Is the Genocide in Congo Due to Human Hatred or Corporate Profit?

[Pictured: Congolese march near the border with Rwanda in 2023. Credit © Getty Images]

By J.B. Gerald

Rwanda has broken international law with the visible presence of Rwandan troops in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) alongside Rwanda's covert M-23 militia. M-23 is reported to have captured Goma (again) and the civilians are in a state of emergency. This is familiar because M-23 previously took over the city in 2012 but had to withdraw because it wasn't equipped to administer the city of two million. As the M-23 rebels and their allies increase their takeover of the East Congo with reported vows of advancing to the capital of the DRC in a "liberation" of the country, it becomes clear Rwanda has invaded Congo again, possibly for keeps this time to maintain its hold on the East's gold, copper, and coltan mines.

The Congo's government has requested international sanctions against Rwanda. But the international community has allowed an ongoing genocide of the Congolese people for thirty years. The people of the Congo live under a genocide warning.

Paul Kagame began invading the Eastern Congo after he took over Rwanda in 1994. Subsequently, Uganda, which sponsored Kagame's invasion of Rwanda with U.S. funding, and Rwanda have maintained militias in the area. While genocide was brought under control in Rwanda, an insistence on mass killing was carried into the Congo by Kagame's Rwandan troops in pursuit of Hutu refugees who fled there. This also allowed Rwandan forces to protect Tutsi groups settled in the Congo, and access and control a portion of the mining resources.

But the resources belong to the people. As they do in the Sudan and South Sudan. As they do in Gaza and Palestine. All three areas are currently threatened by genocide against the people who have lived there.

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The U.S. Government's official site for the National Library of Medicine notes, “5.4 million people have died in Democratic Republic of Congo since 1998 because of conflict” (Peter Moszynski, Jan. 31, 2008, BMJ). However, since the “First Congo War” in 1996 to the present, the western press notoriously underestimates the death toll at six million civilians.

From the perspective of preventing genocide, the source of the problem rests in both the five lakes region of Africa and the Middle East, with corporate interests using national leaders to effect policy. This facile academic statement of the obvious covers the fact that millions on millions of innocent civilian lives are currently being sacrificed for corporate growth and profit. This is against any sense of ethics, knowledge of right and wrong, law, religious commitments to honour life, or the people's informed consent.

In the DRC, the genocide continues because it is meant to. It works. The mines are working, the resources are taken. The peoples’ deaths are not a corporate concern. The elites are not about to stop it. They are the reason Patrice Lumumba was assassinated in 1961 and the UN's Dag Hammarskjöld was killed. And why the Simba rebellion was crushed. And why Eastern Congo was thrown into the chaos of warring militias.

The Rwandan genocide, which suddenly occurred between tribes living in peace, brought in an Anglo-American-backed Paul Kagame. One could say Rwanda is responsible for the genocide of Congolese except that the benefits have devolved to International corporations, stock markets, manufacturers, and western economies. As with all such imperialist and colonialist dynamics throughout history, Kagame’s Rwandan forces are simply mercenaries for western capitalists.

Unfortunately, this is an all-too familiar history. European and American policies have used Independent Congo (Zaire, DRC) since its colonial bondage as a people enslaved to the uses of Western capital. China is now buying into the land as well, with the purchase of many previously American owned mines. It is unclear how or if this will be much different than the Western playbook. One thing, however, is clear: the genocide continues. With respect for conscience, a portion of UN peacekeepers are in place to lessen the civilian body count. But the guilty parties here are the same who engineered the “Rwanda” genocide, which the UN did not stop, and which served Western corporate expansion.

There is little hope of any justice for the people of the DRC until the ownership and control of the mineral resources in the East are in the hands of a just regulator that assures both the people’s safety and fair payment for their resources. And, any such arrangement, would have to be negotiated and agreed upon with not only strict parameters, but with the approval of the very people who labor in these harsh conditions. In our new multipolar global landscape, this would have to be UN administered to include Russian and China. It is an alternative to an ongoing genocide. Until then, all profits from the genocide should be tracked as evidence for eventual prosecution.

Global Philanthropy as an Artificial Plateau for the Bourgeoisie

By Dumi Gatsha

The past few weeks have shown how destabilized we are globally. Globalization has become too heavy for the modern neocolonial empire. As multilateralism, rules based order and global trade no longer serve the interests of those in power. We are seeing generations of progress wiped away by brutal military forces on one extreme end, whilst ideologies, knowledge, and history are destroyed on the other. We see the destructure through abuses in elected offices at all levels: from sporting code regulators, parent-teacher associations, or either of the three arms of a government. Transgender rights, overseas development assistance and intellectual property law trends reflect the regressive shifts in Global geopolitics. We are all at risk of compromised global health security, climate degradation, and state-sponsored gender disparities.

We are held at ransom by a global elite that has thrived off of capitalism, racism, and digitalization. The frontiers of social, activist and change movements haven't been absolved from this crisis. As the barriers to enablement, resources and funding remain largely pooled in the global minority. Asset managers, Donor-advised funds, and private foundations remain vehicles of tax inequity, avoidance, and wealth hoarding. This diagnosis can be applied to any context where war parallels corporate profit and economic growth propels failed governance. Somewhere amidst all of this, rests philanthropy in plateu. A system replicating the world as we know it: centers of knowledge and power, yielding to the whims of the elite, educated, and well heeled.

There are countless theories of change that are reported as “successful”, leaving an impression that progress can be sustained beyond resourcing or project lifespans. Those theories of change have no meaning in a world that enacts anti-LGBT and anti-abortion laws. Neither a world where safeguards for diversity and inclusion are politicized and revoked through state and corporate machinery. We are witnessing atrocious crimes in real time, documenting injustices via social media in a world where aggressors and perpetrators deploy violence with impunity. Activists and caregivers are exhausted. Social structures are slowly being dismantled and removed from any forms of mutual aid or solidarity action. These are the moments grassroots activists warned against. These are the hallmarks of a world with no peace for those most marginalised.

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As the world burns, grant application windows, requirements, and eligibility take away much needed time for organising. The increased heat warnings and cyclones in Southern Africa only aggravate the socioeconomic conditions for the many problems movements try to solve. Yet climate related opportunities rarely weave in queer or reproductive inequities. The coup de tats in West Africa brought economic renaissance domestically whilst enacting over-regulation of civil society and socially restrictive laws that target women and LGBT populations. Philanthropy remains unimaginative, held up in the hubris of self-serving strategies whilst INGOs navigate self-preservation. Remaining with growth targets and maintaining annual distribution percentages; it is intentional to keep ways of working and grant making business as usual. The hierarchy and value chain must be maintained so they can save face, income floors, and for a “rainy day.” The question is whose rainy day and what kind of rains?

Shifting power remains aspirational. As long as money and capital are not yielded and transferred, the risks and harm to communities will continue. Whilst there aren't any dividends paid out in grant making and partnerships; controls remain pre-determined to normative development aligned programming. This leaves little room for disruptive impact and change. Disruption would mean working ourselves out of activism and philanthropy ceasing to exist. It would mean recognising activism as work deserving of meaningful compensation and social protections — even at grassroots levels. It would look like a reparative system returning exploits and extracts to communities. Valuing circular social structures that do more healing and nurturing of the planet and all people. Systems that support our sense of becoming and belonging without reserving these for those who can assimilate or navigate to adopt. It would mean all of us can be saved from a rainy day without someone deciding whether one of us is deserving or not.

As the year of turmoil continues to unfold, those of us deemed undeserving of solidarity or sunshine remain in abundance. We will resist for our own survival, and rest for our own sanity. No one has saved us from our own people, governments or corporates — neither do we expect to be saved. We continue to share our stories and joy with the hope that the world will become kinder one person at a time. Whilst our dignity and personhood may be stripped from us in moments of inequity and injustice; our humanity remains in tact. This was captured harrowingly beautifully by Nomzamo Winifred Zanyiwe Madikizela Mandela: “you are interrogated for 7 nights and 7 days without sleep… God provided a mechanism I had never thought of at the time. I reached a threshold where the body could not take the pain anymore, then I would faint. Those were the most beautiful moments. The body rested and when they threw a bucket of water to wake me up… I got up, I was so refreshed and I started fighting all over again.”

We continue to dream and cultivate our world as best as we can, with the little we have wherever we are. We have accepted that philanthropy, especially that which extends from global capital, will never have the capacity or compassion to meet us where we are. After all, communities remain behind when the donor, enabler, investor, INGO, or development program leave our countries. We will continue to speak truth to power, as capitalism continues without an end in sight. Toni Morrion's masters narrative beautifully captures how I view philanthropy's plateau. Void of any transformative disruption or imagination — whilst performing all the right words, keeping the same partners, co-opting participation and representation to maintain its systems. Its practitioners drawn from across development, volunteer, and civil society pipelines bear the hallmarks of Audre Lorde's masters tools. However, as a part of neocolonial Empires and in Gad Saad's words: philanthropy is bound to implode from within due to its own excesses. We will still be there to recreate, rebuild, and heal towards a queer, climate, and gender just world.

Dumi Gatsha (they/them) is the first ever gender diverse parliamentary candidate in Botswana, former facilitator of the #ShiftThePower UK Funders Collective and founder of Success, a grassroots organisation working in the nexus of human rights and sustainable development.

Where Despair Ends and Tactics Begin: The Invigorating Case of Luigi Mangione

[Pictured: Luigi Mangione is escorted into Manhattan Criminal court for his arraignment on state murder and terror charges in the killing of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson, Monday, Dec. 23, 2024, in New York. (AP Photo/Seth Wenig)]

By Thomas King

What’s at stake in the Luigi Mangione case is where despair ends and tactics begin. On December 4th, an unidentified shooter (now suspected to be Mangione) exposed the alibis through which social power avoids being put right on the spot— as Raoul Vaneigem once wrote. We must resist any misattribution or denial of what this moment reveals; to do otherwise is to conceal how systematic terror breeds desperate acts of political violence in America. This demands that we reject the shoehorning of the alleged gunman’s inconsistent politics into a neat ideological framework, or the digging into his past as doing the state’s work. The truth behind the shooter’s actions lies in the parasitic design of a healthcare system that sacrifices lives to fuel its machinery. After an election where healthcare barely registered for either party, the desubjectivated entity took with him a gun, his despair, and, unsurprisingly, struck a chord with the public consciousness. The praxis was simple. Pain can radicalise anyone. ‘What do you do?’ he wrote.

Let’s not be deterred. Private health coverage spending will exceed $1.5 trillion this year as life expectancy declines. Since the Affordable Care Act passed in 2010, a measure the Democratic Party (aside from Bernie Sanders) has only sought to protect, UnitedHealth Group, the parent company of UnitedHealthcare, increased its annual share buyback program by 217%, funnelling $54 billion into stock repurchases. In 2023 alone, it pocketed $22 billion in profits on $371 billion in revenue—equating to $25 per share—and paid out $7.29 per share in dividends to investors. UHC had the highest denial rate of any U.S. insurance company, at 32 percent. Personal testimonies describe instances where the company denied coverage for essential treatments, including medications and hospital stays, despite their critical necessity for recovery. UHC was accused of using rigid algorithms to cut off payments despite ongoing care needs and was sued for a bot with a claimed 90 percent error rate. Meanwhile, a U.S. Senate committee found that UHC and other insurers intentionally denied critical nursing care to stroke patients, prioritising profit over survival. We lay bare the shooter’s motive when we recognise the healthcare system as a productive force of socialised violence. We must also recognise this violence as producing sad passions: fear, depression, and the suicidal urge. Franco Berardi reminds us, “Only by calibrating the abyss of the American unconscious can we decipher the roots of the social ferocity that is now in full manifestation.” From this point, we might decide where and to whom we must turn.

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The so-called ‘dark corners of the internet’ are, in fact, very bright. Talking heads decry the blurring of celebrity and criminality in the lionisation of Mangione, as if it's a new phenomenon, as if it marks a troubling new phase in the normalisation of violence in America. If violence is indeed normalised in America, it is because U.S.-supplied weapons kill civilians and fuel genocide. It is because both political parties have spent decades eroding public trust in the rule of law. It is because so-called ‘liberal democracy’ is on shaky ground. It is because neoliberal governance thrives on the precarity and commodification of relations. It is because, while Pennsylvania Governor Josh Shapiro claims there is no place for violence, he signs his name on missiles. It is because Zoe Strimpel fears for the future because of ‘Gen-Z’ support for Mangione yet writes that ‘the Israel Defence Forces are the most moral soldiers in the world’. Why is violence only acceptable when carried out—or backed—by elites against the working class and marginalised? Why does a U.S. Congress report deem it necessary to issue a “call to arms” for bipartisan public support to reclaim the United States’ crumbling global hegemony? If we are witnessing the normalisation of political violence through chaotic revenge, it is because the reasons for revolution are staring us in the face. It is because pain and sad passions ignite the active forces within them.

We are fighting a war of information where major media outlets have become arms of the national security state. Mangione’s alleged manifesto remained hidden until Ken Klippenstein published it, despite being in the possession of major media companies, just like his notebook is now. Days later, the New York Times refused to publish Mangione’s image, citing fears of "amplifying the crime and inspiring others," according to Andy Newman. Meanwhile, other media outlets scramble to frame Mangione's alleged actions as 'bizarre' and 'brazen'— desperate to portray him as terrifying and erratic, because acknowledging the truth of the event would force them to recognise that he is, in fact, no different from the average American voter. Even those who appear to empathise with the cause often revert to reductive moralising.

A quick search of Luigi Mangione's name floods the screen with headlines like ‘Who is Luigi Mangione?’, ‘What we know about the New York killer,’ or ‘Tracing the privileged family of Luigi Mangione.’ This is journalism at its most insidious. Had Mangione not been arrested, the shooter may have become a stronger symbol of class antagonism—his image untainted by the specifics of his story. It is why we must resist such attempts to dilute his image. That said, as Will Conway, co-host of the Acid Horizon podcast, pointed out, the flood of comical or provocative edits and politicised videos surrounding the shooter’s assassination reveals how the truth of a politicising event disrupts the biopolitical fabric, where anyone can shape the mythology surrounding the propaganda of the deed. These posts fight back against those who seek to control the narrative, which is why the Times attempted to disarm the public in the name of national security, but it was already too late.

Americans are conditioned to love men who look like Mangione, which is why they dominate narratives in media and culture. If Mangione weren’t white, the universal support he now receives would undoubtedly shape a very different narrative. So, resisting the dilution of the motive also requires, as we should independently of this case, resisting the embedded racism that makes his attractiveness conventional. An obsolete romanticism—seemingly innocent, though it isn’t—will only help sustain the forces that shape who becomes a symbol of resistance and who doesn’t. We must remember the work remains unfinished, and the revolution will have no face. Destituting the political apparatus doesn’t rest on the murder of Brian Thompson— the world is full of Thompsons. With that said, this incident might have done the world a huge favour. It has given a nation, relentlessly beaten down by a for-profit healthcare system, a renewed sense of unity and a reinvigorated cause. What matters now is what we do next.

