South Korean Dictator Dies, Western Media Resurrects a Myth

By K. J. Noh

General Chun Doo Hwan was the corrupt military dictator that ruled Korea from 1979-1988, before handing off the presidency to his co-conspirator General Roh Tae Woo.  Chun took power in a coup in 1979, and during his presidency he perpetrated the largest massacre of Korean civilians since the Korean war. He died on November 23rd, in pampered, sybaritic luxury, impenitent and arrogant to the very last breath.  

Many western media outlets have written censorious, chest-beating accounts of his despotic governance and the massacres he perpetrated (here, here, here, and here)-- something they rarely bothered to do when he was actively perpetrating them in broad daylight before their eyes.  Like the light from a distant galaxy--or some strange journalistic time capsule--only after death, decades later, do "human rights violations" in South Korea burst out of radio silence and become newsworthy.

Better late than never, better faint than silent, better partial than absent, one could argue.  Still all of them miss out on key facts, spread lies through omission.  A key dimension of Korean history and politics looks to be buried with his death. A little background history is necessary to elucidate this.

The Sorrows of the Emperor-Dictator

The imperial president, Park Chung Hee

Chun's predecessor and patron, the aging South Korean dictator Park Chung Hee, had ruled the country as an absolute totalitarian despot for 18 years, but he knew in his bones that his days were numbered. He had survived two violent assassination attempts, mass civil protests, and even opprobrium from his American puppet masters, despite serving them loyally by sending 320,000 South Korean troops to Vietnam. Even Park's closest advisors were worried about the fragility of his rule.

Park Chung Hee had been a former Japanese military collaborator during Japan’s colonization of Korea. A US-installed puppet Syngman Rhee had smashed socialism in the South through genocide--a method later to be replicated in Indonesia's "Jakarta method".

Park Chung Hee (in Sunglasses) and Cha Ji Chul (right; in camo), 1961 during their coup.

But the puppet-genocidaire Rhee was in turn toppled by student protests in 1960, and the integration of South Korea into a US-led security structure and capitalist order looked precarious due to popular hatred of the US. Into this foment, Brigadier General Park took power in a vicious putsch. Park was a totalitarian fascist groomed within the Japanese military system, where he had conducted counterinsurgency against Korean independence fighters in Manchuria. (One of them, a legendary guerrilla leader called Kim Il Sung, would escape his clutches and become a life-long nemesis). He had then been trained and cultivated by the US during the 1950's, attending military school in the US. When Rhee was deposed, Park rapidly took power, pledging fealty to the US and total war against communists. Having already proven his anticommunist credentials through a massive treachery, betrayal and slaughter, he was welcomed by the Kennedy Administration. This established the Junta’s legitimacy, while maintaining the continuity of US colonial “hub and spoke” architecture in the region.

Park Chung Hee as Japanese Military Officer

Park nominally assumed the presidency through an election but then tightened his regime until he attained the powers of the Japanese Emperor, whom he had worshipped and admired during Japanese rule. He formally rewrote the constitution after the Japanese imperial system, legally giving himself the powers of Showa-era Sun God.  This, along with his dismissal of colonial atrocities to normalize relations with Japan, in obeisance to the US strategic design for the region, resulted in massive civil insurrection against him.  These protests were barely put down with mass bloodshed, torture, disappearances, and terror.  But even among his inner circle, doubts were voiced about his extreme despotic overreach.   

The Insurance Policy: Ruthless and Cunning

From the earliest days of his rule, Park Chung Hee had cultivated high ranking officers to key positions, as loyal retainers in an insurance policy in case a coup happened against him.  A secret military cabal, later to be called "Hanahwe" [also, “Hanahoe”; "the council of one"], a group of officers within the 1955, 11th class of South Korea's Military Academy, had signaled their total fealty to Park during Park's military coup in 1961.  As a result, Hanahwe members were rapidly brought in-house, rewarded with powerful roles within the military government, and formed a deadly, elite Praetorian guard within the labyrinthine power structures of the Park Administration. 

Park Chung Hee with Lyndon B. Johnson, 1963

Two of them were the leaders of this secret-society insurance policy.   One of them, Chun Doo Hwan, would be referred to as the "ruthless one", known for his amoral brutality and utter lack of conscience.  He would later be called "the slaughterhouse butcher".  The other was Roh Tae Woo, Chun's military blood brother, the "cunning one", known for his strategic, tactical, and political cunning.

Power players, left to right: Roh Tae Woo, Chun Doo Hwan, Cha Ji-Chul

Together, “Ruthless and Cunning” would prove their mettle in Vietnam, auditioning as understudies for the US Imperial war machine, and proving their bona fides by operating a rolling atrocity machine, the SK 9th Infantry "White horse" Division, where Chun’s 29th regiment would cut its teeth on brutal massacres against Vietnamese civilians. Psychopathic and Amoral, they would form a two-headed hydra, ensuring Park's rule against enemies within and without.  A third member of Hanahwe, Jeong Ho Yong, would also cut his teeth in the 9th Division in Vietnam, as would the Capital Mechanized "Fierce Tiger" Division, and various Marine and Special warfare brigades.  All would gain recognition and favor with the US military brass in Vietnam, where South Korean troops would eventually outnumber US troops on the ground.  They would also play key roles in future Korean history.  

