union as a market to be conquered, and he expressed opposition to the permanent stationing of US troops in Europe (Arboleya 2008:113, 135).

     But Roosevelt died before the war ended, and the implementation his vision was complicated by: the ruin of Europe; the high levels of unemployment and difficulties in the reinsertion of soldiers in the post-war economy; and the characteristics of the war industries, including their integral role in the US economy at the end of the war (Arboleya 2008:132).  
 
      Thus there emerged an alternative idea that proposed the expansion of the war industry rather than its reconversion.  “Winston Churchill was the first to speak of a world divided by an Iron Curtain, but the concepts that served the theoretical base of the Cold War were proposed by George Frost Kennan, a lower rank US diplomat stationed in Moscow, who developed the thesis that lasting peace with the Soviets was impossible, for which reason it was indispensable to strengthen US military power in order that it would serve as the ‘counterweight to expansionist tendencies,’ whose cultural origins go back to the Russian Empires" (Arboleya 2008:133).

      In reality, rather than expansionist, Soviet foreign policy sought to construct a cordon of security around its territory and to peacefully co-exist with the capitalist powers, a policy that created tensions in Soviet relations with the anti-colonial and anti-neocolonial revolutions in the Third World during the period 1945 to 1989.  However, the extraordinary success of the Kennan thesis, in spite of its mischaracterization of Soviet foreign policy, can be explained by the fact that it served the interests of the arms industries and functioned to justify and legitimate an arms race (Arboleya 2008:133-34). 
 
      Thus militarism came to dominate the US political system.  “In a kind of militarist application of Keynesian theory, defense expenses replaced public spending as the principal driving force of the economy and the scientific development of the country” (Arboleya 2008:133).  Arms production became integral to the economy.  “Arms capital merged with other branches of the economy and served the expansion of the large conglomerates and transnational companies of the country.  Such was the warning of President Eisenhower, that a military-industrial complex had been consolidated” (Arboleya 2008:134).

      In a similar vein, U.S. sociologist C. Wright Mills published in 1956 a classic work maintaining that there had developed in the United States a “power elite” composed of the top two or three executives of the largest 100 corporations, the highest fifty members of the executive branch of the federal government, and the members of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. Most of the members of the power elite were born into the upper class, although one-third of its members were recruited from the upper middle class through a process of selection that included socialization into its values.  The power elite made the decisions of great consequence for the nation, and members of Congress as well as educational and religious leaders and the mass media had to adjust to the direction established by the elite.  It was, for Mills, an economic, military, and political elite (Mills 1956).

      The militarism of US society shaped the cultural and ideological formation of the people.  “Militarism required US policy to be based on the fabrication of a climate of fear and insecurity, because this was required for the arms market. Communism was presented as a phantasmagoric force that intended the domination of the world”  (Arboleya 2008:134). 
 
      Anti-communism was an enormously powerful ideological tool, enabling the United States to present a distorted image of Third World anti-colonial and anti-neocolonial movements as manifestations of the spreading menace of communism, thus justifying imperialist interventions throughout the world.  Interventions in defense of neocolonial  interests were presented as the defense of democracy, and this Orwellian inversion was widely accepted by the people.


References

Arboleya, Jesús.  2008.  La Revolución del Otro Mundo.  La Habana: Editorial de Ciencias Sociales.

Mills, C. Wright.  1956.  The Power Elite.  New York: Oxford University Press.


Key words:  Third World, revolution, colonialism, neocolonialism, imperialism, democracy, national liberation, sovereignty, self-determination, socialism, Marxism, Leninism, Cuba, Latin America, world-system, world-economy, development, underdevelopment, colonial, neocolonial, blog Third World perspective, Cold War, militarization, FDR, Franklin D. Roosevelt, power elite, C. Wright Mills

Posted September 24, 2013

      Franklin Roosevelt’s vision of a neocolonial world system with US hegemony and cooperation among the global powers, including the Soviet Union, was cast aside by the ideological construction of the Cold War, which defined communism as evil and expansionist, requiring the defense of democracy through a permanent military preparedness. 

     A liberal-conservative consensus emerged.  There was wide agreement on the militarist application of Keynesian economic principles, facilitating the growth of the economy and the capacity for military intervention anywhere in the world.  “Conservatives as well as liberals ended up supporting this approach, which reduced the differences between the two to the dimension and the quality of the intervention of the state in the economy, with neither side rejecting its
tax collector-investor function in the production of arms” (Arboleya 2008:133).  And there was consensus based on Cold War ideological premises.  “In foreign policy, the distance between liberals and conservatives was reduced to the point of converting Roosevelt into the last traditional liberal that occupied the White House.  As liberalism moved toward militant anti-communism in the context of the Cold War, liberalism ceased to be an alternative ideological current for foreign policy, expressed on the basis of a different political agenda.  Militarism united both currents, and although differences persisted between conservatives and liberals in regard to the procedures to be utilized, nearly no one questioned the strategic importance of US expansionism. Isolationism became obsolete during the Second World War.  The United States no longer was separated from the rest of the world by the ocean or by anything.  Like the dollar, its soldiers appeared everywhere" (Arboleya 2008:138).   
 