Vaneigem wrote,

“My sympathy for the solitary killer ends where tactics begin; but perhaps tactics need scouts driven by individual despair. However that may be, the new revolutionary tactics — which will be based indissolubly on the historical tradition and on the practice, so widespread and so disregarded, of individual realisation — will have no place for people who only want to mimic the gestures of Ravachol or Bonnot. But on the other hand these tactics will be condemned to theoretical hibernation if they cannot, by other means, attract collectively the individuals whom isolation and hatred for the collective lie have already won over to the rational decision to kill or to kill themselves. No murderers — and no humanists either! The first accept death, the second impose it. Let ten men meet who are resolved on the lightning of violence rather than the long agony of survival; from this moment, despair ends and tactics begin. Despair is the infantile disorder of the revolutionaries of everyday life.”

References

UHC Stats. Health Insurance, UnitedHealth, Shareholders, and Buybacks. Jacobin, December 2024. https://jacobin.com/2024/12/health-insuranceunitedhealth-shareholders-buybacks.

Vaneigem, Raoul. The Revolution of Everyday Life.

Berardi, Franco. The American Unconscious and the Disintegration of the West. Substack. https://francoberardi.substack.com/p/el-inconsciente-americano-y-ladesintegracion.

Strimpel, Zoe. The Israel Defence Forces Are the Most Moral Soldiers in the World. The Telegraph, April 27, 2024. https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2024/04/27/israel-defence-forces-mostmoral-soldiers-in-the-world/.

Capitalism as Decay and Chaos. Socialism as Social Order and Security.

[Capitalism has destroyed much of the US, including Detroit (pictured).]

By Sudip Bhattacharya

We’ve entered the era of smartphones and eugenics. “They’re eating cats, they’re eating dogs,” Trump had exclaimed frantically, echoing words that could’ve been uttered by a Klansman in the early 1920s, but now that very same level of toxicity having been beamed into households all across the world for whoever has the stomach to bear it.[1] So many now have access to learning about events on the ground from almost anywhere, where we can communicate, send money to, and spread the word of various political events due to the devices in peoples’ pockets, and yet, none of that alters the fact that entire family trees have been erased in places like Palestine. No amount of streaming with emojis can negate the brutality of Israel’s siege, a high-tech form of genocidal intent and killing, with drones swarming the skies, but a genocide nonetheless.[2]

R. Palme Dutt, a Marxist theoretician of the interwar period in Europe, noted similar dynamics in his own era, the clashing of so-called technological progress with civilizational decay and impending horror. At the time, the productive capacities of Europe had expanded tremendously in a rather short period of time. Major manufacturing and industrialization had finally led to a capacity across most Western societies, including the U.S., to resolve issues of hunger and starvation. However, countries chose to get rid of their “surplus” food, burning it, dumping some of it into the nearest ocean.

“The burning of millions of bags of coffee or tons of grain, in the midst of mass starvation and poverty, have horrified the world,” he stated at the time, while the global economy had still been reeling from years of a financial reckoning.[3] In parts of the colonized world, European policymakers would intentionally funnel basic food commodities, like rice and grain, to maintain high levels of prices for such products, in the process leading to mass starvation in places like Bengal. Prior to European colonization, famines were a rare phenomenon. Even in feudal times, local authorities, however authoritarian and demeaning, had kept aside piles of grain to satiate the masses in times of hardship, to avoid unrest. But that had all changed the moment the British ships arrived, followed by the French and the Americans, all of whom were dedicated to squeezing profit out of every inch of land and person, from the trader to the peasant.[4]

Treating food as a commodity rather than meeting human needs remains a routine feature of our global system. It was only a month or so into the pandemic when farmers across the U.S. were compelled to destroy acres of “excess” food. “In scenes reminiscent of the Great Depression, dairy farmers dumped lakes of fresh cow’s milk (3.7m gallons a day in early April, now about 1.5 million per day), hog and chicken farmers aborted piglets and euthanized hens by the thousands, and crop growers plowed acres of vegetables into the ground as the nation’s brittle and anarchic food supply chain began to snap and crumble.”[5]

In 2008, Japan, one of America’s closest allies, had plans to “dump” excess rice in parts of Asia to alleviate food insecurity. The U.S. was against this, the number one reason being that it could decrease the demand for rice in consumer markets, allowing the price of rice to “dampen.” A New York Times report, the prestigious rag for the “concerned” elite, had stated at the time: “The effect would be more pronounced if Japan followed it with further sales or donations from the 1.7 million tons of imported rice now sitting in Japanese warehouses. Roughly 30 million tons of rice are traded globally each year.”[6] As Dutt understood it generations ago, the mishmash of progress, as in the productive capacity to create a far richer world than it’s ever been imagined, coupled with what he described as “decay”, was not a problem of humanity losing its soul in the modern age. It wasn’t a problem of technological advancement rotting our level of empathy with one another, or something philosophical of that nature. Rather, it’s a direct product of the disorder and irrationalism capitalism forces the vast majority of humanity to endure. “Today they are burning wheat and grain, the means of human life. To-morrow they will be burning living human bodies”, Dutt stated as early as 1934, predicting the death spiral modern capitalism would allow to fester, leading to the next great war that would end up killing millions of people due to inter-imperialist rivalry desperate for new markets to conquer.[7] Much of the world had been carved up and seized by the British empire, the French, and the U.S., with newly industrialized nations such as Italy and Germany frustrated at their own limited right as Europeans to dominate and control parts of Africa and Asia. This was one of the main reasons precipitating the war, with fascism as a product of this rising anger over the denial of the German peoples and the Italian peoples, and the Japanese, access to more colonies and overseas territories they could also brutally exploit for extreme profit and gain.[8]

Through capitalism, such things as economic growth, competition, and the drive for more are prioritized against what humanity truly requires for its existence, from peace and security to universal access to healthy food, housing and entertainment. This rotting dynamic has been the most pronounced in the U.S., and countries it chooses to ally with, like South Korea, where at the most molecular level, our daily lives become a constant web of stress and rolling chaos. How else to describe being surrounded by so much alleged abundance, and yet, not having consistent access to it based on how much you make, being denied that access in critical moments even, like when severely ill. Sharon Zhang at Truthout wrote merely a few years ago, “A new report done by the U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO) has found that drug prices in the U.S. on average are about two to four times higher than they are in Australia, Canada and France.”[9] Some of this has changed, but only for certain medicines, like insulin, but even then, Americans have died due to this inane system whereby you either have the money to give to these private entities that hoard these essential resources and services, or you are compelled to plead for donations to help pay for life-saving medications instead.[10] How is this sanity, let alone moral?

Most of us navigate our lives with this level of pressure mounting. Either we have limited access to the most fundamental things we need, as employees, as consumers who can sustain some level of income cobbled together in a mesh of part-time and full-time work, or we lose it all in a matter of weeks, months maybe, if we’re so fortunate. One moment you can be at your computer, or at the cash register, filing reports, running items through barcode scanners mindlessly, and in another, you’re hiding in your bedroom as a voice bellows at you from behind your apartment door, right before another eviction notice has been slipped underneath your door.

It is in the “rational” interest to cause this level of mayhem and pain, and panic in our lives by businesses that are allowed to dominate and control how much we work, how much we own, how much time we have to be ourselves. Unemployment is a necessary condition for capitalism to thrive. For private employers to retain an increasing level of profit, they must euphemistically “let people go”, cut them off. There can never be full employment either since capitalists need and desire some level of people without jobs so they can always replace their existing employees if unrest starts to brew, and to drive down wages with this threat in place. Economist Richard Wolff states, “Capitalism makes employment depend chiefly on capitalists’ decisions to undertake production, and those decisions depend on profits. If capitalists expect profits high enough to satisfy them, they hire. If capitalists don’t, we get unemployment. Capitalism requires the unemployed, their families and their communities to live with firing decisions made by capitalists even though they are excluded from participating in those decisions.”[11] Such decisions sow chaos at the personal level for so many, and even social problems that communities must endure (like crime), and yet, these considerations are barely considered since the main guiding light is how heavy a man’s wallet can get.

Dutt too spoke of how major capitalists, just as the global capitalist economy was steadying itself through some measure of increased social democracy, decided to unload workers they felt they didn’t need, once more sowing disorder and political turmoil. “Increasing millions are thrown aside as ‘superfluous’”, he stated.[12]

However, none of this can compare to the most chaotic and disorderly result of all: climate change. Quite literally, the right for mainly Western companies and nations to accrue wealth has been the reason why the waters are rising across the globe, why so much land has become more challenging to grow food on, why the temperatures are rising to dangerously high levels, threatening the majority of the world’s population.[13] The need to see red arrows ticking upward on graphs unveiled at executive boardrooms across Europe and the U.S. has been the reason why humanity is on the brink of extinction.

LORDS OF CHAOS

Only in capitalist societies can thugs like Trump, and Bolsonaro find space to not merely fester, but thrive, and maneuver into major seats of power. At the time of Dutt’s major work, Fascism and Social Revolution, published prior to the horrors of WWII, fascism itself had already become a worldwide phenomenon, having conquered state power in Italy, Germany, Japan, and threatening to do so in the U.S. among other places. Of course, the U.S. itself, although not explicitly run by a fascist party, remained in the throes of white supremacy and colonialist interests. It was the same within the British Isles too, with figures like Winston Churchill already professing his hatred of black and brown peoples, eager for the British government to pour money and technological support behind every hard-right nationalist movement imaginable to squelch the rising tide of “Bolshevism” across parts of Eastern Europe.

The rise of fascism and other forms of extreme forms of racialized terror (i.e. Jim and Jane Crow) had everything to do with capitalism and how it breeds elements of social dysfunction, intentionally or not. At one level, due the chaos that capitalism itself creates and the various classes affected by such chaos, people themselves can be driven, out of lost privilege in many instances, toward extreme right political movements. As Dutt explains, during times of economic crises, no one was immune. Even those who have been raised to believe they are “middle class”, a meaningless vacuous concept designed to obscure one’s true class position (you can earn six figures and still be an employee reliant on your job), can start to feel the ground underneath them shake. However, because such elements of society have been developed intellectually to think they’re entitled to more, and are better than others, in many examples, such groups lash out at those below or around them instead of seeking solidarity against said system of exploitation and unjust results. This is more of an issue, Dutt explains, when societies lack a robust labor movement that’s radical and internationalist, able to funnel the rage of the white-collar workers and occasionally, even small business owners, into something far more productive for themselves and others. In the American context, the rise of overt white supremacy was eventually welcomed by various capitalists because this meant a force that could stamp down on socialist, or more liberatory movements that sought to free the black masses and other nonwhite groups from their position as being heavily exploitable and captured as a consumer base for separate, oftentimes subpar, services and goods.[14]

But even this last point has everything to do with the broader economic system. In the U.S., political power and speech is fundamentally linked with money and wealth. Although on technical terms all civic and various interest groups can participate in lobbying government institutions, for the most part, those who have the most money can effectively shape policy at a greater pace, able to unleash their army of lawyers into every conceivable issue-based policy discussion at Capitol Hill.

Political scientist, Lee Drutman, in one of the rare well-written Atlantic pieces, writes, “Corporations now spend about $2.6 billion a year on reported lobbying expenditures—more than the $2 billion we spend to fund the House ($1.18 billion) and Senate ($860 million). It’s a gap that has been widening since corporate lobbying began to regularly exceed the combined House-Senate budget in the early 2000s. Today, the biggest companies have upwards of 100 lobbyists representing them, allowing them to be everywhere, all the time. For every dollar spent on lobbying by labor unions and public-interest groups together, large corporations and their associations now spend $34. Of the 100 organizations that spend the most on lobbying, 95 consistently represent business.”[15]

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But beyond the explicit political channels available to people, allegedly, capitalism privileges the worst elements of people to attain power and control. If it is a meritocracy, it is a meritocracy for the craven and cunning, the sociopathic and disjointed. In American life, the distribution of land to white “settlers”, for the purposes of extending capitalist hegemony across the North American continent, empowered the worst to exact revenge and bloodlust against various groups of native and indigenous peoples. The Northern obsession over sustaining high levels of private manufacturing was intrinsically tied to the resources plucked and grown by enslaved Africans.[16]

In the modern era, starting in Dutt’s time, capitalists not only created the conditions for the indirect creation of swamp things and horrid extensions of themselves into the rest of civil society, they actively supported rightwing formations, from the right-wing of the social democrats who promised some measure of stability without “Bolshevism”, to finally, fascist groups and various rightwing nationalists, all of whom dedicated to smashing communist and socialist workers organizations across Europe. In the U.S., the growth of the Klan was supported by business owners, national and regional, as a means of instilling terror and “discipline” against the domestic “horde” of black and nonwhite peoples seeking self-determination, and labor groups vying for dignity and some measure of control over their own lives.[17]

In Italy, Dutt writes, the army itself trained Mussolini’s forces and stepped aside as those same forces rampaged through socialist party labor halls and community centers. As communists threatened to bring democracy to Germany, the German capitalists and their allies abroad eagerly feted and funded what was the Nazi party. “Unlimited funds, not only from German bourgeois, but also from foreign bourgeois sources, were poured into the National Socialist coffers,” he explained.[18]

One of the leading backers of Trump is Elon Musk, a billionaire able to accrue wealth and power during “normal” times under capitalism.[19] Now, he uses that same wealth and influence to spread disinformation and hate speech, reminiscent of the 1920s, through social media, as well as throwing his support behind someone as odious and confusing as Trump, a billionaire himself, having done the brave thing of not paying workers, and inheriting his father’s money.[20]

But before Trump became the increasingly spiteful figure he is, uncomfortably alongside Musk, the political class, both Democrat and “moderate” Republican, supported him, and allowed for him to grow his wealth and control.[21] While working class black and brown families were torn apart in the ‘90s, Trump was applauded for his branding schemes.[22] Just as others were being hit by drones, Trump, even though he was humiliated, was invited to luncheons and major public events, despite his track record of being a notorious scumbag.[23]

Beyond Trump or Trumpism itself, the various scurrilous ideas that consist of his platform, like his intense hatred of immigrants from Latin America, China, and parts of Africa (essentially, the entirety of the nonwhite world), have been pet projects among billionaires for decades.[24] John Tanton, one of the leading “advocates” against immigration from the so-called Third World, soaked in his fear of “demographic” changes to the U.S., succeeded in spreading his poisonous gospel with the aid of benefactors such as Cordelia Scaife May, part of the wealthy Mellon of Carnegie Mellon fame.[25] “With May’s support, Tanton established a small network of think tanks and nonprofits that would, in the decades ahead, grow to become the most powerful mainstream advocates of immigration restriction since the early nineteenth century—a key component in the ruling class’s ideological machinery of exploitation and oppression,” writes Brendan O’Connor in his study of the rise of the modern far right in Blood Red Lines: How Nativism Fuels the Right.[26] As much as companies have branded themselves as empathetic or somewhat oriented to aspects of social justice (at least in some scraps of rhetoric), they easily align with the existing security state as it serves to harass, intimidate and sow mass panic and fear among black and brown working class and poor migrants. “In fact, brands and private industry had pride of place at the Border Security Expo,” O’Connor details, “Corporate sponsors included familiar names like Verizon and Motorola, and other less well-known ones, such as Elbit Systems of America, a subsidiary of Israel’s largest private defense contractor, as well as a handful of IT firms with aggressive slogans like ‘Ever Vigilant’ (CACI), “Securing the Future” (ManTech, and ‘Securing Your Tomorrow’ (Unisys).”[27]

Coalitional corporate entities, like the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC), which includes companies like Amazon and Johnson & Johnson among other heavyweights, exists solely to influence politicians, to develop networks of think tanks, and to pour money into astroturf on-the-ground groups to do everything possible to stall any form of progressive legislation that would improve the lives of working people, and various marginalized groups.[28] Such organizations end up diminishing the natural antibodies of a healthy political system, of radicalized labor and the left, that could serve as a bulwark against impeding fascism. “Despite its generally low profile, ALEC has drawn scrutiny recently for promoting gun rights policies like the Stand Your Ground law at the center of the Trayvon Martin shooting case in Florida, as well as bills to weaken labor unions and tighten voter identification rules.”[29]

What benefits the public interest, including a safe and healthy political system, is far from the minds of most corporations and those who run them, no matter how well spoken and articulate they may be in front of the cameras. A Trump, a Musk, a Sheldon Adelson, a Bill Gates, a Jeff Bezos, Steve Bannon will routinely slither into the moonlight so long as there exists the swamp, a bubbling sweltering pile of business “rationale” and anti-egalitarian anti-human debris, lurking and seeking an opportunity to smash and dominate. 

