The Third World at Home

1. "The Paradox of '92"

The basic theme of the 500-year conquest is misread if it sets Europe -- broadly construed -- against the subject domains. As Adam Smith stressed, the interests of the architects of policy are not those of the general population; the internal class war is an inextricable element of the global conquest. One of the memories that reverberates through the 500 years is that "European societies were also colonized and plundered," though the "better-organized" communities with "institutions for economic regulation and political self-government" and traditions of resistance were able to retain basic rights and even extend them through continuing struggle.¹

The end of the affluent alliance and the onset of the "new imperial age" have intensified the internal class war. A corollary to the globalization of the economy is the entrenchment of Third World features at home: the steady drift towards a two-tiered society in which large sectors are superfluous for wealth-enhancement for the privileged. Even more than before, the rabble must be ideologically and physically controlled, deprived of organization and interchange, the prerequisite for constructive thinking and social action. "The paper has taken us one at a time and convinced us `how good the times' are," Wobbly writer T-Bone Slim commented: "We have no opportunity to consult our neighbor to find out if the press speaketh the truth."<sup>2</sup> A large majority of the population regard the economic system as "inherently unfair," look back at the Vietnam war as not a "mistake" but "fundamentally wrong and immoral," favored diplomacy not war as the US prepared to bomb Iraq, and so on. But these are private thoughts; they do not raise the dread threat of democracy and freedom as long as there is no systematic way "to consult our neighbor." Whatever the individual thoughts may be, collectively we march in the parade. No presidential candidate, for example, could possibly say "I opposed the Vietnam war on principled grounds and honor those who refused to obey the order to fight a war that was `fundamentally wrong and immoral'."

In any system of governance, a major problem is to secure obedience. We therefore expect to find ideological institutions and cultural managers to direct and staff them. The only exception would be a society with an equitable distribution of resources and popular engagement in decision-making; that is, a democratic society with libertarian social forms. But meaningful democracy is a remote ideal, regarded as a danger to be averted, not a value to be achieved: the "ignorant and meddlesome outsiders" must be reduced to their spectator status, as Walter Lippmann phrased the theme that has long been common coin. The current mission is to ensure that any thought of controlling their destiny must be driven from the minds of the rascal multitude. Each person is to be an isolated receptacle of propaganda, helpless in the face of two external and hostile forces: the government and the private sector, with its sacred right to determine the basic character of social life. The second of these forces, furthermore, is to be veiled: its rights and power must be not only beyond challenge, but invisible, part of the natural order of things. We have travelled a fair distance on this path.

The rhetoric of the 1992 election campaign illustrates the process. The Republicans call for faith in the entrepreneur, accusing the "other party" of being the tool of social engineers who have brought the disaster of Communism and the welfare state (virtually indistinguishable). The Democrats counter that they only intend to improve the efficiency of the private sector, leaving its dictatorial rights over most of life and the political sphere unchallenged. Candidates say "vote for me," and I will do so-and-so for you. Few believe them, but more important, a different process is unthinkable: that in their unions, political clubs, and other popular organizations people should formulate their own plans and projects and put forth candidates to represent them. Even more unthinkable is that the general public should have a voice in decisions about investment, production, the character of work, and other basic aspects of life. The minimal conditions for functioning democracy have been removed far beyond thought, a remarkable victory of the doctrinal system.

Toward the more totalitarian end of the spectrum, self-styled "conservatives" seek to distract the rascal multitude with jingoist and religious fanaticism, family values, and other standard tools of the trade. The spectacle has elicited some bemused commentary abroad. Observing the 1992 Republican convention, from the pre-Enlightenment God and Country Rally on opening day to the party platform crafted by evangelical extremists, and the fact that the Democratic candidate "mentioned God six times in his acceptance speech" and "quoted from scriptures," the Economist wondered at a society "not ready yet for openly secular leaders," alone in the industrial world. Others watched with amazement as a debate between the Vice-President and a TV character occupied center stage. These are signs of the success in defanging democratic forms, to eliminate any threat to private power.³

Contemporary right-wing discourse can hardly fail to bring to mind earlier denunciations of "liberalism," with its call "for women's equality" and denial of the ancient truth that a woman's "world is her husband, her family, her children, and her home" (Adolf Hitler). Or the warning, from the same voice, that it is "a sin against the will of the Almighty that hundreds upon thousands of his most gifted creatures should be made to sink in the proletarian swamp while Kaffirs and Hottentots are trained for the liberal professions" -- however the current version may be masked in code words. The resort to "cultural" themes and religious-jingoist fervor revives the classic fascist technique of mobilizing the people who are under assault. The encouragement of religious "enthusiasm," in particular, has a long history within what E.P. Thompson called "the psychic processes of counter-revolution" used to tame the masses, breeding "the chiliasm of despair," the desperate hope for some other world than this one, which can offer little.⁴

¹ Pp. 17, 65.

² T-Bone Slim, Juice, 68.

³ Economist, Aug. 22, 1992.

⁴ Brady, Spirit, ch. VI; Schoenbaum, Hitler's Social Revolution, ch. VI. Thompson, Making, ch. 11.