Sex, Whiskey, and Guns: High Deductibles

Park's insurance policy kicked in when his KCIA chief pumped him full of bullets at a whiskey-sodden orgy gone bad in late autumn of 1979.  Two young women--a nervous college student and a popular singer--had been procured to serve the sexual whims of the president at a luxurious KCIA "safehouse" that had been set up for such routine vernal assignations.  During the pre-coital dinner banquet, with expensive whiskey serving as lubricant, a heated argument arose between the KCIA Chief, Kim Jae Kyu and Chief Presidential Bodyguard, Cha Ji Chol, about how to put down massive civil protests against Park's rule in Pusan and Masan. Cha Ji Chol proposed the "Pol Pot option" arguing that a massacre of 30,000 civilians would subdue civilians and put the genie back in the bottle.  This was accompanied by insults at Kim for not having implemented such "effective" measures.   Kim Jae Kyu, incensed either at the casual brutality or at the blatant criticism, put an abrupt end to the debate by drawing his pistol and shooting Cha and Park. "I shot the heart of the beast of the (Yushin) dictatorship", he would later claim.  Park's insurance policy would rapidly kick in at that point, although the deductible would be his own life.  

Enter the Praetorian Guard: Tigers, Horses, and Dragons

After Park's death, Oct 26th, Lt General Chun Doo Hwan, the head of the Armed Forces Defense Security Command (DSC)--Park's institutional Praetorian Guard--rapidly took matters in hand.  Chun would rapidly take over, first the investigation of the assassination, then key army positions, and then the government.  Some historians marvel at the rapidity with which Chun consolidated power and how quickly he disciplined loose factions within Park's old guard.  This ignores the rhizomatic base of Hanahwe deep within the executive and in all branches of the military, and the institutional powers baked into the DSC to preserve loyalty and deter subversion and coups. 

Chun, using his statutory powers, and good dose of military firepower, arrested key military leaders for the assassination, and then on Dec 12th, 1979 instigated a coup, supported by Hanahwe comrade Roh Tae Woo, now division commander of the 9th “White Horse” Division. Roh withdrew the elite unit away from its critical position on the DMZ to the Capital, where they were joined by another Vietnam/Hanahwe classmate, general Jeong Ho Yong.  These troops, with another Vietnam-veteran division, the Capitol Mechanized "Tiger" Division, and various special warfare brigades, fought the old guard in the streets before rapidly subduing them. Not long after this class reunion, Chun would declare martial law and appoint himself president with a new constitution and fill all key military ranks with his Hanahwe classmates.

A "Splendid Holiday" turns sour

Mass protests broke out again after Chun’s declaration of Martial Law on May 17th, 1980.  In the city of Gwangju, hundreds of students protested. 

Chun's response was to send a crack division of special warfare troops to smash heads, assault bystanders, and shoot protestors, in an operation named "Splendid Holiday". Beatings, rapes, and mass killings were the order of the day; “blood flowed like rivers in the streets”.

Mass Protest in Gwangju, May 1980

However, in an extraordinary turn of events, stunned protestors, instead of capitulating at the terror, responded by storming police armories and requisitioning weapons, taxis, buses, and improvised explosives, to fight the elite troops to a standstill. Despite the deployment of helicopter gunships and Armored Vehicles, 3000 Special Warfare Paratroopers, along with 18,000 riot troops, found themselves driven out of the city. In this, the liberation of Gwangju stands out as one of the most astonishing feats of civil resistance of the 20th century.

Riot Troops and Paratroopers assault protestors and bystanders in Gwangju

This victory was not to last, however. After the rebels surrendered thousands of arms as a gesture of good faith to seek amnesty, Chun's administration would assault the city with 2 armored divisions and 5 special forces brigades. An untold number of civilians--excess death statistics note 2300 individuals--would be slaughtered, searing Gwangju into the historic annals of atrocity and infamy.

Anti-government protests would go underground, and re-erupt 7 years later, when Chun's presidency, which had been awarded the Olympics found it inconvenient to perpetrate another massacre in front of the international press in the run up to the Olympics.  Chun would accede to protestors' demands for a direct election, the outcome of which conveniently passed the presidency to his Hanahwe second, General Roh Tae Woo.

The missing factor:  Who let the dogs out?  

The above are the basic historical outlines, acknowledged by most journalists and historians.  But what they miss out, is the platform and permissions that circumscribed these historic events.  In particular, two questions arise: Under what authority did Chun initiate his coups? And how did he subdue Gwangju?  The answer leads back to the same place.  

South Korea has never had a policy independent of the US--it has always been a vassal neo-colony. This was demonstrated when the US placed THAAD missiles on Korean soil, ignoring the explicit orders of President Moon Jae-In by coordinating secretly with the South Korean military. Even US Ambassador Donald Gregg, acknowledged openly before Congress that the US-South Korea relationship had historically been a Patron-Client relationship.

This is because the Southern state of Korea, from its inception, was created deliberately by the US after liberation to thwart a popular, indigenous socialist government (the Korean People's Republic) from taking sovereign power over the entire peninsula.

Since its occupation in 1945 by the US military government, South Korea has always been constrained and controlled by the US. Its politics and culture, even where it might be nominally independent, has been thoroughly colonized by the US. For example, in the early 90's, a fractious intra-party conflict broke out between two Cabinet factions of the Liberal Kim Young Sam presidency.  The “irreconcilable” fight was between cliques who had studied political science at UC Berkeley and those who had studied at Yale.  Such were boundaries of South Korean discourse and the overarching nature of US influence.