And when the contradictions of life under capitalist hegemony expands, such forces will continue to unify against any form of legitimate and effective labor and justice-oriented agitation. They’d rather watch the world burn than allow for anyone to be able to control their own waking lives.

COMMUNISM IS ORDER & PEACE

Communism has stood in stark contrast to the chaos and lack of control that most people endure while surviving the vicious cycle of booms and busts in a capitalist system. Under capitalism, social dysfunction and disorder are the norm, increasingly so. This is not to suggest that somehow all social issues or at all times, social order, will be present in a socialist world. There will still be tensions between people, conflicting issues too. But what is so different about a socialist world compared to a capitalist one that we have currently, a product of U.S. imperial rule, is that such disorder and dysfunction are severely limited, and can be better resolved since the prime objective of a socialist society internationally is one that privileges and incentivizes the public welfare over private selfish desires, especially any that’s been attached to the profit-motive that’s led us down this abyss that we’re currently experiencing.

“The workers’ dictatorship is the only alternative to the capitalist dictatorship, which at present is increasingly passing from the older ‘democratic’ to Fascist forms,” Dutt stated.[30]

Peace and security, social order and justice can only be achieved once there is a system in place  that doesn’t allow for wealth to equate with political power and rampant influence. Order and peace is unleashed, allowed to thrive, when goods and services are managed, not for private gain, but rather for the public welfare. In a socialist society, people would still need to labor, but when they do, it’ll not be for any private employer. Instead, it would be done to help provide what the general public needs and wants. Housing, healthcare, education, entertainment, and food, among other fundamental things that make life worth living will be managed and distributed by government institutions, institutions that are transparent and have a higher level of input from workers, and communities that have historically been displaced and disenfranchised.

Essentially, to prevent the world from slipping back into the clutches of political and economic chaos, there can be no capitalist class. There can be no so-called “free market” in charge of how people access basic amenities. The U.S. imperial regime, which has done so much to redistribute land and resources for herself and her allies the world over, must be dismantled, replaced by a global world order of governments seeking common solutions and health for the world’s majority, especially for those who’ve been often condemned to a life of immiseration and dysfunction due to the rise of the U.S. global regime.[31]

Socialism brings us closer to ourselves as human beings, not as profit-seeking monsters, sometimes compelled by capitalism’s latent drive for more and more, to destroy ourselves and others. Trumps will certainly still show themselves in a socialist society, the art of dissent is still one that can be easily manipulated by nefarious forces claiming pluralism and “democracy”. But in a socialist world that seeks to uplift the historically exploited and oppressed, backed by governments that work tirelessly to help regulate society in ways that benefits the majority of such groups, not only shall the rightwing remain a tiny minority, but if they do start to boil and bubble over, will find no allies in higher institutions of management and governing. Instead, they will only find what we ourselves experience today, repression and the prioritization of positive public policies that value the oppressed and exploited, which include our right to control those elements that threaten us.

“Only the working-class revolution can save humanity, can carry humanity forward, can organise the enormous powers of production that lie ready to hand,” Dutt had stated, when optimism and pessimism clashed.[32]

Examples of this future we can see glimmers of in countries such as Cuba, where healthcare remains a right, despite the brutal U.S. embargo.[33] Or in places like Vietnam, a country that rebuilt itself, almost miraculously, following the brutal occupation of French and U.S. forces.[34] China too, despite some of its flaws, represents forms of political thinking that can prove useful to the rest of the planet. As Covid-19 became reality, it was China’s government that so swiftly directed the masses to construct hospital after hospital to care for its own.[35]

In America too, there have been fleeting moments but moments nonetheless of what can be possible. The early days of the Reconstruction era, as W.E.D. Du Bois examined in his classic Black Reconstruction, saw the federal government, for the first time in U.S. history, rise to the occasion in creating government programs and institutions that could provide basic schooling and healthcare to the masses, black and white, while having troops stationed across the confederacy to stifle emergent white supremacist rebellions and putsch.[36] It was only when the federal government retreated from these stated objectives that the white supremacist gangs had taken over and conquered political power.

But what was done can be done again. There is no other choice anyway. It is either we, as Dutt states, “rise to the height of its task”, of finding ways to generate the social movements that can create order and stability that people crave, and need, or we witness total devolution and chaos. Nothing is set in stone, yet. The waters haven’t risen over our heads, not yet at least. But whatever we choose to do has to be done, very, very soon.

There will be no order and peace, or security, until the capitalist and the colonizer have been obliterated.

 
Notes

[1] Merlyn Thomas & Mike Wendling, “Trump repeats baseless claim about Haitian immigrants eating pets,” BBC News, Sept. 2024, https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c77l28myezko.

[2] Rasha Khatib, et. al, “Counting the dead in Gaza: difficult but essential,” The Lancet, July 10, 2024, https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(24)01169-3/fulltext.

[3] R. Palme Dutt, Fascism & Social Revolution (New York: International Publishing Co., 1934), 64.

[4] Mike Davis, Late Victorian Holocausts (New York: Verso, 2002).

[5] Christopher D. Cook, “Farmers are destroying mountains of food. Here's what to do about it,” The Guardian, May 7 2020, https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2020/may/07/farmers-food-covid-19.

[6] Keith Bradsher & Andrew Martin, “U.S. in Difficult Position Over Japan’s Rice Plan,” New York Times, May 23, 2008, https://www.nytimes.com/2008/05/23/business/worldbusiness/23rice.html.

[7] Dutt, 68.

[8] Dutt, Fascism & Social Revolution.

[9] Sharon Zhang, “Prescription Drugs in US Are Quadruple What They Cost Elsewhere, Report Finds,” Truthout, April 21, 2021, https://truthout.org/articles/prescription-drugs-in-u-s-are-quadruple-what-they-cost-elsewhere-report-finds/?gad_source=1&gclid=CjwKCAiA65m7BhAwEiwAAgu4JHAE9XUZPidG3m1RSVg_DXL1XYekevJptgBSD5C58J0r2Cv9NnbEPhoC6tAQAvD_BwE.

[10] Ben Popken, “With rise in patients dying from rationing insulin, U.N. tries a new solution,” NBC News, Nov. 15, 2019, https://www.nbcnews.com/business/business-news/rise-patients-dying-rationing-insulin-u-n-tries-new-solution-n1083816.

[11] Richard Wolff, “Capitalism and Unemployment,” Truthout, Nov. 15, 2013, https://truthout.org/articles/capitalism-and-unemployment/.

[12] Dutt, 44.

[13] “Crop Changes,” National Geographic, https://www.nationalgeographic.com/climate-change/how-to-live-with-it/crops.html.

[14] Robin D.G. Kelley, Hammer and Hoe (Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press, 1990).

[15] Lee Drutman, “How Corporate Lobbyists Conquered American Democracy,” The Atlantic, April 20, 2015, https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2015/04/how-corporate-lobbyists-conquered-american-democracy/390822/.

[16] Greg Grandin, The End of the Myth: From the Frontier to the Border Wall in the Mind of America (New York: MacMillan, 2020).

[17] Linda Gordon, The Second Coming of the KKK (New York: W.W. Norton, 2018).

[18] Dutt, 139.

[19] Maggie Haberman, et. al, “How Elon Musk Has Planted Himself Almost Literally at Trump’s Doorstep,” New York Times, Dec. 30, 2024, https://www.nytimes.com/2024/12/30/us/politics/elon-musk-trump-mar-a-lago.html.

[20] David Barstow, “Trump Engaged in Suspect Tax Schemes as He Reaped Riches From His Father,” New York Times, Oct. 2, 2018, https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2018/10/02/us/politics/donald-trump-tax-schemes-fred-trump.html.

[21] Maureen Dowd, “When Hillary and Donald Were Friends,” New York Times, Nov. 2, 2016, https://www.nytimes.com/2016/11/06/magazine/when-hillary-and-donald-were-friends.html.

[22] Lisette Voytko-Best, “Judge Rules Trump Can Be Sued For Marketing Scheme Fraud,” Forbes, July 26, 2019, https://www.forbes.com/sites/lisettevoytko/2019/07/25/judge-rules-trump-can-be-sued-for-marketing-scheme-fraud/.

[23] Shawn McCreesh, “Trump Among New York’s Elites at a Charity Dinner: It Got Awkward,” New York Times, Oct. 18, 2024, https://www.nytimes.com/2024/10/18/us/elections/donald-trump-al-smith-dinner-new-york.html.

[24] Christine Ro, “Why African Groups Want Reparations From The Gates Foundation,” Forbes, Sept. 2, 2024, https://www.forbes.com/sites/christinero/2024/09/02/why-african-groups-want-reparations-from-the-gates-foundation/.

[25] Nicholas Kulish & Mike Mcintire, “Why an Heiress Spent Her Fortune Trying to Keep Immigrants Out,” New York Times, August 14, 2019, https://www.nytimes.com/2019/08/14/us/anti-immigration-cordelia-scaife-may.html.

[26] Brendan O’Connor, Blood Red Lines: How Nativism Fuels the Right (New York: Haymarket, 2021), 29.

[27] Brendan O’Connor, 175.

[28] Alex SeitzWald, “Revealed: Full List of ALEC’s Corporate Members,” Truthout, May 5, 2012, https://truthout.org/articles/revealed-full-list-of-alecs-corporate-members/?gad_source=1&gclid=Cj0KCQiA1Km7BhC9ARIsAFZfEIufx4FOoy_3vNZHfBMnvL2x7OEGtWbVauJtxl46Oc2GgUqhsUP8h30aAkgBEALw_wcB.

[29] Mike McIntire, “Conservative Nonprofit Acts as a Stealth Business Lobbyist,” New York Times, April 21, 2012, https://www.nytimes.com/2012/04/22/us/alec-a-tax-exempt-group-mixes-legislators-and-lobbyists.html.

[30] Dutt, 306.

[31] “Hugo Chavez Harshly Criticizes Bush at U.N.,” NPR, Sept. 20, 2006, https://www.npr.org/2006/09/20/6111080/hugo-chavez-harshly-criticizes-bush-at-u-n.

[32] Dutt, 309.

[33] David Blumenthal, “Fidel Castro's Health Care Legacy,” The Commonwealth Fund, Nov. 26, 2016, https://www.commonwealthfund.org/blog/2016/fidel-castros-health-care-legacy.

[34] “Viet Nam’s Economy is Forecast to Grow 6.1% in 2024: WB“, World Bank, August 26, 2024, https://www.worldbank.org/en/news/press-release/2024/08/26/viet-nam-s-economy-is-forecast-to-grow-6-1-in-2024-wb.

[35] Yuliya Talmazan, “China's coronavirus hospital built in 10 days opens its doors, state media says,” NBC News, Feb. 3, 2020, https://www.nbcnews.com/news/world/china-s-coronavirus-hospital-built-10-days-opens-its-doors-n1128531.

[36] W.E.B. Du Bois, Black Reconstruction in America 1860-1880 (New York: The Free Press, 1935).

Trump, Tariffs, and Trade: ‘Protectionism’ Won’t Save Workers

By Eugene Puryear

Republished from Liberation News.

President-elect Donald Trump has declared his intention to enact tariffs on trade from, at least, China, Mexico and Canada. He’s also threatening tariffs on BRICS nations if they are not sufficiently supportive of the dollar. Trump has also floated an across-the-board tariff on all goods coming into the country, and specific tariffs on individual companies like John Deere. These tariffs are supposed to improve the situation for the American worker and the country writ large. Given the ravages of deindustrialization in large swaths of the United States, moving away from “free trade” holds an instinctive appeal to those of us fighting to make ends meet. 

In reality “protectionism,” as these sorts of tariff policies are called, is just another of the ruling elite’s economic strategies. That, like, “free trade,” comes with a range of problems for workers, to greater or lesser degrees depending on one’s occupation. With Trump linking tariffs to issues like migration, dollar supremacy and managing the fall-out of tax cuts for the wealthy, the general effects of tariffs will also be affected by political shocks.

The very debate over “trade policy” reflects how inadequate the capitalist system is for meeting the needs of the vast majority of working and poor people. The problems it looks to solve can only be addressed by replacing the profit-first orientation of capitalism with the people-first orientation of socialism. 

Tariffs 101

A tariff is a tax — a tax on goods coming into a country from another jurisdiction. The popular perception is that this is a tax on foreign companies in other countries. However, the reality is different. A tariff is a tax on imports, so most of the burden falls on the companies importing either fully produced goods or parts to assemble or sell in the U.S. 

In other words, if Wal-Mart buys TVs from China to sell in its U.S. stores, Wal-Mart pays the tariff when it receives the TV’s from China. Wal-Mart can, of course, increase the price of the TV to absorb the cost of the tariff, meaning the tax is really paid by the person trying to buy an affordable TV. Wal-Mart might buy more TVs from a U.S. company, creating some jobs. However, in addition to higher production costs, less competition means the U.S. TV companies also can increase their prices. So, at the end of the day, all the TVs in Wal-Mart are going to be more expensive. 

During Trump’s first term, for example, tariffs were placed on washing machines. One study found that approximately 1,800 new jobs were created at Whirlpool, Samsung and LG factories in the U.S. However, according to the same study, in the months following those tariffs, prices for washers and dryers increased as well, by $86 and $92 per unit, respectively.