     Utilizing the Cold War ideological construction, US presidents Harry Truman (1945-53) and Dwight Eisenhower (1953-1960) provided economic and military support to Latin American governments that utilized repressive tactics against communist and socialist parties as well as progressive organizations.  Eisenhower’s “Good Partner” policy included CIA support for a counterrevolutionary force in Guatemala in 1954 in opposition to the government of Jacobo Árbenz, a democratically elected president who had nationalized some of the properties of the United Fruit Co.  “In addition to the overthrow of Árbenz and his replacement with the Carlos Castillo Armas dictatorship (1954-57), the Good Partner policy also stimulated the fall of the governments of Getúlio Vargas in Brazil (1954); Juan Domingo Perón in Argentina (1955); and Federico Chaves in Paraguay, which led to Alfredo Stroessner’s dictatorship (1956-89).  At the same time, Eisenhower’s policies contributed to undermining the thrust of the Bolivian revolution in the governments of Victor Paz Estenssoro (1952-56) and Hernán Siles Zuazo (1956-60).  Jean-Claude Duvalier’s dictatorship in Haiti also arose in this period” (Regalado 2007:122).

     The Cold War was the ideological pillar of imperialism, facilitating US economic and financial penetration of Latin America and the Third World and ensuring the consolidation of the United States as the hegemonic power of the neocolonial world-system.

       Thus, we see that immediately following the Second World War, pushed by the economic interests of arms industries, political leaders created a Cold War ideology that provided justification for a permanent war economy.  But the Cold War ideology distorted history in fundamental ways: the Soviet Union was not a threat, and it was less evil than portrayed; the nations of the Third World were not turning to communism, but were seeking independence from colonialism and neocolonialism; and the nation itself was less democratic than it pretended.   The Cold War ideological distortions became widely accepted beliefs not because they were true or right, but because they served powerful particular interests.  

     The ideological distortions of the Cold War would be exposed in the 1960s by the African-American movement and the student anti-war movement, bringing to an end the post-war consensus.  We will be discussing these movements and their anti-imperialism in future posts.


 References

Arboleya, Jesús.  2008.  La Revolución del Otro Mundo.  La Habana: Editorial de Ciencias Sociales.

Regalado, Roberto.  2007.  Latin America at the Crossroads: Domination, Crisis, Popular Movements, and Political Alternatives.  New York: Ocean Press.


Key words:  Third World, revolution, colonialism, neocolonialism, imperialism, democracy, national liberation, sovereignty, self-determination, socialism, Marxism, Leninism, Cuba, Latin America, world-system, world-economy, development, underdevelopment, colonial, neocolonial, blog Third World perspective, Cold War, militarization, Eisenhower, Truman


 

Posted September 25, 2013

     John F. Kennedy became President of the United States at a time when the process of the decolonization of the European colonies in Asia and Africa was well underway.  Decolonization established new possibilities for the United States, because it could open the ex-colonies to greater U.S. economic and financial penetration.  But decolonization also established for the United States a situation of insecurity, in that there was now the possibility that the newly independent nations could incorporate themselves into the socialist bloc or could emerge with anti-imperialist and/or socialist governments.  
 
     The Non-Aligned Movement was formed by the most radical Third World leaders who sought to break with the neo-colonial relation.  An organization of newly independent governments, the Non-Aligned Movement was anti-imperialist, but it did not wish to be incorporated into the socialist bloc.  It sought to break dependency with the major capitalist powers and to avoid dependency on the nations of the socialist bloc.  To the extent that these radical Third World movements were socialist, they were developing in theory and practice a redefinition of socialism.  But such nuances were not appreciated by the Kennedy administration, which considered newly independent Third World nations to be “vulnerable to communist influence” and viewed the national liberation movements as “extensions of Soviet power in the world” (Arboleya 2008:151-52).

     Accordingly, the foreign policy of the Kennedy administration gave greater emphasis to the Third World as the arena of the Cold War conflict between the superpowers, developing a perspective that viewed the national liberation movements and newly independent nationalist governments as expressions of communism and Soviet influence, downplaying their nationalist, anti-colonial, and anti-imperialist character (Arboleya 2008:151).

     The US strategy toward the Third World during the Kennedy administration included the development of a US capacity for counterinsurgency, involving armed confrontation with the revolutionary movements of the Third World.  The Special Forces (“Green Berets”) were developed in order to give the armed forces the capacity for a flexible response in any place or circumstance in the world.  In addition, the CIA became involved in training military and para-military groups in the neocolonies of the Third World, developing techniques that came to be known as dirty wars.  "Since 1954, the CIA was given the task of strengthening security corps in various parts of the world, but beginning with the Kennedy administration, this mission would have greater importance and greater consequences.  Through the so-called Program of Public Security, the United States trained more than a million security personnel of other nations, and this development is tied with the emergence of the 'death squads,' with the indiscriminate application of the torture of political prisoners, the assassination and disappearance of alleged insurrectionists, and the dissemination of terror among the civil populations in the zones of conflict" (Arboleya 2008:154-55).  Believing that the United States and its allies in the neocolonies were confronted with a supposed “international communist conspiracy,” and assuming that the insurgent revolutionaries were uncivilized and lacking in ethical norms of conduct, the Kennedy administration excused any excess on the part of the counterinsurgents, including the most brutal forms of behavior (Arboleya 2008:153-55).