This state of affairs is most true of the South Korean military, which was cloned from the US military during the US occupation of 1945-1948, and which has been continuously under US control (Opcon) since July14th, 1950. 

A young Chun Doo Hwan at US Army Special Warfare School, Fort Bragg (1950’s)

Key leaders such as Park, Chun, Roh were trained and indoctrinated into US military practices and culture and had close personal connections with the US military.  Chun, for example, had attended the US Psychological Warfare school and Special Warfare school in Fort Bragg, Ranger school at Fort Benning, and Airborne training at the US Army infantry school before receiving commissions to lead Special Warfare forces.  He then in Vietnam fighting under US MACV command before ascending to key positions in the ROK military.

This dependency is starkest regarding military operational control, which the US still maintains in “wartime” to this day. ROK divisions cannot move or act independently without explicit orders from the top of the military command chain, or unless explicit permission is granted to be released from this operational control. The head of the military command chain at the time of Gwangju was General John A Wickham Jr, the head of the UNC/CFC command.  Wickham would have been subordinate to the US Joint Chiefs of Staff. 

In other words, SK troops do not get to commit massacres on their own.  They need a hall pass from the US to engage in any military maneuvers or actions.  The US military granted them such a hall pass to travel down to Gwangju, knowing that this plan that would likely result in the slaughter of students and citizens.  The released units under the Special Warfare Command, a lethal killing machine, are all divisions with a deep integration with and long history of serving the US.

Chun Doo Hwan with Ronald Reagan, 1981

The US claims that it was utterly in the dark and in no position to refuse the release of Opcon demanded by South Korea: that the Koreans snatched up Opcon, like a bully stealing lunch money, and then went on to commit mass atrocities that the US could only sit by and watch in slack-jawed innocence. These are after-the-fact re-workings of history by creative lawyers ignorant of military realities. Militaries are instituted to have unity of command, and Chun was a US-trained, known actor in a specific chain of command, with close ties to the US brass.  The notion that a partially established coup junta of a client state could simply Swiss-cheese US military command structure and snatch Opcon to commit massacres at will strains credibility.  The absurd official portrayals of the US Military brass as hapless damsels before roguish generals is refuted by official records and smacks of satire or desperation.   

Protestors running from Troops, Gwangju, 1980

In fact, Journalist Tim Shorrock  using the declassified "Cherokee files", has detailed well the discussions that happened at the time of Gwangju: top US officials in the Carter administration 1) knew of the brewing crackdown and 2) greenlighted military action, knowing full well the costs.  According to Shorrock’s meticulous reporting:

[Troops] were sent with the approval of the US commander of the US-Korea Joint Command, Gen. John Wickham…That decision, made at the highest levels of the US government….exposed how deeply the Carter administration was involved in the planning for the military coup of 1980….the Carter administration had essentially given the green light to South Korea’s generals to use military force...

This action was authorized to avoid a second "Iran" debacle, where another US-placed despot had been overthrown by popular revolt to US consternation, humiliation, and loss.  Not only did the US greenlight the massacre by US-familiar Vietnam-veteran divisions, the US deployed the USS Coral Sea to support the flank of Chun's military during the retaking of the city and heightened surveillance support with AWACS. In other words, the Gwangju massacre was a US-enabled-and-supported operation, done with explicit US knowledge and coordination.

Pentagon lawyers have argued that they had previously "released opcon" to the Korean military, so that these massacres were not done under direct US control. That is a distinction without a difference, akin to a pit bull owner saying that they took their beast off the leash, and therefore are not responsible for the deadly consequences.  The ROK military was a US-trained-and-coordinated combatant force; some units involved had served directly under the US I Corps in Vietnam only years prior to Gwangju.  The very fact that the US released opcon, knowing full well their capacities, military histories, and what was on the cards, makes the whole argument a poor exercise in plausible deniability.  No one who has the smallest understanding of how armies work would fall for "the pit bull ate my homework" excuse.   

The US has also argued that the Special Warfare division was exempt from opcon at the time.  This, too, is a legal fiction--Special Warfare Troops, of all ROK troops, are the most tightly integrated and bound to US command, where they have a long history of training, coordinating, and working with and as proxies for the US military. (The US maintains this pretense because SWF are designed to infiltrate into NK, where the necessity to avoid US command responsibility requires a legal fiction of "independence").

The same could also apply for Chun's coups as well.  The Dec 12th coup involved the movement of the Vietnam-veteran 9th division, far away from its position guarding the DMZ to attack the incumbent government, along with maneuvers of the Capital Mechanized Division and Special warfare troops.  The May 20th coup also involved large troop maneuvers to threaten and dissolve the Korean parliament.  South Korea is a small, crowded peninsula, bristling with arms and military bases on hair trigger alert, surveilling and monitoring every inch of its territory for military movement.  To assert that the US command was aware of the coups is not conspiracy that presumes US omniscience.  It's simply assuming clear signaling on a crowded dance floor to avoid inadvertent collisions.  It's inconceivable that such a massive troop maneuver would not have been signaled up the chain at minimum to avoid a friendly fire incident.  