As Trump himself has noted about the impact of his proposed new tariff policies when asked if he could “guarantee” that it would not raise prices: “I can’t guarantee anything.”

‘Benefits?’

For the working class, understanding these trade-offs is crucial. What can benefit one subset of our class, can hurt the other, and in both senses “hurt” and “help” are relative concepts. Autoworkers, for instance, suffer on the job injury rates twice as high as workers overall. At the Rivian Automotive electric vehicle factory, for example, workers sustained injuries as serious as cracked skulls, bone fractures, back lacerations that required surgery and even amputated fingers. 

So, increasing “manufacturing jobs” is no panacea, even if the salaries are higher than in other working-class sectors. Nonetheless, the appeal of tariffs to many is that it will bring overseas manufacturing jobs back to the U.S. In Trump’s own words:

This new American industrialism will create millions and millions of jobs, massively raise wages for American workers, and make the United States into a manufacturing powerhouse like it used to be many years ago.

The year 1979 was the peak of manufacturing employment in the U.S., with 19.5 million employed. Currently there are 12.8 million manufacturing workers, a difference of 6.7 million. During Trump’s first term, when he also pursued various tariffs, manufacturing employment, at best, increased by 350,000 jobs over four years. Even if you were to add in the best case scenario of the impact of the Inflation Reduction Act and the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs act, the possibility of more than a few hundred thousand manufacturing jobs a year being created seems highly unlikely. In such circumstances, manufacturing jobs reaching the level they were at in the year 2000, much less 1979, is a faraway prospect. 

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Further, most workers — roughly 90% — do not work in manufacturing, placing them on the losing end of cost increases associated with tariffs. One analysis estimates that the tens of millions of workers making less than $55,000 could see their cost-of-living go up between 5-6% from Trump’s tariff proposals. The heaviest burden falls on those making less than $28,600, which is already “insufficient to meet a one-person basic family budget in any county or metro area in the United States.”

The real motive

Trump’s tariff policy, from a worker’s perspective, is classic divide and conquer. It entices those struggling with the cost-of-living with the limited, possible opportunity at getting a higher-paying manufacturing job, while making life more expensive for everyone else, in particular the lowest paid workers. This faux-pro-worker policy, then, really has different goals. First and foremost is to kneecap China’s economy. 

Since the earliest days of capitalism, tariffs have been used for such purposes. When combined with military power, tariffs are a way for capitalists in one country to maintain their advantages over others. As Fredrich Engels, pioneering Marxist, noted: “England thus supplemented the protection she practiced at home by the Free Trade she forced upon her possible customers abroad; and, thanks to this happy mixture of both systems, at the end of the wars, in 1815, she found herself, with regard to all important branches of industry, in possession of the virtual monopoly of the trade of the world.” 

Significant tariffs on China directly (or third countries where Chinese businesses invest to export to the U.S.), combined with sanctions policy and military force, are designed to raise the “cost of doing business” with Chinese companies for companies from anywhere looking to also do business in the United States. The hope is to slow Chinese economic growth and development and/or forcing China to make various economic concessions to the U.S. 

Another motivation for Trump’s tariff policy is to try to cover the holes he plans to create through his trillion dollar tax transfers to billionaires. Trump and the Republicans are promising to extend the tax cuts they enacted in 2017 at the cost of $4 trillion, primarily benefiting the ultra-rich. The average tax cut for the bottom 60% of the country would be $500, for people with $5 million in income, the average tax cut would be $280,000. 

The only way to address the government’s debt, also a Trump promise, while pursuing these tax cuts (and more) would be destructive cuts to essentially all vital government programs, including Social Security. Since most workers certainly would not like to see their retirement cut so that millionaires can buy new cars and boats, tariffs are meant to try to keep enough critical programs afloat that it staves off mass anger. 

Failure all around

Most estimates show Trump’s tariffs will not be enough to replace losses from his tax cuts for the ultra-rich, and real life has shown that Trump and Biden’s tariff policies have failed to hobble Chinese steel or auto companies. So, even considering its true purpose, Trump’s tariff proposals are unlikely to meet their goals. Not to mention they are going to increase costs for working-class people, create — at best — a very limited number of manufacturing jobs, and possibly slow down the U.S. and global economy leading to more economic misery for the working class. 

Trump’s “protectionism” is no better than the alternative of “free trade.” They are both just capitalist strategies to maintain their stranglehold on wealth and power. 

As we’ve noted before, “Relentless focus on profit is core to capitalism. This obsession with profit is the system’s motor engine.” Yet since 1969, profitability has been trending downward. The first response of the capitalist class, starting in the 1970s, to promote policies that have become known as “neoliberalism”: expanding production in the developing world (globalization); attacks on public spending and progressive taxation (austerity); and a massive expansion of U.S. military power to subdue those who refuse to comply with the imperial agenda.​​ Which all came with a heavy dose of “free trade” ideology. 

These strategies failed to fully restore profitability and created their own contradictions, like the rise of China, that also created issues for the ruling class. So now, a new “protectionist” strategy has arisen to apply different medicine to the same illness. What is really needed is radical surgery, a total change in the economy, from profit first, to people first, or, socialism.

Bodily Autonomy is Impossible Under Capitalism

By Petra Glenn

Bodily autonomy is the right to make decisions about one’s own body. United States capitalism has turned bodies into commodities, thus preventing the obtainment of the human right of bodily autonomy. Capitalism requires the utilization of bodies as capital to generate wealth. The historic bodily oppression and utilization, particularly of black women, has created a dangerous and exploitative experience of motherhood in the United States. Rather than being based on care, the American medical, childcare, and education systems are built to generate profit, which in many cases results in poor care and exploitation. Due to the role and priority of economic efficiency in every stage of reproduction within the United States racialized capitalism, true bodily autonomy is impossible to obtain. 

This argument is part of a wider national discussion regarding bodily autonomy in the wake of Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, and Republicans’ newly revealed Project 2025, both of which highlight the GOP’s goal of eliminating access to reproductive healthcare. However, Project 2025 and the Dobbs decision are a consequence of a working system rather than a broken one. Capitalism, in theory and practice, relies on the commodification of bodies. So, despite living under a system supposedly grounded in individual liberties (abortion bans notwithstanding), to secure proper bodily autonomy, capitalism must be abolished. 

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Capitalism requires the utilization of bodily autonomy to sustain profit from workers. Workers sell their labor that occurs through the use of their bodily capital. Capitalists utilize labor by placing an economic value on labor and bodily capital. Through this process, the worker’s body becomes commodified. The United States economy was created through the oppression of enslaved person’s bodily autonomy and now operates under the guise of guaranteeing bodily autonomy but is instead rooted in the denial and utilization of bodily autonomy. Reproduction is vital to this system as it creates more bodies for the labor supply. Laborers create surplus value, or the value from labor that isn’t used to compensate the laborer. Through surplus value, businesses and companies generate profits. The goal within capitalist markets is to maximize profits, and therefore the surplus value created through laborers. Laborers thus don’t own their labor value. This system therefore relies on the exploitation of lower classes, which further burdens marginalized populations, such as women. 

The oppression of women has long played a role in the maintenance of capitalism even when separated from its racialized elements. The creation of modern Western class hierarchies was in part an establishment of gender hierarchies. From slavery through feudalism to capitalism, the oppression of women has been a feature of all stages of class society. The creation of separate family units isolated women into servile positions in their homes and families. Capitalist ideology reduced women to vessels of future workers, demeaning them while stealing the fruits of their uncompensated domestic labor. Pregnant people are therefore cogs in the creation of a labor supply while being economically valued through their labor in rearing children, homemaking, and other aspects of unpaid labor on which the United States economy relies. 

Black women are among the most oppressed populations in the United States through their intersection of race and gender. Through the legacy of slavery and contemporary racist policies,  race and American capitalism are inherently linked. Black labor was, and still is, foundational to the growth and development of the United States. The pivotal industries of cotton, tobacco, and sugar, which established the early infrastructure and profit that grew the economy, were built by enslaved persons. Railroads, which were essential in the Western expansion that grew and industrialized the states, were too. The White House, Capitol, and other landmarks were built by enslaved people. The rearing of many white children of plantation owners was through the labor of enslaved women. The for-profit prison industry and policing system were created in response to the emancipation of enslaved persons and now rely on black bodies for continual profit. The very core of the United States economy and culture was created through black labor and the suppression of bodily autonomy. 

Abortion access is just one facet of a racialized and for-profit medical system, which often fails to deliver actual care. Reproductive justice includes the ability to birth and raise children in a safe and healthy environment, which requires proper medical care beyond abortion access. These are consequences of the healthcare system's overall capitalistic structure, which creates economic inequality via class division. Owners' interests come first, so even healthcare is governed by principles of maximizing shareholder value. Among other things, this incentivizes insurance companies to deny care to those who are qualified for coverage.

Consequently, women are routinely denied the care they need to fully realize bodily autonomy — including but not limited to abortion. And it’s not just healthcare. No paid maternity leave also curtails bodily autonomy. The lack of support pushes many mothers into financial instability, disempowering these women and making them more reliant on their employers. 

Proper bodily autonomy therefore cannot exist under capitalism. For mothers in particular, every stage of conceiving, rearing, and raising children has been commodified, erasing the sanctity of procreation and parenthood. True reproductive justice is impossible under a class system that values profit over human lives. The Dobbs decision and the doom of Project 2025 simply prove that reforming a for-profit society can only secure basic rights for so long until the hierarchy inevitably shoves women back into place. Regardless of who wins in the upcoming 2024 election, securing true bodily autonomy will require greater class consciousness, rather than bandaging a system that requires control over our bodies. 

Petra Glenn is an activist and aspiring political scientist. She is pursuing her PhD and aims to aid in bridging the gap between academic theory and practice.

Palestine: The Human Cost of Capitalist Exploitation

By Peter S. Baron

As the genocide in Palestine continues, we must confront the stark reality of American involvement. American taxpayer money is funding a continuous supply of bombs and war technology to Israel, weapons that are being used to kill Palestinians. Despite the political posturing, the U.S. government’s unwavering stance isn't about moral high ground or justice — it's about cold, calculated geopolitical and capitalist interests.

Escalation and Brutality Since October 7th, 2023

Since October 7th, 2023, Israel’s brutality in Gaza has escalated to unimaginable levels. Families have been torn apart, homes reduced to rubble, and entire communities shattered. The death toll is over 45,000, including more than 41,000 civilians, 15,620 children, and 10,173 women, according to Euro Med Monitor. When including “indirect deaths,” the Lancet estimates the true death toll is likely upwards of 186,000 people. With countless bodies buried under 40 million tons of rubble, the true number may never be known.

Children, who should be playing and learning, are instead facing death and destruction. Roughly 80% of Palestinian children have reported emotional distress and trauma. Think back to when you were a child, say nine years old. Could you imagine living in such a dystopian reality? According to UNICEF, at least 17,000 children have been orphaned or separated from their families. Over 2,750 people have been detained or forcibly disappeared by the Israeli Defense Force, leaving families in anguish and communities in fear.

Israel’s constant bombardment has left over 86,200 injured, overwhelming Palestine’s already crumbling healthcare system. The injured and sick have been abandoned with nowhere to go as over 30 hospitals, 100 clinics, and 275 ambulances have been targeted and destroyed by Israeli strikes. Health professionals, who should be saving lives, are themselves becoming casualties, with over 486 killed and 640 injured. Civil defense workers, crucial for emergency response and rescue operations, have not been spared, with over 259 killed or injured.

Palestine is being suffocated under a wave of deliberate, calculated suffering. A million people are gasping for air with acute respiratory infections, 577,000 are writhing in agony with severe diarrhea, and 107,000 are battling acute jaundice. Over 100,000 people are being devoured by scabies, 65,000 are enduring the relentless torment of skin rashes, 12,000 are passing blood through their bowels in sheer agony, and 11,000 children are suffering from chickenpox in conditions that are nothing short of hellish.

And it doesn't stop there. Hundreds are gripped by mumps and meningitis, diseases that thrive in the chaos and despair deliberately inflicted upon this population. The threat of a polio outbreak looms, like a vulture waiting to feast on a community already pushed to the brink.

Gaza has tragically become a vast graveyard, a land where the living walk among the dead, buried hastily and in desperation as the relentless bombardment continues. Once vibrant neighborhoods have been reduced to fields of graves, where bodies are laid to rest in backyards, beneath staircases, and along roadsides. Cemeteries overflow, and morgues can no longer contain the sheer number of the dead. The ground is dug up repeatedly, with graves being made on top of graves as space runs out. In some places, graves themselves have been destroyed by Israeli airstrikes, leaving bones and remains scattered and exposed. The once sacred rituals of honoring the dead have been replaced by hurried, makeshift burials, often without the dignity of proper rites. Gaza has become not just a place of death, but a symbol of the utter devastation and inhumanity that has turned an entire territory into one massive, sorrow-filled cemetery.

Israel has completely destroyed over 141,920 Palestinian homes and partially damaged another 312,000, displacing at least 1.7 million people out of a population of 2.2 million. Can you fathom such enormous numbers? What about the terror of losing your home, your loved ones, and your sense of security, repeatedly over the course of eight long months? This mass displacement has left countless people without shelter, food, electricity, or basic necessities. Families are huddling in makeshift shelters, clinging to the hope of survival amidst relentless attacks.

Over 180 press headquarters, 2,500 industrial facilities, 460 schools, 690 mosques, 3 churches, and 200 heritage sites have been destroyed or damaged. This is the erasure of the history, culture, and identity of an entire people. This genocide has been the deadliest event on record for journalists in decades. Deliberately targeting reporters, killing over 140, aims to silence the truth and blind the world to the atrocities being committed.

The blockade on Palestine, which has been in place since 2007, has been elevated to a “complete siege,” significantly restricting the flow of food, water, electricity, humanitarian aid, and medical supplies ensuring that Palestinians remain trapped in a cycle of poverty, dependency, and despair. Israeli Minister of National Security, Ben-Gvir, even went so far as to assert, “The only thing that needs to enter Palestine are hundreds of tons of explosives from the Air Force, not an ounce of humanitarian aid.” This blockade, justified under the guise of security, is in reality a brutal economic stranglehold designed to cripple the region and maintain geopolitical dominance.

The justifications for the blockade of Palestine, particularly claims like those highlighted by commentator Steven Bonnell, known online as "Destiny," that Hamas uses sugar from imported soda and sweets to manufacture rockets, are patently absurd. They insult the intelligence of the global community. The implausibility of using common sugar for military rocket propulsion is glaring. It belies established chemistry.

The real motivation for blocking basic goods is to make Palestine uninhabitable. The tactic of deliberate deprivation carried out by Israeli elites with American support coerces the Palestinian population into leaving their homeland behind or suffering intolerable living conditions, thereby clearing the way for further territorial control. Israeli Colonel Yogev BarSheshet revealed as much, saying, “Whoever returns here, if they return here, will find scorched earth. No houses, no agriculture, no nothing. They have no future.”