       The distorted and misleading characterization of the Third World movements as well as the use of all necessary means to preserve and protect the neocolonial system, including the systemic use of barbarous techniques and practices, are legacies of US foreign policy that continue to our time.  It was the dark side of Camelot.


References

Arboleya, Jesús.  2008.  La Revolución del Otro Mundo.  La Habana: Editorial de Ciencias Sociales.


Key words:  Third World, revolution, colonialism, neocolonialism, imperialism, democracy, national liberation, sovereignty, self-determination, socialism, Marxism, Leninism, Cuba, Latin America, world-system, world-economy, development, underdevelopment, colonial, neocolonial, blog Third World perspective, Cold War, counterinsurgency, Special Forces, Green Berets, Non-Aligned Movement, nonalignment

Posted September 26, 2013

     In relation to Latin America, alongside the development of counterinsurgency as a primary strategy (see “Kennedy and the Third World” 9/25/2013), a secondary strategy of the Kennedy administration was economic reform of the neocolonial system.  “The fall of Pérez Jiménez in Venezuela and Fulgencio Batista in Cuba—precisely two of the nations where the US neocolonial model had been most advanced—called into question the capacity of the Latin American oligarchy to continue to guarantee control of the region.  Its nearly feudal mechanisms of exploitation tended to reduce the expansion of the market, and the extraordinary reactionary character of its ideology as well as its inclination to the most brutal and generalized repression, were destabilizing factors of the system and a problem for the foreign policy that Kennedy intended to project” (Arboleya 2008:156).  

      Kennedy therefore called for social changes, including structural reforms in land tenancy and reforms in the distribution of wealth. Kennedy’s policy thus involved an abandonment of the traditional landowning oligarchy that up to then had been considered as sustainer and protector of the neocolonial system.  Proclaiming a “revolution of the middle class,” the Kennedy strategy was to support the reformist sector of the national bourgeoisie, which up to that point had confronted the powerful obstacle of the traditional oligarchy.  The Alliance for Progress committed twenty billion dollars over a decade for concrete projects for the development of this reformist sector, which also would have the consequence of establishing new possibilities for US investment (Arboleya 2008:156-57). 
 
      The proposed reforms in Latin America did not represent fundamental structural changes that would involve a transition from a neocolonial system to an alternative more just and democratic world-system.  They were proposed reforms of the neocolonial system.  “The modernization that Kennedy proposed for Latin America was not based on the development of an independent national bourgeoisie as an alternative to the traditional oligarchy.  Rather, it was based on producing a ‘new class’ that, more than related to, would form a part of the US transnational corporations and would share their interests. In short, it aspired to consolidate US neocolonialism in the region, through the articulation of a new relation of dependency, which would require a national class organically tied to foreign capital” (Arboleya 2008:157).

     The proposed economic reforms of the neocolonial system did not succeed,  and it was not possible for them to succeed.  The Kennedy plan encountered political opposition from those sectors of US capital historically tied to the traditional oligarchy in Latin America.  In addition, the national bourgeoisie did not have sufficient economic and political strength to play the role assigned to it by the plan.  There was in this regard a fundamental contradiction: the national bourgeoisie, according to the plan, would transform itself into a class economically dependent on foreign capital, which therefore would render it unable to lead the nation in a project of independent economic development. Under these conditions, the national bourgeoisie would not be able to mobilize the popular support needed to challenge the control of the oligarchy and thus would be incapable of playing the political role that it was supposed to play.  The national bourgeoisie would become increasingly discredited by nationalist popular sectors, which would search for more revolutionary approaches and more independent approaches to national development (Arboleya 2008:157).

       The failure of the Alliance for Progress suggests the impossibility of reforming the neocolonial system in a form that promotes US interests, with the intention of establishing political stability.  As long as the core-peripheral structures that promote US economic and financial penetration remain, the neocolonized nation will not be able to develop, and the needs of the people will not be met. Thus, the conditions for popular mobilization in opposition to the system, in other words, for political instability, will remain.  The establishment of political stability requires the economic and cultural development of the nation, impossible under the structures of the core-peripheral relation. What is required is an autonomous national project for economic and cultural development, which could be put into place when a popular movement takes control of the government and seeks to govern in a form that represents the interest of the various popular sectors.  Cuba, Chile, Nicaragua, Venezuela, Bolivia, and Ecuador have seen the realization of this possibility.


References

Arboleya, Jesús.  2008.  La Revolución del Otro Mundo.  La Habana: Editorial de Ciencias Sociales.


Key words:  Third World, revolution, colonialism, neocolonialism, imperialism, democracy, national liberation, sovereignty, self-determination, socialism, Marxism, Leninism, Cuba, Latin America, world-system, world-economy, development, underdevelopment, colonial, neocolonial, blog Third World perspective, Kennedy, Alliance for Progress