Return OPCON, Restore Peace

So where do these facts leave us? 

As the media stir up the flies around Chun's sordid past, they also seek to bury with his body the fact that South Korea's military is an appendage of the US military, and that its warts, chancres, and tumors are grown from within the US body politic. Exorbitant atrocities such as the Bodo League Massacres, or the Gwangju Massacre, accrue to the secret debit account of the US imperial ledger, where human rights violations vanish off the books, and where moral debt and karmic interest are never calculated or reconciled.  

Despite a confusing, bifurcated organizational structure (Independent command control vs. Subordinated operational control; Peacetime Opcon vs. Wartime Opcon), the bare political fact is that South Korea's military falls effectively under US control, not simply in “wartime”, but whenever it is politically expedient or strategically necessary. This card was obvious when the ROK military simply defied Moon’s moratorium on THAAD missile installation and took its orders from the US, not even bothering to notify the Korean president that the missiles had been delivered in-country.  Subsequent investigation revealed that the South Korean military claimed a confidentiality agreement with the US military as the reason to hide the information from South Korea’s own commander-in-chief.  

Not only does the ROK military translate the will of the US in domestic actions--including coups and massacres, but it has also functioned as a brutal sidekick for US aggressions abroad, and serves as a strategic force projection platform and force multiplier for US containment against China. Unlike any other "sovereign" state in the world, South Korea's 3.7 million troops and materiel all fall under US operational control the instant that the US decides that they want to use them.

This is despite the fact that since the inception of its civilian government in 1993, SK has sued the US for the return of Opcon.  This request is now going into its third decade; the US has simply stalled, moved goal posts, changed definitions and conditions, and stonewalled to this date.

This debate around Opcon is important in the current historical moment as the US is escalating to war with China. Any de-escalation with North Korea will require the declaration of peace, predicated on the return of sovereign opcon to South Korea.  However, the US will not seek to de-escalate tensions with North Korea, because if that happens, South Korea is likely to confederate in some manner with North Korea, join China's Belt and Road Initiative and then become integrated as an ally of China.  This would cripple the US security architecture in the Northeast Pacific.  This renders any peace with North Korea antithetical to US strategic interests. 

Secondly, the US escalation for War with China requires the capacity to access and threaten the Chinese continent across a series of leverage points. Inescapably, South Korea will be a key theater of battle, because of its geostrategic position as a bridgehead onto China.  Also, the temptation to leverage a force of 6.7 million South Koreans (3.7 M troops +3 M paramilitary) as cannon fodder for war against China is simply too irresistible to pass on.  In light of this, Korea expert Tim Beal argues that in this moment of heightened tension with China, the most dangerous place in the Pacific is not the South China Sea or the East China Sea, but on the Korean Peninsula.  

We will see this conflict heighten as South Korea enters into a new presidential election cycle between a US-favored conservative candidate, and a China-sympathetic progressive candidate.  

Nevertheless, South Korea’s history offers a stark and ominous lesson, one that the MSM would prefer you ignore: a battle is brewing, with very high stakes.  Under pressure, the US has taken brutal actions to maintain control and hegemony. It may do so again.  

Chun’s passing is being taken as an opportunity to distribute soporific drafts of historical amnesia--the better to sleepwalk into war or tragedy, again. 

People with a conscience should not let this misdirection pass.  To close one’s eyes to history is to enable future atrocities and war.   Only with eyes wide open does the public have a chance of staving off this coming war. 

K.J. Noh, is a scholar, educator and journalist focusing on the political economy and geopolitics of the Asia-Pacific.   He writes for Dissident Voice, Black Agenda Report, Counterpunch, Popular Resistance, Asia Times, MR Online.  He also does frequent commentary and analysis on the news programs The Critical Hour, By Any Means Necessary, Fault Lines, Political Misfits, Loud & Clear, Breakthrough News, Flashpoints. He believes a functioning society requires good information; to that end, he strives to combat the weaponization of disinformation in the current cold war climate.

From Neoliberalism to Nowhere

By Thomas McLamb

From 1932-1945, FDR responded to the Great Depression by way of the New Deal to temporarily put a bandage on the crises of capital. This creation of the American Welfare State served as the response to the occasional short-term downturns of capitalist expansion. From FDR’s term until the Oil Crisis in the early 70s, the United States capitalist system enjoyed a period of steady growth and a stable rate of profit, whose occasional declines were solved by way of a variety of government programs that sent one clear message; the government existed to serve the people.

When Nixon took office, the processes of persistent economic inflation became apparent, indicating that this long period of economic expansion and stability was changing. That said, Marxist analyses of economic patterns of expansion, contraction, and long-term growth should stray away from the use of inflation as an economic pattern. Inflation is merely the process by which bourgeois economists summarize the degeneration of working-class buying power and strengthening of capitalist class buying power. In one short phrase – the dollar is fundamentally worth less to the worker than it is to the capitalist. While the capitalist is able to purchase more money with less, an exponential process depending on how much capital has been accumulated, the worker is dependent on purchasing essential life commodities, healthcare, food, housing, etc. with their dollar; the worker does not enjoy the luxury of purchasing more money with less, a process that inevitably leads to the phenomenon neoclassical economists refer to as inflation. Regardless of the actual relationship of inflation and the working-class, the aforementioned cycle of profits and growth from the post-war periods came to an end with the ’73-75 recession. The long wave of capitalist expansion had begun to wane, signaling the forthcoming period of long-term stagnation of working-class wages still underway today.