The United States’ steadfast support of Israel’s manipulative use of basic human needs for geopolitical ends demonstrates a profound disregard, if not contempt, for the humanity of Palestinians. The death and devastation are not “mistakes.” This is a calculated campaign of destruction and control.

Economic Interests and Military-Industrial Complex

The United States’ unwavering funding for Israel’s actions in Palestine is driven by a web of economic, political, and ideological factors that prioritize profits and power over human lives.

The U.S.-Israel partnership is not just about direct military might; Israel's intelligence capabilities provide the U.S. with critical insights into Middle Eastern geopolitics, preempting threats to American economic dominance while generating profits for the elite.

Israel's advancements in cybersecurity, defense, and agriculture are exploited by U.S. industries to create profitable joint ventures and innovation hubs that benefit the wealthy few. The Iron Dome missile defense system, a joint U.S.-Israel project, is lauded for safeguarding Israeli cities, but it primarily serves to bolster the military-industrial complex, allowing U.S. defense companies to gain insights and innovations that they can apply to other projects. For example, the Iron Dome has introduced cutting-edge technology in missile interception, which the U.S. likely integrates into its own defense systems.

Of course, the production and maintenance of the Iron Dome system generate significant profits for U.S. defense contractors involved in the project. The Israeli corporation Rafael Advanced Defense Systems and the U.S. corporation Raytheon have joined up to produce Iron Dome components and systems within the U.S. The partnership is propped up by over $7 billion in U.S. investments allocated to Israeli missile defense programs since the early 1990s.

The U.S. provides Israel with billions of dollars in military aid annually, which Israel then uses to purchase advanced weaponry and technology from American defense contractors like Lockheed Martin, Raytheon, and Boeing. Outside of corporate executives, major shareholders, and a limited number of employees directly involved in the defense industry, very few people benefit from investments in these companies.

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Overall, about 61-63% of Americans own some form of stock, either directly or indirectly through mutual funds, retirement accounts, and other investment vehicles. Given the widespread investment in major indexes and mutual funds, which often include shares of these large defense companies, it is likely that a substantial portion of Americans who own stock indirectly hold shares in defense companies. For instance, many popular index funds and ETFs that track the S&P 500 or other major indexes include shares of these top defense contractors. However, this figure is misleading when it comes to the actual distribution of wealth. As of the third quarter of 2023, the top 10% of Americans held 93% of all stocks — the highest level ever recorded. In stark contrast, the bottom 50% of Americans held just 1% of all stocks. This means that despite a majority of Americans technically owning stock, most people see very little financial benefit from the market, including any profits gained by defense companies. The economic and social costs of military engagements disproportionately impact the majority, who gain almost nothing from the stock market despite their indirect involvement.

The Stable-Unstable dynamic

More broadly, the relationship with Israel is vital for U.S. companies aiming to access, dominate, and control the Middle East's abundant resources — namely, oil and natural gas. Despite the U.S. achieving energy independence, regional “stability” remains crucial for the elite, because it allows them to maintain control over global energy prices, secure profitable trade routes, and preserve their geopolitical dominance, all of which protect their economic and strategic interests on a global scale.

Israel’s US funded military capabilities aims to prevent conflicts or political upheavals that could disrupt the U.S.’ dominance over the flow of oil and other goods through critical chokepoints like the Suez Canal and the Strait of Hormuz, which are essential for maintaining global trade routes. According to Israel, for example, Israel’s Shin Bet — its FBI equivalent —  has foiled adversarial plots aimed at key targets, preventing attacks that could have disrupted global oil supplies.

But let’s be clear, what the elites seek to foster is not peaceful stability, but rather controlled instability.

Regional stability is essential in key areas like oil flow and trade routes because it ensures that oil and goods keep moving smoothly, without sudden disruptions that could hurt the profits of the elite. Stability here means oil tankers safely passing through shipping lanes without threats of piracy or war, and goods flowing from factories to markets without delays. Governments in these regions need to be cooperative, keeping things calm and under control so that business can continue as usual.

But in other regions, controlled chaos is part of the strategy. By stirring up conflict and instability in countries like Iraq, Syria, and Libya, the U.S. prevents any one country or group from becoming powerful enough to challenge American dominance. This kind of instability looks like ongoing civil wars, governments struggling to maintain control, and communities torn apart by violence. These conditions keep local leaders too busy trying to survive to focus on resisting U.S. influence or forming alliances with America’s rivals.

In this way, the U.S. ensures that no single country in these regions becomes strong enough to disrupt American interests. Instead, these countries remain weak, divided, and dependent on U.S. military aid and economic support to stay afloat. The chaos keeps them in check, while the stable regions keep the oil and goods flowing—both serving to maintain U.S. power and control in the world.

Therefore, what the elites truly seek is a balance: stability where it protects their economic interests and controlled instability where it ensures their geopolitical dominance.

Selective Stability, Controlled Instability

The U.S.-Israel military presence in the Middle East serves as the iron fist behind the smooth flow of oil and goods, ensuring that nothing disrupts the relentless pursuit of profit. Oil tankers, loaded with crude, glide through the Persian Gulf under the ever-watchful eyes of American and Israeli warships, their safety guaranteed by the threat of overwhelming force. These tankers are the arteries of the global economy, and the military presence ensures that they deliver their cargo without interruption. The calm waters mask a brutal reality: this enforced stability exists solely to protect the profits of oil magnates, ensuring that every drop of oil fuels the capitalist machine, keeping the elite firmly in power.

On land, the same dynamic plays out with trade routes from factories in the East to markets in the West. U.S. and Israeli forces act as enforcers, maintaining a system where compliant governments keep their populations in check, ensuring no disruption disturbs the flow of goods. This military presence suppresses any threat to the status quo, propping up regimes that prioritize business as usual over human rights.

Simultaneously, the U.S. military presence in the Gulf keeps the Middle East in perpetual turmoil. Israel's airstrikes on Hezbollah targets aren’t about self-defense—they’re about throwing gasoline on the fire. When bombs rip through crowded neighborhoods, it’s not just militants who suffer; it’s entire communities—families gathered around dinner tables, children laughing in the streets—obliterated in an instant. This isn’t collateral damage; it’s a strategy. The more destruction, the more Hezbollah is provoked, ensuring a vicious cycle of retaliation that justifies yet another wave of attacks. This relentless violence keeps the region seething with rage, just the way the arms dealers like it. With every missile launched, stock prices for American defense contractors soar, profits stained with the blood of innocents.

Saudi Arabia’s onslaught against the Houthis is no different. These so-called "precision" airstrikes routinely tear apart schools, hospitals, and marketplaces—places where everyday people go to survive, to live. But that’s exactly the point: to turn Yemen into a landscape of despair, ensuring it remains a theater of war. The more catastrophic the situation becomes, the more Saudi Arabia clings to American military support, feeding into the U.S.'s grand design. The bombs don’t just destroy buildings—they destroy any chance for peace, ensuring Yemen remains a battlefield where only the arms dealers prosper.

When local governments are weakened by instability, they become more desperate, more willing to sign deals that favor U.S. companies, especially in resource extraction and trade. These companies swoop in, exploiting the disarray to secure access to valuable resources at bargain prices, all while the region burns. Meanwhile, the ongoing turmoil makes it nearly impossible for rival powers like Russia and China to establish a stable presence or secure long-term investments. Every time they try to establish a foothold, the instability disrupts their plans, forcing them to pull back or lose billions in failed ventures. This ensures that U.S. interests face no real competition in the region, keeping American dominance secure.

The paradox of U.S. policy lies in using instability to achieve a form of controlled stability. By periodically destabilizing the region, U.S. elites maintain a balance of power that prevents any one nation from becoming too powerful while ensuring ongoing dependence on U.S. support.

Palestine isn't just a footnote in this power-hungry game; it's a centerpiece. The capitalist elite know that crushing Palestinians will ignite resistance, not just in Palestine but across the entire Middle East. And that's exactly what they want. This turmoil becomes the perfect excuse for Israel to beef up its military, all under the guise of "security," funded by billions of U.S. dollars. Every act of Palestinian defiance is twisted into a justification for Israel's brutal military machine, which the U.S. gleefully supports because it keeps their imperial ambitions alive.

“Orientalism” (as understood by Edward Said) provides further pretext for the atrocities in Palestine. Arabs and Muslims are depicted by corporate media and bad-faith social media personalities as violent, backward, and a threat to Western civilization, which views itself as rational and enlightened. This dehumanization makes it easier to justify and carry out extreme violence against them. The Israeli government speaks of fighting “human animals,” making Palestine a “slaughterhouse,”  and “erasing the Gaza Strip from the face of the earth.”

The skeptics among us might wonder, "Even if we are being overly destructive, isn't the core of this foreign policy in our best interests?" After all, our politicians constantly assure us that our military actions are meant to protect us and enhance our security.

No. This policy doesn't protect us; it undermines our security. The “stable instability” American elites create fosters resentment and extremism, breeding terrorist groups that then target innocent civilians, including us. The CIA has admitted that such actions generate significant "blowback," leading to increased threats that culminate in loss of lives. The fear and threats generated by our aggressive foreign policy lead to the erosion of our own civil liberties through measures like invasive airport security. One study demonstrated that despite spending over $550 million on TSA screening equipment and training, TSA agents failed to detect a threat in 67 out of 70 mock tests. This means that in 95% of the trials, the TSA missed planted threats. The elite are sacrificing our privacy and rights in the name of a security that remains elusive.

Elite Manipulation of Politicians

Historically, politicians have never hesitated to carry out the elite’s killing missions in exchange for political funding. The situation here is no different. The Israel lobby’s influence in the United States plays a significant role in maintaining this status quo. Powerful lobbying groups such as the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) exert tremendous influence over U.S. politicians. Through campaign contributions and political pressure, these groups ensure that U.S. policies remain staunchly pro-Israel. Politicians, driven by the need to secure campaign financing and re-election, often align their policies with the interests of these lobbies.

Despite its relatively small financial contributions compared to other donors, AIPAC strategically targets key lawmakers to maximize its impact. By lobbying, fostering close relationships with politicians, and forming strategic alliances and partnerships with various interest groups, political entities, and organizations to advance their policy goals and support for Israel, AIPAC ensures that legislators align with its pro-Israel agenda.

Furthermore, AIPAC uses intimidation tactics, threatening to support challengers against incumbents who do not toe the line, thereby coercing politicians to adopt its views. Recently, the anti-Zionist Democrat Jamal Bowman lost his primary to Zionist candidate George Latimer, who received over $15 million from AIPAC in the most expensive primary race ever. Politicians witness the political fallout in races like NY-16 and quickly learn the severe consequences of defying the Israel lobby. This creates an oppressive environment where fear of backlash forces compliance, transforming the political landscape into a monolithic echo chamber where Zionism is the only acceptable stance.

The Cycle of Violence and Exploitation

Remove all the moral platitudes and justifications for our actions and what we are really talking about here is an obscene, ruthless pursuit of power and money, where the deaths of children and the destruction of homes are built into the business model. The elite have their sights set on Gaza today, with plans that starkly illustrate their predatory strategies. Jared Kushner, Donald Trump’s son-in-law and former senior advisor, highlighted the "very valuable" potential of Gaza's waterfront properties. In a revealing interview at Harvard University, Kushner suggested Israel should remove civilians from Gaza to "clean up" the area.

Israeli real estate developers, such as Harey Zahav, have proposed building beachfront properties over the ruins in Gaza, which have been heavily bombarded. Constructing settlements on the remains of demolished Palestinian homes evokes the harrowing history of the Nakba, during which over 500 Palestinian towns and villages were systematically destroyed by Zionist militias. Israeli General Elad Peled described the war crimes he committed during the Nakba, saying “we entered the village [and] planted a bomb next to every house.”

Ultimately, the more successful Israel is in wiping out Palestinians, the stronger the U.S.-Israeli stranglehold on this region becomes. More land becomes available to exploit, to expand settlements, and to control strategic trade routes, such as the Suez Canal where 30% of the world’s shipping containers must pass through and the Bab el-Mandeb strait where six million barrels of oil pass through every day.

The Zionist leaders of years past were clear about their intentions. In 1948, the founder and first prime minister of Israel David Ben-Gurion said, “We must do everything to ensure [the Palestinians] never do return.” Moshe Sharret, the second prime minister, agreed, stating, “We… have come to conquer a country from the people inhabiting it.” Chaim Weizman, the first president of Israel, analogized Palestinians to “the rocks of Judea” — “obstacles that have to be cleared on a difficult path.”

At its core, Zionism is a capitalist project. It is about turning land — what should be communal — into a commodity for private profit. The Jewish State, a pamphlet written by the father of Zionism, Theodor Herzl, admits as much. He called for transforming previously non-commercial lands into productive economic zones through agriculture, urban planning, and infrastructure — efforts that would inevitably displace existing populations. Israeli authorities implemented this idea, strategically seizing and reclassifying Arab land to consolidate their control over it.

By forcibly removing Palestinians and appropriating their land, Zionism creates fertile ground for real estate ventures and new markets. This process is further bolstered by the military and security industries, cornerstones of capitalist economies, which profit from the instability and conflict.

The Zionist project does not merely parallel capitalism; it is a manifestation of it, embodying the drive to dispossess, commodify, and profit.

The Nauseating Reality

How sickening is this?

The endless churn of war keeps corporate profits soaring. Capitalism demands ever-growing profit margins, and the corporate overlords, with their iron grip on political power, won't let go. The U.S. must remain Israel's staunch ally, not for justice or security, but to keep the gears of the war machine turning, to keep the stock market fat, and to ensure the elite continue to float above the suffering they've engineered.

Without unwavering U.S. support, Israel would have to consider diplomacy, stripped of the military dominance that U.S. aid guarantees. This could finally reduce tensions, forcing other nations and groups in the region to soften their aggression, knowing the U.S. is no longer fueling the militarized madness.

However, in this late stage of capitalism, the elite cannot afford peace. Demand for weapons would plummet. The military-industrial complex, bloated by blood money, would see profits wither. Stock prices of defense companies would fall, dragging down the portfolios of the elite who thrive on this manufactured chaos.

The deep animosity between Israelis and Palestinians is a direct result of the calculated strategies employed by elites to maintain their stranglehold on power. This conflict is deeply rooted in the reality of Israel as a settler-colonial state, driven by a capitalist system that thrives on division and exploitation. The powerful deploy propaganda and systemic oppression to manipulate the masses into fighting each other, distracting them from uniting against their true oppressors — the elites themselves.

This situation mirrors the European settlers' ruthless exploitation and slaughter of Indigenous populations in North America. European elites indoctrinated and mobilized ordinary European settlers to commit genocide out of fear and hatred, but the elites were truly motivated by the opportunity to seize indigenous resources and grow obscenely wealthy. Similarly, the Israeli occupation of Palestinian territories is motivated by an elite community’s rapacious desire to control land and resources. The elites stoke hatred and fear among ordinary Israelis, framing the conflict as an inevitable clash where both sides must annihilate the other. They position themselves as indispensable protectors in this endless cycle of bloodshed, manipulating public opinion to cement their power.

Many Israelis may genuinely feel that their security is at risk, leading them to support their government’s aggressive policies as a form of self-defense. This fear is skillfully manipulated by the elite through a relentless stream of propaganda. Settlers are not inherently evil; they have been indoctrinated—through schools, media, and political discourse—to believe that their safety requires they have an exclusive right to the land.

The truth is, no one has an inherent right to any land. The earth belongs to all people. Israelis aren't wrong simply for living in Palestine; they're wrong for denying Palestinians the same right to live there.

Recognizing this common oppression is crucial for building solidarity and working towards an equitable resolution. Otherwise, we fall back into the same old power struggles that the elite have always used to divide and conquer.

The Real Struggle

The real struggle is not between Israelis and Palestinians but between the oppressed masses and the elite forces that divide them and facilitate their exploitation in the pursuit of profit and power. Israeli society, like any other, is divided by class. The elites, who benefit from the conflict, use their power to maintain control and increase their wealth, manipulating the fears and prejudices of the broader population to sustain the status quo. The average Israeli, despite being on the dominant side of the conflict, is still part of the oppressed mass under capitalism. They are manipulated into supporting policies that perpetuate the occupation and the conflict, believing it necessary for their survival and security.

On the other side, Palestinians' anger and resentment are understandable, if not inevitable. Such feelings are born from their experiences of dispossession, violence, and systemic brutality. Both populations are oppressed by the same capitalist system that prioritizes profit over human lives, using division and hatred to maintain control and suppress any potential unity against the true oppressors. There is a vast difference in degree, but not in kind.

The true enemy is not the individual Israeli or Palestinian but the elite-driven capitalist system that fuels the Zionist project. Recognizing this common oppression is crucial for building solidarity and working towards a just and equitable resolution.

This entire situation reflects a broader reality; a tiny elite class routinely manipulates global politics and economies to their advantage. The genocide in Palestine is a means to an end — ensuring that share prices climb and profits soar, all while innocent lives are taken. Millions are deemed expendable by an elite class that orchestrates these horrors from boardrooms and government offices, far removed from the bloodshed and despair their decisions cause.

This is murder for money.

Peter S. Baron is the author of If Only We Knew: How Ignorance Creates and Amplifies the Greatest Risks Facing Society (https://www.ifonlyweknewbook.com) and is currently pursuing a J.D. and M.A. in Philosophy at Georgetown University.

Groveling at the Feet of Greed: How U.S. Politicians Sacrifice Lives for Profit and Power

By Peter S. Baron

U.S. foreign policy has consistently exposed the cowardly and self-serving opportunism of our political leaders, who are driven by the interests of their corporate elite overlords. From the earliest days of the Republic, American interventions abroad have prioritized the elite class’s accumulation and consolidation of profit and power over human rights and international stability. Politicians, ever ready to serve corporate interests, have implemented policies designed to expand market access, control vital resources, and maintain global dominance, all while cloaking their actions in the rhetoric of democracy and security.

American politicians, as executors of this foreign policy, perpetuate wars, coups, and economic sanctions, ensuring a steady stream of blood money to their elite patrons. They manipulate public sentiment and suppress dissent to create a facade of national interest that conceals the true beneficiaries of these policies. The cumulative devastation from the African Slave Trade to the genocide in Gaza exposes the moral bankruptcy of a foreign policy rooted in murder and torture for profit and power. This grotesque complicity demands a radical rethinking of America's role in the world, prioritizing human dignity over corporate greed.

A History of Exploitation: From Slavery to Modern Conflicts

The pattern of exploitation, intrinsic to American capitalism and imperialism, traces back to our earliest days as a new nation. Understanding this continuum helps explain ongoing atrocities in places like Gaza, where marginalized lives remain collateral damage in the pursuit of profit and power.

The African Slave Trade, beginning in the 16th century, was an era of unparalleled brutality that resulted in the deaths of approximately 1.5 to 3 million African people. This brutal chapter in history was propelled by European powers and elite colonists, whose capitalist ambitions demanded a massive labor force to produce surpluses of profitable crops like sugar, cotton, and tobacco. Africans were enslaved and forcibly torn from their homes, families, and cultures, then transported across the Atlantic under the most inhumane conditions imaginable. Packed like cargo in the filthy holds of ships, many died from disease, malnutrition, and abuse. Those who survived the harrowing journey were sold like cattle, treated as mere property, stripped of their humanity, and forced to toil under relentless, brutal conditions.

The dehumanization and commodification of millions of men, women, and children generated immense wealth for European and American economies, laying the very foundation for modern capitalism.

In what is now the contiguous United States, the Indigenous population was decimated from over 5 million before European contact to fewer than 238,000 by the late 19th century, a near-total annihilation that subjected indigenous communities to unimaginable horrors—relentless warfare, violent displacement, and the deliberate introduction of diseases to which they had no immunity. The forced removal and extermination of Indigenous peoples was justified by U.S. expansionist policies under the guise of "Manifest Destiny." Americans were supposedly destined to occupy and control the land across the American continent from the Atlantic to the Pacific. Driven by a relentless capitalist hunger for land and resources, the U.S. government and settlers aggressively seized vast territories for agriculture, mining, and real estate ventures in a calculated effort to pave the way for capitalist development.

The American Revolutionary War resulted in approximately 25,000 American deaths, around 24,000 British deaths, and about 7,500 Hessian (German) mercenary deaths, totaling approximately 56,500 fatalities. British trade policies were designed to keep the colonies economically dependent on Britain, restricting their ability to trade freely and forcing them to benefit the British economy. These policies included excessive taxation, which disproportionately burdened the lower classes in the colonies, fueling their anger towards both the elite in the UK and their colonial counterparts.

However, as the revolution progressed, the colonial elite seized control of the revolutionary committees and assemblies. This allowed them to hijack the grassroots demands for liberty and self-determination, twisting the revolutionary fervor to serve their own selfish economic interests. The common colonists were thrust into a violent and bloody struggle, duped into believing they were fighting for genuine freedom. However, the revolution ultimately served only to enrich and empower the wealthy American elite, betraying the common people and stripping them of the promised economic and social gains.

Elite leaders such as Thomas Jefferson, John Adams, and James Madison ensured the founding documents would usher in a political structure that safeguarded the interests of property owners and the wealthy. The original Constitution included mechanisms like the Electoral College and the Senate, which diluted the direct influence of the popular vote and ensured that power remained concentrated among the elite.

In essence, the rich leaders of the revolution, like George Washington who was one of the wealthiest men in the colonies, sought to dismantle British control to establish a capitalist economy where private property and free enterprise reigned supreme. Washington, often lauded for his prudence in declining to rule as King, certainly did not forgo the opportunity to live like one. He paid himself a Presidential salary that amounted to 2% of the total budget of the newly established American nation.

The US Civil War, which claimed between 620,000 and 850,000 lives, was fundamentally a battle between the Southern elites' agrarian economy based on slavery and the Northern elites' industrial economy based on wage labor. Southern landowners accumulated wealth through the brutal exploitation of enslaved people on plantations that produced cash crops like cotton and tobacco. The relentless drive for profit under capitalism pushed these enslavers to seek expansion into new American territories, a practice that Abraham Lincoln aimed to halt.

Northern elites, driven by the same capitalist commitment, were invested in expanding industrial capitalism, which relied on wage labor. They saw slavery as an economic hindrance to their vision of a more profitable and adaptable workforce. Wage labor allowed Northern industrialists to exploit workers without the legal and logistical constraints of slavery, offering a more scalable and flexible labor force for factories and industries. Workers could be hired and fired based on demand, paid only when needed, and subjected to poor working conditions without the need for lifelong ownership.

The North's victory dismantled the Southern slave-based economy, ending the agrarian capitalist model and paving the way for industrial capitalism to dominate. This shift facilitated rapid industrial growth and infrastructure development, promoting a capitalist economy based on wage labor. After approximately a decade of Reconstruction efforts, Northern industrial powers strengthened their influence over key economic sectors such as manufacturing, railroads, and finance. Subsequently, they withdrew their support for Reconstruction, allowing the South to effectively reinstitute slavery through the systems of sharecropping and convict leasing.

The Spanish-American War of 1898, which led to approximately 60,000 Spanish deaths and 3,200 American deaths, was driven by the U.S. desire to expand its influence and open new markets for American goods. The war was partly fueled by the sensationalist journalism of the time, which drummed up public support for intervention in Cuba's struggle for independence from Spain. However, underlying this public sentiment were strong economic motivations. The U.S. sought to protect its investments in Cuba and to gain control of other Spanish colonies like Puerto Rico, Guam, and the Philippines. The acquisition of these territories allowed the U.S. to expand its reach into new markets, securing strategic locations for military and trade purposes, thereby furthering American capitalists’ economic and strategic interests.

The US-Philippine War, which occurred from 1899 to 1902, caused around 220,000 Filipino deaths. This war was driven by the U.S.'s desire to establish a foothold in Asia, opening up new markets and resources for American businesses under the guise of "civilizing" and democratizing the region. Following the Spanish-American War, the U.S. took control of the Philippines, facing resistance from Filipino nationalists who sought independence. The brutal suppression of the Filipino independence movement demonstrated the lengths to which the U.S. would go to maintain its new colonial possessions.

During World War I, the federal government registered about half a million "enemy alien" civilians, monitored many of them, and sent around 6,000 German Nationals and German-American men and a few women to internment camps. The camps were harsh and inhumane, with poor living conditions, inadequate food, and rampant disease. Internees were subjected to forced labor and constant surveillance, stripped of their freedoms under the guise of protecting the nation. Perhaps, more strikingly, the government seized vast amounts of private property, often with dubious connections to the war effort, amassing assets worth over half a billion dollars—nearly the entire federal budget before the war.

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By seizing the businesses and properties of German Americans, the American elite removed economic competition and consolidated control. Xenophobia was used as a tactic to create an ideological construct where the German American community was scapegoated, symbolizing both external and internal threats. This strategy reinforced national cohesion by projecting fears onto a racialized other, uniting the nation against a common enemy.

Following the Pearl Harbor attack, American elites and their obedient politicians deflected public anger away from their own profit-driven actions that had escalated tensions with Japan. The greedy capitalist elite, desperate to control vital resources like oil and rubber from Southeast Asia, had imposed crippling economic sanctions on Japan. A State Department memorandum a year before Pearl Harbor laid bare their true motives: fear of losing access to lucrative markets and essential materials in Asia. These ruthless measures posed a clear and potent threat to Japan's very existence, intentionally provoking them into war. Instead of holding these capitalist vultures accountable, the government cowardly redirected blame onto Japanese Americans, shielding the true culprits behind this manufactured conflict.

Thus, echoing the strategic motivations behind the internment of German Americans during World War I, the U.S. government initiated the internment of 120,000 Japanese Americans during World War II. These camps were dehumanizing, with families torn from their homes and businesses, stripped of their rights, and confined in remote, desolate locations. The deplorable conditions lacked adequate shelter, food, and medical care. People lived in overcrowded barracks, surrounded by barbed wire and armed guards, enduring extreme weather and a constant sense of fear and uncertainty.

The Korean War, which raged from 1950 to 1953, was a horrific conflict that resulted in approximately 2.5 million deaths, leaving the Korean peninsula in ruins and its people devastated. This war, driven by the U.S. aim to contain Soviet influence and protect global capitalist interests, reveals that the Cold War was essentially a series of hot wars, with Soviet and American elites fighting proxy battles around the world. After World War II, Korea was divided into two zones, with the North under Soviet influence and the South under American control. The American aim was to establish a capitalist South Korea that could serve as a bulwark against Soviet influence, ensuring a market-friendly environment beneficial to American economic interests. The war saw relentless bombings, mass executions, and widespread atrocities. Entire cities were leveled, and countless civilians were caught in the crossfire, subjected to unimaginable suffering.

In Guatemala in 1954, the U.S.-backed coup of Jacobo Árbenz set the stage for decades of brutal conflict and repression, including the Guatemalan Civil War, that led to the deaths of between 140,000 and 200,000 people. The overthrow of President Jacobo Árbenz was a direct response to his land reform policies that aimed to redistribute land to impoverished peasants, which threatened American corporate interests, particularly those of the United Fruit Company.

The US-backed Indonesian genocide from 1965 to 1966 resulted in the deaths of between 500,000 and 1 million people. The U.S. supported General Suharto's rise to power as part of a broader strategy to eliminate communist influences in Indonesia, the world's largest Muslim-majority country and a region of significant geopolitical importance. Suharto's regime, with U.S. backing, targeted members of the Communist Party of Indonesia (PKI) and suspected leftists, resulting in mass killings and widespread atrocities. The elimination of communist influences in Indonesia helped to secure a stable and capitalist-friendly regime that ensured a favorable environment for American economic interests and multinational corporations in Southeast Asia.

The Vietnam War, from 1955 to 1975, resulted in approximately 2 million deaths. The U.S. intervened to prevent the spread of communist influence in Southeast Asia, crucial for protecting global capitalist interests. The Domino Theory suggested that if one country fell to communism, others in the region would follow, threatening capitalist markets and investments.

The war was characterized by extensive bombing, chemical warfare, and brutal ground battles, leading to immense destruction and loss of life. The U.S. aimed to support a non-communist government in South Vietnam to maintain a strategic and economic foothold. Th U.S. government installed Ngo Dinh Diem as the leader of South Vietnam in 1954, a man who aided the French colonizers in rounding up independence fighters during Vietnam’s revolution and who was living in Lakewood, New Jersey prior to being installed as President of South Vietnam. Villages were razed, civilians massacred, and entire regions devastated by napalm and Agent Orange.

As part of the Vietnam War, the U.S. bombing campaigns in Cambodia and Laos from 1969 to 1973 resulted in 500,000 deaths. These, known as Operation Menu and Operation Freedom Deal, were aimed at destroying North Vietnamese supply routes, particularly the Ho Chi Minh Trail, which ran through these countries. The campaigns involved extensive use of carpet bombing and chemical defoliants, causing widespread civilian casualties and long-term environmental harm. In total, U.S. dropped 2,756,941 tons of bombs, more than all of the bombs dropped by the Allies in World War II.

The Bangladesh famine of 1974, which claimed up to 1.5 million lives, was tragically induced by U.S. policies that prioritized geopolitical interests over human suffering. During the Bangladesh Liberation War, the U.S., driven to uphold global capitalism through their Cold War alliances, supported the Pakistani government with aid and arms, enabling Pakistan to brutally suppress the independence movement in East Pakistan, now Bangladesh.

The conflict ravaged the region, leading to widespread devastation and economic collapse. When Bangladesh finally achieved independence, it was left in ruins, its infrastructure destroyed, and its economy in shambles. The newly formed government struggled desperately to address the famine that followed. Fields lay barren, markets were empty, and the people starved. During the height of the famine, the U.S. withheld 2.2 million tons of food aid as a means to pressure the Bangladeshi government into aligning with American political and economic interests.