The end of the doctrine of the Welfare State led directly into a new doctrine of economic policy. The dominant economists of the period suggested that government welfare was wasteful and inefficient, that the occasional patterns of economic recession could be solved by allowing the markets to regulate themselves. The general assumption of these economists, i.e. Friedman et. al., was that government welfare resulted in an exponential process of inflation that could be remedied by a revival of liberal economics. This renascent adoration of laissez-faire capitalism came to serve as the genesis and framework of neoliberalism – the doctrine of cutting government expenses by any means necessary. Following the birth of neoliberalism, austerity quickly set in. The government responded to crises by allowing the bottom to hit the bottom, and externalizing and outsourcing previously domestic forms of labor that had now suffered from a declining rate of profit.

Alongside the externalization and outsourcing of labor from the United States, a process that signaled the shift of the U.S. to a strictly service and information economy, came a renascent nationalism and patriotism within the United States. This renascent nationalism served as the popular justification for the endless oil wars in the middle east, the incessant and undemocratic CIA-backed military coups in Latin America, and the continuous starving acts of tariffs and embargoes against foreign governments who refused to kneel to the imperialist war cry of neoliberalism. In industries where the rate of profit waned in the United States, the government merely cut popular welfare programs to fund the imperialist war machine to appropriate resources, governments, and economies of foreign governments, continuing the accumulation of capital and comfortable seat of influence of America.

Away from the wars, coups, and starvation acts outside of American borders, American workers waded through an ever-changing industry of employment in the United States. The neoliberal response to the discovery of ‘inflation,’ better understood as another symptom of the declining rate of profit, resulted in the same outcome the neoliberal economists and politicians believed they would be avoiding – a period of long-term stagnation of working-class wages and the devaluation of the buying-power of the working-class by large-scale privatization and imperialist efforts to sustain the total economic growth of the U.S. economy. Of course, these solutions worked to create more wealth than ever and higher profitability that ever before in the United States, but the measure of the total economy and its exponential growth ignores the continuous struggle of the non-propertied class. Marx’s theories of surplus value provide us with the truth that all profit is derived solely from labor. With that understood, wherever labor costs can be reduced, they will be, and profits will increase. Additionally, the buying-power of those wages themselves have been structurally diminished long-term by the neoliberal doctrine. This process of the stagnation of working-class buying power can be observed in the history of wages since the beginning of the neoliberal period. Real per capita wealth in the U.S. has more than doubled since 1964 while average real wages have barely increased. From 1964 to 2018, the buying power of the average worker in the United States increased by only 11.7% while the actual average wages themselves have increased by 806%. This mass rate of inflation is not an aberration of capitalist market economies – it is precisely a function of the long and short waves of capitalist development; all of which is accelerated and exaggerated by neoliberal austerity.

Over the past 50 years, over 90% of all growth in income has gone directly to the top 5% of households in the United States. Just short of 3% of total economic growth went to the bottom 20% of households, while more than half went to the wealthiest 20%. Wealth inequality from the late sixties throughout the development of the neoliberal period can be described in one sentence – the rich got richer and the poor get poorer.

The bottom 95% of families have experienced within themselves disproportionate rates of economic growth relative to productivity. While workers are producing more than ever for their bosses, hikes in productivity in the neoliberal period haven’t resulted in higher wages at all. Drew DeSilver has pointed out in his work through the Pew Research Center that while productivity amongst workers has increased by 80% over the past 30 years, the data will show that the buying power of the wages those workers earned has moved up barely a percent and a half.  Despite this near doubling in productivity, neoliberal austerity and market purism have made more money than ever for those at the top, and stolen more than ever from those at the bottom. The general tendency of money to move upwards on the capitalist market has resulted in exponential gains for the ultra-rich, which as mentioned before, creates an exponential increase in the buying-power of the rich and a stagnating or decreasing buying-power of the poor.

Alongside the hikes in productivity and slow growth of wages, nearly 80:1 from 1987-2017, there has been a drastic shift in employment by major industry sector amongst the total workforce. From 1948-1975, the total employees in the United States increased by 65.67%, around 2.43% annually. From 1975-2017, total employees increased by 79.23%, or 1.89% annually. Even though productivity and total wealth increased exponentially over the neoliberal period, employment decreased in growth year after year.

Amongst the general change in total employment, specific industries saw drastic changes during the neoliberal period compared to the period of government intervention policy stemming from the FDR era. Manufacturing jobs have disappeared in mass numbers since the beginning of the neoliberal era. Manufacturing has been pushed abroad to keep up with the ‘cutting costs’ doctrine of neoliberalism, while more workers than ever are forced into low-paying service and information jobs, since these are the only jobs that exist anymore. Retail positions have increased proportionally with total employment, but many of these positions are occupied by formerly well-employed manufacturing jobs. The shift in employment by major industry sector can be observed as a primary vehicle for the slow-growth of working-class buying power, as well as an expression of ever-disappearing manufacturing jobs.

In terms of buying power of the working-class, the numbers represent a similar transformation of shares of economic expansion, though the buying-power can illuminate a more concrete examination that accounts for the bourgeois notion of inflation and market behaviors.