The haunting images of skeletal children did nothing to stir the cold, calculating hearts of American politicians, who shamelessly grovel at the feet of greed. As expected, their consciences, deeply buried beneath their unwavering service to those who relentlessly pursue profit, remained impervious to the suffering they inflicted. The elite relied on their unwavering commitment to corporate profit and control over the global order, and these politicians met those expectations without hesitation.

The $8 trillion U.S. invasion of Afghanistan in 2001, part of the broader War on Terrorism, has resulted in over 900,000 deaths over the ensuing years. Initially justified as a response to the September 11 attacks, aimed at dismantling Al-Qaeda and toppling the Taliban, this intervention was heavily influenced by imperialist strategic interests. Afghanistan's critical location in Central Asia made it a prime target for projecting U.S. power and influence, surrounded by key nations like Iran, Pakistan, China, and the Central Asian republics. Establishing a foothold in Afghanistan provided the U.S. a strategic base to manipulate regional dynamics and counterbalance rivals such as Iran and China. Additionally, the prolonged military occupation and reconstruction efforts were a boon for American corporations involved in defense, security, and infrastructure, including then Vice President Dick Cheney's Halliburton.

The U.S. interventions in Iraq, including the Gulf War in 1991 and the Iraq War in 2003, resulted in catastrophic human losses, with approximately 100,000 deaths the Gulf War and 600,000 deaths from the Iraq War. These interventions were driven by strategic interests in Iraq's vast oil resources, with the U.S. aiming to control and secure these assets for capitalist benefits. The Gulf War was initiated to expel Iraqi forces from Kuwait, a key oil-producing country, thereby protecting U.S. allies and ensuring the stability of global oil supplies. The 2003 invasion of Iraq, under the pretext of eliminating weapons of mass destruction, was similarly motivated by the desire to gain control over Iraq's oil fields and to establish a compliant government that would favor U.S. economic interests. Here too, the Vice President Dick Cheney's former company, Halliburton, made a staggering $39.5 billion from contracts related to the Iraq War, many of which were awarded without competitive bidding.

The devastation caused by these wars was immense: infrastructure was obliterated, cities were reduced to rubble, and millions of civilians were caught in the crossfire or suffered from the resulting chaos and instability, with 5 million displaced. The prolonged occupation and the dismantling of its military and governmental structures created a power vacuum and widespread chaos. This environment facilitated the rise of extremist groups, with ISIS eventually forming from the remnants of al-Qaeda in Iraq and other militant factions.

The NATO intervention in Libya in 2011, which led to approximately 22,000 deaths, was officially framed as a humanitarian effort to protect civilians during the uprising against Muammar Gaddafi's regime. However, beneath this veneer of humanitarianism lay significant strategic and economic interests, particularly related to Libya's vast oil reserves. Libya, boasting the largest proven oil reserves in Africa, was a crucial supplier of oil to Europe. The NATO-led intervention resulted in the overthrow of Gaddafi but also plunged the country into chaos, leading to prolonged instability and conflict. This destabilization allowed multinational corporations easier access to invest in and exploit Libya's oil resources. Moreover, the intervention had dire consequences for the social fabric of Libya. The power vacuum and ensuing chaos led to the re-emergence of open-air slave markets, where human beings are being bought and sold like commodities for as little as $400.

The ongoing genocide in Gaza is simply another manifestation of the capitalist ethos that permeated the violence described above. The U.S. government's complicity in perpetuating violence and destruction is driven by economic and geopolitical imperatives just like those we have discussed above. American taxpayer-funded military aid to Israel supports a relentless campaign against Palestinians, masked as a security measure but fundamentally rooted in capitalist and strategic interests. This alliance between American and Israeli elites consolidates control over critical resources and trade routes, enriching defense contractors and entrenching regional dominance. Innocent civilians bear the true cost: tens of thousands killed, homes and infrastructure decimated, and entire communities obliterated.

Collective Disengagement: Standing Up to Oppression and Building a New Future

The elite sustain this centuries long pattern of calculated violence by manipulating our collective psychology. They justify their acts of violence and war, while those who denounce such atrocities and propose new ways of organizing society are marginalized and discredited. Public sentiment is meticulously crafted through propaganda that narrows the range of acceptable discourse and paints revolutionary voices as unrealistic, insane, or dangerous.

Their fearmongering is particularly effective because it exploits our vulnerable position in a systemically competitive society. Those who have the least are warned they can't afford to join the courageous revolutionaries and risk losing what little they have, even though they stand to gain the most. Meanwhile, those with some financial security are told that embracing revolutionary ideals would plunge them into the struggles faced by those below them. The truth is, these revolutionary ideals would remove us from the cutthroat competition that characterizes the current world order. Such actionable ideals promise a world where no one has to live in insecurity or fear of losing everything. By fostering cooperation instead, we can create a society where everyone's needs are met, and the constant anxiety of survival is abolished.

The elite's hostility towards so-called 'radical' ideas is not simply a matter of ideological disagreement. They are acutely aware of the power, practicality, and rapid spread of these revolutionary concepts, and they fear how quickly they can be implemented. Thus, they ensure such dissent is systematically suppressed through state-sanctioned violence, creating a climate of acquiescence. This dual approach of bounded discourse and suppressed dissent ensures that transformational ideas are marginalized and genuine social change is hindered. Through this method, the ruling class engineers a grotesque charade where the only permissible political stances are those fundamentally devoted to perpetuating corporate dominance and expanding capitalism.

But their manipulation runs deeper—they sell us these contrived choices! They cleverly associate being a Democrat with specific cultural values and being a Republican with others. Glossy advertisements and sleek marketing campaigns flaunt both celebrities and everyday people who embody these fabricated values, pushing products that supposedly define liberal or conservative lifestyles, along with their various subcultures.

Every purchase we make, whether it's a hybrid car adorned with progressive bumper stickers or a pickup truck flaunting patriotic decals, feeds into this fabricated dichotomy. We're not just voting with our wallets; we're being coerced into aligning our self-worth and identity with these consumer choices. It's a grand illusion where both sides, despite their apparent differences, funnel us into the same exploitative system.

We’re bombarded with slogans and images that blend politics with consumerism. "Vote blue, buy green." "Real Americans wear red." It's a relentless cycle where we are implored to buy products that signify our 'values'—values crafted in boardrooms to serve corporate interests.

Every vote, every purchase, every piece of cultural paraphernalia we adorn ourselves with is a cog in their profit machine. The elites sit back, watching us dance to their tune, our dissent muted, our choices orchestrated, our lives commodified. This is a profound violation of our autonomy and dignity, a testament to the insidious power of corporate hegemony.

It’s time we reject the individuals who are “leading” our country, recognizing them as the spineless and avaricious opportunists they repeatedly prove themselves to be. They do not look out for “American interests.” They look out for elite interests. The elite are fully aware of the destruction and death they cause. They wield force not just because it’s effective but because it sends a chilling message to those of us who see through their charades. They know that some of us can see their justifications for war—drenched in pompous, misleading rhetoric of spreading democracy or protecting American interests—for the sham that it is. They want us to understand that if we challenge them, they can and will bring hell upon earth. They will kill without hesitation.

Yet, they have a vulnerability. To oppress and kill, they need us to do their bidding. They need us to ship the bombs, to provide political support, to play their rigged game. They require vast numbers of soldiers to sign up, commit these atrocities, suffer from PTSD, and then be discarded when they return and seek help. It's time we stand together and refuse to be pawns in their murderous schemes. We must take this stand for ourselves and for humanity. By building networks of mutual aid and supporting each other, we can create the solidarity needed to resist their exploitation and implement new, just ways of organizing society.

Our collective power lies in our ability to say no. By refusing to participate in their wars, by resisting their propaganda, we can dismantle their power. The elites rely on our complicity, our labor, and our silence to maintain their dominion.

Imagine we chose to serve each other instead! Picture the strength of a unified populace, rejecting the exploitation and brutality inflicted in our name. We must rise together, in defiance of the so-called leaders who have sacrificed their integrity on the altar of capitalism. For every life shattered by their betrayal, for every dream crushed under the weight of their gluttony, we must unite. It is our duty to reclaim the values they have perverted, the future they threaten, and the planet they are setting aflame with their endless pursuit of profit. We owe it to ourselves and to the world to disrupt this cycle of violence and build a new social order that values human dignity over capital. Now is the time to come together and take action.

Peter S. Baron is the author of “If Only We Knew: How Ignorance Creates and Amplifies the Greatest Risks Facing Society” (https://www.ifonlyweknewbook.com) and is currently pursuing a J.D. and M.A. in Philosophy at Georgetown University.

Debunking Myths About Venezuela: What's Really Going On?

[Photo Credit: MIGUEL GUTIERREZ/EPA/Shutterstock]

By Eli Morey

Republished from Liberation Center.

Nicolás Maduro, the leader of Venezuela’s socialist movement, won the July 28 Venezuela presidential election by a wide margin. In a near-repeat of 2019,  the Biden administration  immediately declared the election illegitimate and recognized their preferred—but badly defeated–candidate as the winner, Edmundo González as the winner, just as they supported Juan Guaido’s pitiful attempt to take power in 2019-2020. Similarly, the U.S. is fully supporting current right-wing violence in Venezuela to set the stage for another coup against the legitimate and widely popular government.

None of this appears in the corporate media, of course. Instead, we only encounter accusations of “corruption” and “illegitimate” elections.

What about the polls that showed Maduro losing?

Headlines in the U.S. cite polls as evidence of fraud in the 2024 elections. According to some polls, Maduro trailed the opposition by a wide margin in the lead-up to election day. A closer look reveals that these polls are not a reliable source of information about Venezuelan voter preferences. 

In fact, each of the four polls cited by Western media were run by organizations with a clear conflict of interest:

1. The Encuestadora Meganálisis poll is openly affiliated with the opposition, as their Facebook page filled with videos denouncing Madruo and the Bolivarian Revolution.

2. The Caracas-based Delphos poll is directed by Felix Seijas Rodriguez, an outspoken member of the Venezuelan opposition who has authored numerous articles attacking Maduro and even discussing U.S. military intervention against Venezuela.

3. OCR Consultores is a “consultancy” group whose Director, Oswaldo Ramirez Colina, lives in Miami, where the group is headquartered. Colina studied “Terrorism and Counterterrorism” at Georgetown University, which is notoriously cozy with the CIA. He has appeared on news segments and podcast episodes criticizing Maduro and questioning the legitimacy of Venezuela’s electoral processes.

4. Edison Research, whose exit poll claimed Maduro’s loss, has “top clients [that] include CIA-linked US government propaganda outlets Voice of America, Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, and the Middle East Broadcasting Networks, all of which are operated by the US Agency for Global Media, a Washington-based organ that is used to spread disinformation against US adversaries.”

Are elections in Venezuela free and fair?

While western media consistently accuses Maduro of rigging elections, there is zero evidence to support this claim. In both the 2018 and 2024 elections, thousands of international observers were present at polling stations across Venezuela. 

In fact, even mainstream liberal organizations like the Carter foundation have praised Venezuela’s electoral system. In 2012, former U.S. president Jimmy Carter said that “as a matter of fact, of the 92 elections that we’ve monitored, I would say the election process in Venezuela is the best in the world.”

Who are the leaders of the opposition?

Maduro’s primary opponent in the elections, Edmundo Gonzalez Urritia, was not a big figure in Venezuelan politics until this most recent election cycle. He is primarily serving as a stand-in for Maria Corina Machado, who is the true face of Venezuela’s opposition. 

Machado is on the far right. Her policies would undermine Venezuela’s sovereignty by privatizing national assets and selling off Venezuela’s oil reserves to western corporations. 

She is also a proud and open Zionist. In fact, in 2018 she wrote a letter directly to Benjamin Netanyahu asking Israel to intervene militarily in Venezuela to conduct a “regime change” operation in order to overthrow its democratically elected government. In 2020, she signed a cooperation agreement with Netanyahu’s Likud party stating that they were in agreement on “political, ideological, and social issues” and “issues related to strategy, geopolitics and security.”

The right-wing’s violence is particularly directed against Afro-Venezuelans and the indigenous populations because the Revolution has greatly benefitted the sectors of society who have historically been excluded and oppressed. In 2014, a right-wing group beat a law student named William Muñoz, and doused him in gasoline. Fortunately, an ambulance rescued Muñoz before the mob could ignite the gasoline. In 2017, the right-wing went on a rampage targeting darker-skinned Venezuelans, setting them on fire and even lynching them.

Why and how does the U.S. try to overthrow the Venezuelan government?

It is not only the domestic reactionaries that constantly threaten the Revolution. Particularly since 2005, the U.S. has deployed numerous strategies to reverse the revolutionary gains of Venezuela.

A few years after the presidential election of Hugo Chávez, representing the Fifth Republic Movement, the U.S. ruling class started openly working to destroy Venezuela’’s socialist government since the Bolivarian Revolution began with the 1998 election of Hugo Chávez, who ran as the Fifth Republic Movement’s candidate.’s government. Under Chávez’s leadership, Venezuela’s democratic processes expanded quickly and rapidly. In 1999, Venezuela adopted a new constitution that created a constituent assembly, bringing the people into positions of power to pass laws in their interests. Land was redistributed and social goods like housing and education were prioritized thanks to the massive oil reserves of the country.

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What became known as the Bolivarian Revolution, led by the United Socialist Party of Venezuela (PSUV)—which formed in 2007—was a spark that set off a “pink tide” throughout Latin America. Progressive governments came to power in Brazil and Bolivia, and people’s movements surged across the continent. With state power, progressives and socialists formed new alliances to challenge U.S. domination and imperialism, including notably ALBA, or the Alliance for the People’s of Our America. Founded in 2004, ALBA enables Latin American and other countries to engage in non-exploitative trade and other inter-state projects and agreements.

Sanctions were the first tactic the U.S. deployed against the Revolution. By depriving the government of the ability to fund social programs, the intent was and is to create widespread poverty and misery to foment dissent and blaming the results of the sanctions on the policies of the Venezuelan government.

If Venezuela’s socialist government was allowed to engaged in “free trade,” they could make even more impressive advances for their people and inspire other countries to follow in their path. As a result, Venezuela is one of the most heavily sanctioned countries in the world, with over 900 unilateral sanctions imposed by the United States alone. The U.S. has actively worked for over a decade to destabilize the Venezuelan economy specifically by targeting its oil industry and its financial sector.

However, undermining the Venezuelan economy is just one element of the U.S. hybrid war on Venezuela. There have also been multiple coup attempts with links to the U.S. Here are a few:

• 2002: Socialist president Hugo Chavez was kidnapped and removed from power by military coup plotters connected to Venezuelan big business. After two days, huge protests in support of Chavez forced the coup government out of power and restored the constitutional order. Chavez was freed and returned to the presidency.