From 1967 to 2017, the buying power of the lowest 80% of families grew at a similar rate to the actual dollar amount in the previous data set. From a sliding scale of the least to most wealthy in terms of economic expansion, the buying-power of the poor increased by around half compared to their dollar-amount wages while the buying-power of the wealthiest percentile classes increased by around 2.1 times. Though these numbers from the census do adjust buying power to examine the market behaviors and adjust the wages to paint a more accurate picture using consumer price indexes, these numbers are not adjusted to account for factors that only affect growth amongst the ultra-rich, i.e., debt, investments, property, etc. Furthermore, the tendency of capital upwards results in exponential increases in the buying-power of those at the top, but commodities can only grow so expensive before those at the bottom can no longer pay for them, thus the tendency of the rate of profit to fall despite exponential levels of expansion for the most-high spheres of capital.

Of course, the most wealth 5% of households in the United States have enjoyed economic expansion that dwarfs that of those at the bottom, a near 60-40 split. This is largely due to the existing ownership of the means of production and investment spheres by the ultra-rich maintaining their positions through one of the largest hikes in productivity in the history of capital itself.  The bureau of labor statistics provides us with a catalogued measure of productivity increases by major industry sector, though some catalogs only go back as far as 1987. Despite this, the numbers are still useful to examine the production and profitability levels of economic industry relative to real wage increases.

There are data series on productivity in the manufacturing sector using the same measuring scale as the data set above, though the historical series only date back to 1987, presenting several problems, but the data itself is still very useful. The data is included in the above chart, though 1967-1986 are omitted for mentioned reasons.

Referring to the real average household incomes of the same time-set discussed above, we can build a relationship by percentile class of the wage-productivity increase from 1967-2017. Listed below are both the data from 1967-2017 as well as a smaller section from 1987-2017 to include manufacturing data relative to the other major industry sectors.

Regardless of year and industry, there is a general tendency both within the latent capitalist mode of production as well as the neoliberal tendency for exponentially disproportionate ratios of growth to productivity depending on income class. Since 1987, there has been a harsh stagnation of wages especially amongst the poorest 20% of households in the United States that was not shared in years prior. Following the tendency of the income-productivity relationship upwards can illuminate the fact that the neoliberal period has resulted in the richest few in the United States have received the overwhelming majority of money and buying-power from the bottom. The philosophy of trickle-down economics combined with the furthering development of the capitalist tendency towards class-monopoly has resulted in both the longest period of wage stagnation in the history of American capitalism as well as the largest wealth inequality in the history of this country. Hikes in productivity are useful for examining the rate at which working-class wages are outpaced by economic growth, but these productivity measures also help illuminate the mass-level of accumulation and theft that the billionaire class has taken part in over the past 50 some-odd years.

In all industries, sans manufacturing, the highest 20% of household incomes have reaped the rewards of the increased productivity of the bottom 80%. The outsourcing and evisceration of American manufacturing deals primarily with the need for a higher profitability from labor by those who own the manufacturing means, as well as the systemic decline in union membership and labor solidarity from Reagan to present. Furthermore, the top 5% of families have almost exclusively reaped the rewards of hikes in productivity, being the only percentile class in the country that has achieved a level of economic growth that is even barely comparable to the growth of productivity. Again, this wage-productivity relationship only grows more dramatic and exponential as you examine those higher and higher up on the wealth ladder. For those at the very top, their economic growth makes that of those of the bottom 99% seem like raindrops in the vast open ocean.

In the period of FDR, there were three solutions to the crisis of capitalism across the world – Bolshevism, fascism, and social-democratic government policy. If the policy of FDRs social-democratic platform was to sustain the rate of profit through bailing out the worker through mass government programs, the policy of neoliberalism was to simply allow the economy to bottom out, so that the rate of profit could be restored organically in the market. The neoliberal period which proceeded from the welfare state allowed for mass accumulation of capital by the ultra-rich at exponential levels. In the early 20th century, bailing out the ultra-rich would not allow for an organic recovery of the rate of profit since the raw inequality between the rich and poor paled in comparison to that of the 21st century. However, in 2020, the capitalist system has been able to sustain its profits by doing precisely what couldn’t be done 100 years ago – bailing out the 1% of the 1% time after time. The capital that has been accumulated in disproportionate amounts over the past 100 years has facilitated this very process of the reintroduction of mass government programs that serve the market, only this time, they serve those at the top instead of those at the bottom. The program of neoliberalism is the death knell of capital, whose only defense is to consume its very mechanism of its own creation and sustenance.

The rate of profit is in decline. There are two paths forward from neoliberalism. The first path is the possibility that capital can save itself through the false-promises of several decades of social-democratic reform, recreating the conditions that led to the development of neoliberalism. The second path is the dissolution of capital by its own hand. Capitalism has dug its own grave through the doctrine of neoliberalism, resulting in the greatest wealth inequality in the history of capital and the ever-growing contradictions of labor and productivity. The path forward from the death knells of capital cannot be understood as some sort of communist eventuality. Capital will certainly die, but what takes is place is certainly indeterminate.

Neoliberalism has wreaked havoc on the worker for half a century now. Corporate tax cuts, the starvation of the worker, and the greatest wealth inequality the country has ever seen – these are the legacies of neoliberalism. Its doctrine has been nothing but the largest heist in the history of capitalism, with the ultra-rich stealing more every day from the pockets of the worker. The path forward must address these concerns, lest we allow the economy to bottom out, and leave authoritarianism and failed bourgeois economics to dominate the world as it has for the past century.

Thomas McLamb is a Lebanese-American Marxist writer, historian, and graduate student residing in the so-called United States. Thomas has spent the last few years researching historic wages, economic expansion, recession, and the currents of capitalism both in the so-called United States as well as internationally.

Political Crossover: The Troubling Emergence of Black Reaganism

By Colin Jenkins

During the 1976 Republican Presidential Primaries, then-candidate Ronald Reagan coined the term "Welfare Queen" as he detailed the story of an African-American woman from Chicago who was arrested after using multiple identities to collect over $150,000 worth of welfare benefits. Reagan's story had a purpose: to establish a connection between the "evils of taxation" and the consequences of "illegitimate" welfare programs that "rewarded laziness," and to relay this to an American electorate poised to identify a scapegoat for what they viewed as a "dying nation." The engine behind this message was the Republican Party's overtly racist "Southern Strategy," which formulated a conscious effort to "appeal to racist whites" who Republicans believed "could never forgive the Democratic Party for its support of civil rights and voting rights for Blacks." Reagan's implication, while purposely misleading, was ripe for the taking and tapped into America's deep-seated culture of white supremacy, misogyny, and classism - prompting a public discussion over social welfare programs and the need for higher levels of "personal responsibility" from those who relied on such.

Fast forward thirty-two years - a period that witnessed the unveiling of neoliberalism, historic welfare drawbacks at the hands of a Democratic President (Clinton), and a disastrous eight years under the George W. Bush administration - to the election of America's "first Black President." For a nation whose history is littered with the horrors of genocide, slavery, and Jim Crow, Barack Obama's ascendancy to the highest office was an incredibly symbolic victory over a shameful past - a seemingly giant leap over the obstruction of institutionalized racism. While not specifically elaborated on, one could not help but recognize the campaign motto of "hope and change" as having a firm foundation in bridging the country's racial divide. To many Americans, electing a Black man to the white house equaled a proverbial cutting of the ribbon - the official opening to a "post-racial America," ready for the business of not only bridging this divide, but also of finally addressing the collective disenfranchisement of a Black population still feeling the effects of a horrible past.

It is no secret that Reaganism, in its original form, was especially unkind to the Black community. "The Reagan legacy is replete with examples of disrespect and outright hostility towards African-Americans," writes David Love in The Grio. "As governor of California, Ronald Reagan signed the Mulford Act , which prohibited the public carrying of firearms. The law was passed specifically as a direct response to the Black Panther Party." On the campaign trail, Reagan courted openly racist Dixiecrats in the South, championed the States Rights platform which was responsible for Jim Crow, and even referred to the historic Voting Rights Act as "humiliating to the South." While in office, Reagan "stepped up the war on drugs, which was really a war against people of color; waged an assault on labor unions ; cut programs of importance to African Americans; slashed low income housing under HUD and social programs such as Medicaid and food stamps that disproportionately impacted black people; attacked the government's civil rights infrastructure; sought to gut the Voting Rights Act and affirmative action; and waged war on the tiny Caribbean nation of Grenada. Reagan even befriended the white supremacist government in South Africa, and vetoed a bill to impose sanctions against the apartheid regime."

It would seem far-fetched to attempt to establish a connection between the Reaganism of the 1980s and the emerging Black leaders of today. However, in reality, Reaganism never really left - it merely flowed through the pipelines of neoliberalism, gaining a near-omnipresence within America's socio-political structure. Considering its permeation through the 1990s into what was once considered the opposition - the Democratic Party - it only makes sense that this process would eventually reach outlying components of the former center-left. Symbolic victories don't always translate into real change. An Obama presidency, unfortunately, has proven to be no exception. In true Reaganesque fashion, Obama immediately "brought corporate executives into the White House, reached out to the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and made compromise his new watchword. He also signed a surprise $858 billion tax cut that would have made Reagan weep with joy, and huddled with Reagan's former White House chief of staff Ken Duberstein for lessons learned when the Gipper governed amid economic troubles." Besides appointments and policies, Obama has never shied away from his admiration for the former President. In a January 2011 op-ed in the USA Today, Obama lauded Reagan for "his leadership in the world," his "gift for communicating his vision for America," and his ability to "recognize the American people's hunger for accountability and change." In a 2010 speech, Obama told a newspaper editorial board in Nevada, "I think Ronald Reagan changed the trajectory of America in a way that, you know, Richard Nixon did not and in a way that Bill Clinton did not (by tapping into) what people were already feeling, which is - We want clarity, we want optimism."

While Obama spent time immortalizing Reagan, Black Americans - fresh off their symbolic and historic "victory" - remained stifled under the mounting economic crisis. Today, in the fifth year of the "first Black presidency," the results are in:

• Black unemployment remains double that for whites.

• The median income gap between white and black households has hit a record high.

• Blacks have half the access to health care as whites.

• The gap in homeownership is wider today than it was in 1990.

• African-Americans are twice as likely as whites to have suffered foreclosure.

• Net wealth for Black families dropped by 27.1 percent during the recession.