• 2019: In 2018 the opposition boycotted the elections, and as a result their candidates lost by a huge margin. In spite of this, they then declared opposition figurehead Juan Guaidó—who had not even run in the elections and won 0 votes—the new interim president of Venezuela. The United States immediately recognized Guaidó as the president of Venezuela. The following year Guaidó led a failed coup attempt against Maduro. 

• 2020: “Operation Gideon,” an armed invasion of Venezuela led by a former member of the U.S. Army special forces, was defeated by the Venezuelan military.

Why are so many immigrants leaving Venezuela?

Millions of people have left Venezuela in the last 10 years. While the U.S. media often portrays these people as political refugees fleeing a dictatorship, the reality is quite different. 

Global oil prices dropped drastically in the mid 2010s. Oil is a key component of Venezuela’s economy. This would not have been a problem if Venezuela was able to take out loans to cover shortfalls until the price of oil rebounded. Oil-dependent countries like Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, and the UAE are able to get cheap loans when oil prices decline because they are allies of the U.S. and EU. In Venezuela’s case, the U.S. did everything it could to undermine the Venezuelan economy in a moment of crisis, and prevent its economy from rebuilding in the wake of disaster. 

Most of Venezuela’s immigrants are in fact victims of the U.S’s harsh sanctions regime, which has damaged Venezuela’s economy and prevented it from accessing key goods including food and medicine. 

Why do I see posts on social media calling Maduro a dictator?

After every election there are outspoken people who are upset about the outcome. If you were to look on social media or talk to random people on the street after the 2016 or 2020 elections in the U.S, you would certainly find people angry or confused about the results. You would probably also encounter people claiming that the election was rigged. This does not amount to evidence of election fraud. 

In the U.S. and on western social media platforms, the anti-Maduro position is over-represented because of the number of expats living in the United States. Venezuelans living here have, for the most part, left Venezuela either because they had the money to leave when the economy took a downturn, or they left out of desperation when the economy was at its lowest point. These are the segments of the population most likely to be critical of Maduro, most likely to speak English, and most likely to be on American social media pages and platforms.

Alternatively, the social base of the Bolivarian revolution is in the working class, poor, and indigenous people living in the barrios and rural villages of Venezuela. These people are significantly less likely to speak English, have smartphones, or be active on social media platforms like Instagram. Their voices are never centered in conventional media like TV and radio in the United States, which is largely run by corporations with a vested interest in demonizing socialism.

What is the Bolivarian Revolution and why do the masses support it?

Under the leadership of Chavez and later Maduro, notable achievements were made in spite of ongoing attempts by the U.S. to sabotage Venezuela’s socialist project. The main vehicles for these achievements has been the mobilization of the working class and the misiones, or “missions,” which are long-term economic and social development programs. The Bolivarian government has built over 4 million new homes for poor people living in substandard housing as part of the Misión Habitat. Over 10 million poor Venezuelans have benefited from subsidized food under a program called Misión Mercal. Another program known as Mision Barrio Adentro built thousands of clinics and community centers in an effort to provide free healthcare and dental care to Venezuela’s poorest people.

A massive literacy campaign in the 2000s helped over a million people to read and write. In spite of economic hardships due to the oil crisis and U.S. sanctions, millions of Venezuelans continue to support the Maduro government because of the tangible benefits it provides in their day-to-day lives. This is even more understandable given the ruthless nature of the racist right-wing opposition.

The Economic Consequences of the Rio Grande do Sul Floods

By Diego Viana

The southernmost state in Brazil, Rio Grande do Sul, was under heavy rain and flooding for several weeks in May. The Guaíba, the most important river in the region, which flows through the capital city of Porto Alegre is usually about two meters deep. It went over five meters. More than 400 cities (out of about 480) were hit by this climate catastrophe, with over 2.1 million people affected and over 170 casualties so far. Material losses are hard to calculate at this point, but insurance companies already consider this the "worst event in our history" and the government estimates that reconstructing the Rio Grande do Sul will take several years.

The connection between the climate catastrophe and the rise of a suicidal far Right immediately becomes evident as social media in Brazil is overrun with swarms of outright lies, political accusations, and fraud. Meanwhile, intellectuals get stuck in a somewhat sterile discussion about whether one may refer to the people who have lost their homes and belongings as “climate refugees” — because it is shocking to realize that this term may refer to people other than the poorest among the poor.

Horrifying events like this have been occurring at increasingly shorter intervals, as we all know. Simultaneously with Porto Alegre, parts of Afghanistan, Kenya, Texas, the United Arab Emirates, Italy, Germany and California have also been under water. Not to mention droughts, wildfires and hurricanes. But in the midst of this chaos, two lessons about our shared future stand out, which may be helpful beyond the regions directly struck, giving us a preview of how to build a future that would be different from what is being prepared right now.

Postponing an exam

The first lesson regards the possibility and requirements of large-scale planning. It so happens that the Brazilian federal government was planning a massive recruitment exam for the public service, which has been anemic after almost a decade of neoliberal rule. The tests were to take place on Sunday, May 5th, in more than 200 cities across the nation with 2.14 million candidates competing for 6,640 jobs. But then the rain came, and it turned everything upside down: how can you administer such an enormous test when many contesting for those public jobs are isolated, stranded, and homeless?

After a week of hesitation, and just two days before the tests, the government finally convened a press conference to announce what was obvious to all: the "National Unified Recruitment" was postponed and later rescheduled to August. Maybe it is just a predisposition on my part, but while I watched the conference I felt that the officials, ministers Esther Dweck (Public Management) and Paulo Pimenta (Communication), seemed somewhat astonished, maybe dismayed. Even among the journalists, there was, or so I felt, an atmosphere of disbelief.

This discomfort is not entirely surprising, though. For someone who had been planning an ambitious, country-wide operation, involving logistics, security forces, and millions of people, I can imagine that the idea of ​​having to postpone the tests didn't even cross the organizers' minds. In fact, a reporter did ask about provisions for an eventual postponement of the exam. There were none.

The federal government placed this initiative at the top of its priorities. It is boasted as an innovation in public sector recruitment, which it is indeed. But it is also an expensive and risky undertaking that had to be stopped in a hurry because nobody considered the intervention of natural forces. Even the decision-making process hints at the impasse the authorities were put in due to the floods. When the press was summoned, dozens of lives had already been lost, and entire municipalities were almost unreachable. It was clear that the "gaucho" (residents of Rio Grande do Sul) candidates were excluded from the test. If communication to the general public only occurred on Friday afternoon, it is because demobilizing this colossal apparatus is almost as hard as assembling it. I suppose that even the budget law will need to be amended.

The postponement made painfully and pathetically clear that in times of global connectivity and interdependence, an episode such as a natural disaster is never “only itself.” It is not limited to its immediate causes and direct effects, where it happens, nor is it limited to its own regime of existence. In a world of complexity, every system and every event spreads and contaminates other aspects of reality, other systems. The eruption of the concrete, palpable, real, into the universe of planning, abstraction and bureaucracy perfectly illustrates the reality we are entering.

I want to draw attention to the meaningful difference between this catastrophe's domino effect and two other consequences of the flooding. First: Rio Grande do Sul is an important producer of rice, wheat and cattle. It is clear by now that the output of these commodities will be compromised, putting pressure on prices. This has led the federal government to announce that it will resort to the international market. Shock waves can also reach interest rate decisions and, with a spike in inflation, unpleasant political consequences are not out of sight, with the far right constantly on stakeout.

Second: the fact that, per the insurance companies, the destruction of cities and plantations in Rio Grande do Sul is the “worst event in the history of Brazil.” The costs incurred could sap some of these institutions and is likely to lead to a significant reallocation of resources, which would weaken other public policies. As for insurance, as has been predicted for some time, we can expect a progressive and heavy increase in premiums, making investments of all types more expensive, especially the most ambitious and expensive ones, such as infrastructure.

In both cases, we are dealing with long-term issues, but mostly already advanced and priced. It is common to hear from economists and managers, but also from some scientists dedicated to complex systems, that the global interconnection of logistical, financial and economic systems makes it possible to overcome ruptures and failures that eventually appear in some part, guaranteeing the stability of the whole. The reference usually evoked is the initial 1966 Arpanet project, the embryo of the internet: decentralized and increasingly numerous connections are almost impossible to take down.

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Nonetheless, other scientists linked to complexity also warn that these ultra-complex systems, although resilient, are vulnerable. This means that they can resist deformation and remain stable, but if a particular disturbance, small as it may be, turns out to be capable of compromising the system, it will collapse completely and suddenly. In a dangerous but not absurd analogy: this is what happens in the death of an organism, for example, or the collapse of an ecosystem. To return to the Arpanet reference: the problem is not always in preventing transmissions from being interrupted. It may lie in the transmission itself. This is what Edgar Morin had in mind back in the 1990s, when he coined the term “polycrisis,” now taken up by historian Adam Tooze and theorized by the Canadian think tank Cascade Institute.

The postponed exam is suggestive of the increasing difficulty we will have in planning and articulating large-scale projects and programs. Without taking into account the climate factor, which is less and less “imponderable,” the government wanted to carry out a broad and solid initiative — and discovered that it was fragile. It won't be the last time something like this happens. This is at the core of what we have come to call "the new normal": from now on, the norm will be that all planning will be subject to failure for reasons that will fall from the sky or emerge from the depths, not without warning, far from it, but with warnings we may not be able or willing to hear.

Solidarity, distribution and economy

What then? — I thought, as I completed the previous section. Do we simply sit and cry, waiting for the moment when a calamity reaches us too? What does all this, the coming crisis of planning, imply for workers, proletarians, the wretched of the earth, and international solidarity in general?

This brings me to my second point. There has been a remarkable outpouring of solidarity in Brazil since the magnitude of the catastrophe became clear. Of course solidarity always emerges when one of these disasters occurs, and there have been many in various regions of the country: landslides in the Southwest, droughts in the North, fires in the Amazon and the Pantanal region, floods all over. But this time there is something different due to the sheer magnitude of the event.

No previous environmental disaster affected the infrastructure of modern life so deeply in Brazil. Airports closed, with runways sometimes inaccessible even for the planes carrying vital aid. There are broken dams, isolated cities and neighborhoods, roads cut, and power, telephone and internet networks down. The distribution of food, medicines and clothing in this scenario can be a daunting challenge. And it has indeed mobilized organizations from all around the country, in the form of donations, logistic networks and information centers.

While this parallel economy was taking shape, representatives of the private sector and the State governor Eduardo Leite himself were more preoccupied with the possibility that donations would have a deleterious impact on local commerce. I mention this not because I want to smear Mr. Leite as someone insensitive to his people's suffering — though one must admit he is indeed responsible for withholding funds marked for preventing floods — but because it presents us with a pulsating contrast between different kinds of economic logic. And this contrast is likely to intensify in the near future, suggesting what may amount to a paradigm shift.

I am thinking about a distinction that Karl Polanyi, the Austrian-Hungarian socialist political economist, makes in his masterpiece The Great Transformation, published in 1944. According to Polanyi, in the history of human societies, there have been three major principles of economic practice, in the sense of the production and distribution of the means of livelihood. These are: householding, which accounts for a mostly autarkic existence; redistribution, in which a central instance, such as the Mesopotamian empires, amasses the goods produced by the collective as a whole and redistributes them according to its own criteria; and reciprocity, of which trade is a particular case, and designates a system where different parties exchange their productions either through a price mechanism or a gift system.

Polanyi argues that a central element in the emergence of capitalism is the dominance of market exchanges over all the other systems. He says the market economy is disembedded from society in general. There is still some room for householding, as the nuclear family is responsible for many activities that are crucial for economic life, particularly the reproductive and unpaid labor ascribed to women. From the institutionalist perspective, the capitalist firm also absorbs a chunk of what would fall into the category of householding. Redistribution still exists too, especially under the form of grants, by both the state and the corporate sector. And non-market forms of reciprocity can be found all over, including gifts, favors, and the occasional barter. But they are all subjected to the general logic of monetary trade, their worth is calculated according to their link to markets, their position in economic life is below secondary.

Very well, what does this have to do with the disaster in Brazil and the solidarity that has been manifested since it began? The answer is, I believe, that the initiative to organize donations, which will become progressively more common as the climate crisis unfolds, contains the seed of a future recomposition of the three economic logics. When a breach in the regular market distribution of goods and services leads to a surge of solidarity, alternative economic circuits emerge spontaneously, simply because they must. This has been the case in emergency situations that had nothing to do with the climate, such as the Argentinian collapse in 2001, wartime scenarios, and the fall of the Soviet Union. Forms of householding, with families tending to their own needs; redistribution, with central committees organizing rations; and forms of non-monetary reciprocity, or alternatively monetary reciprocity, such as the “trueque,” came to life.

In all of these cases, the relative stabilization that succeeded the trauma reestablished the market mechanisms, and these other forms died down. The same happens with every environmental calamity in Brazil and elsewhere: circuits of donations and redistribution arise and dissolve just as quickly. But this time the scale is much higher, the needs more urgent, and the response is proportionally more ostensible. Makeshift centers for collection, transportation and distribution of aid packages are set up overnight, with a remarkable capacity of coordination. Online platforms dedicated to identifying particular needs and connecting them to donors have been created. Volunteers flock to the affected areas, but given the magnitude of the destruction, can only actually act when coordinated with other groups with better knowledge of the region.

Of course these initiatives also tend to wane as the situation improves. But we must take some things into account. To begin with, we are so used, at least since the Communist Manifesto, to think of capitalism as infinitely resourceful, ruthless, and awe-inspiring, that we can forget it has its own internal fragilities. While it may be easier to imagine an end to the world than to capitalism, as Fredric Jameson once said, capitalism still needs the world to be in place, and relatively stable. Disaster capitalism, in Naomi Klein's words, may bloom with the occasional landslide or earthquake, but if people lose the capacity to sell their workforce and purchase their livelihood, the market becomes groundless.

Also, the experience of those who engage in these distributive acts of solidarity represents a valuable acquisition of knowhow and habit. In time, the practice of non-market economic logics may very well solidify, at least from the side of distribution, if not production. As the environmental calamities unfold, as they are expected to do, on the one hand the capacity for large scale planning, corporate or governmental, will be shaken. But on the other hand, it is predictable that the recourse to alternative arrangements will lose its alternative character and constitute a permanent response. Of course, this will require further learning and the development of intellectual tools and strategies.

It is obviously sad to realize that the perspective of non-capitalist arrangements becomes realistic due to the accelerated degradation of the conditions of life on Earth as we know it. The mere fact that we have reached such a stage is a testimony to our incapacity to build large-scale and long-lasting alternatives to the radical capitalism of the last half-century. We should be clear about the fact that the environmental crisis is not an opportunity for change; instead, change is the only way out of the calamities that come with the degraded environment. But it requires careful work of construction, from the ground up. And this is why we can look for inspiration in the spontaneous emergence of solidary economic arrangements in Southern Brazil.

Diego Viana is a Brazilian economic journalist. He earned his PhD in political philosophy from the University of São Paulo and covers Brazilian politics, economy, and social conflict.