• One in 15 African-American men is incarcerated, compared with one in 106 white men.

• Blacks make up 38 percent of inmates in state and federal prisons.

• Although only 13.8 percent of the U.S. population, African-Americans represent 27 percent of those living below the poverty line.

• African-Americans are the only demographic group with higher unemployment today than when Obama took office. White unemployment dropped from 7.1 percent in January 2009 to 6.8 percent in February 2013. Hispanic unemployment dropped from 10.0 percent to 9.6 percent. But African-American unemployment rose from 12.7 percent to 13.8 percent during that time.

• The Black teen jobless rate hit a staggering 39.3 percent in July 2012.

The reasons for these horrid realities are vast. However, if you were to listen to the President, they most surely come from a lack of "personal responsibility." Piggy-backing on Reagan's three-decade-old message, Obama has gone on a tour of the American landscape, carrying this very message. His most recent stop was Morehouse College, where he spoke to the nation's most prominent historically-Black graduating class. "We've got no time for excuses," said Obama, "nobody is going to give you anything you haven't earned." "You're graduating into an improving job market," he claimed. "You're living in a time when advances in technology and communication put the world at your fingertips. Your generation is uniquely poised for success unlike any generation of African Americans that came before it." In other words, Black youth (or anyone for that matter) have no viable excuse for not making it in America. An antiquated and powerfully conservative message indeed - one that, while seemingly positive and motivating on the surface, is delivered on the false premise that individuals truly control their own destiny. An absurd notion to a working class that, despite working more hours at more jobs than any other time in history, is still waiting for that "trickle"; and laughable to Black members of that working class who have long been trapped under the shallowest of glass ceilings.

Obama's latest speech was viewed by many as condescending, elitist, and out of touch. When placed alongside his policy initiatives, or lack thereof, it was flat out insulting. And these allegations are nothing new. In 2008, during the Presidential race, Jesse Jackson made similar remarks regarding Obama's "tone" when speaking to Black audiences. "I said it can come off as speaking down to black people," said Jackson. "The moral message must be a much broader message. What we need really is racial justice and urban policy and jobs and health care. There is a range of issues on the menu." And as Ajamu Nangwaya points out, Obama's words ignore deeply embedded issues of racial inequality, including those faced by college graduates in the job market: "Many of these African men do not have control over events within the labor market. There are entrenched racist, gendered and class-related employment barriers that are resistant to personal effort and responsibility on the part of these prospective racialized, despised and stereotyped job-seekers." A point supported by The Journal of Blacks in Higher Education, which reported that "African men in the United States with a bachelor's degree earned only 82 percent ($41,916) of the median income ($51,138) of their white counterparts."

The President is not alone in channeling Reagan while addressing predominantly Black audiences. On the campaign trail in late 2011, Republican Presidential candidate Herman Cain proclaimed that black voters were "brainwashed" and incapable of "thinking for themselves," concluding that "if you don't have a job, you should blame yourself!" Political commentator Juan Williams has made a career out of preaching "personal responsibility" to Black men, suggesting they could "get ahead" if only they were willing to "work hard" and stop wearing their pants "hanging off their asses." In a recent speech at Bowie State University, the First Lady teetered on the "personal responsibility" mantle by openly criticizing black children for what she perceives as a narrow-minded obsession with becoming "ballers or rappers," and for "sitting on couches playing video games and watching TV," as if that's merely a "Black problem." In a June 10th op-ed in the NY Post, a notoriously conservative newspaper, Bill Cosby gave his two cents on "what's wrong" with African-American communities. In it, Cosby pointed to a lack of "personal responsibility" on the part of Black children for being unnecessarily "loud" and "angry," yet "apathetic." And this is not the first time Cosby has made such remarks. In a 2004 speech to the NAACP, Cosby referred to Black youth as "knuckleheads" for not being able to "speak English," ridiculed hip hop culture and style for its backwards hats and sagging pants, and reduced the entire Black population to "women who have eight children with eight different husbands," millionaire athletes "who cannot read or write two paragraphs," and "someone working at Wal-Mart with seven kids," while ending his speech with the disclaimer of "we cannot blame the white people any longer." Ironically, all of these charges come at a time when African-American voters participated at a higher frequency than white voters for the first time in history; "Occupy the Hood" movements are gaining traction around the country, grassroots alternative organizations like the Black Farmers and Urban Gardeners are surfacing, and Black-centered labor movements like "Detroit 15" have garnered national attention.

Considering barely half of whites believe that racism against Black Americans still exists, and instead actually believe they are subjected to racism at a higher rate, it is no surprise that Cosby's comments (as well as the others) caught on like wildfire through the mainstream media - the product of millions of White Privilege-deniers seeking confirmation: "See! A Black man/woman is saying it, so we must be right!" This ultra-conservative approach to historic problems facing African-American communities, especially when coming from those who are viewed as leaders and representatives of that community, is problematic to say the least. In response to Michelle Obama's speech, Jamelle Bouie succinctly wrote , "That too many black students live in poor neighborhoods, attend segregated schools, and don't have much access to the outside world has nothing to do with their effort or their priorities. Michelle Obama is a native of Chicago. I have no doubt she knows this history. Ignoring it, and focusing on the daydreams of teenagers as the real problem, is a considered choice, and a bad one at that." A bad choice indeed - and one typically reserved for those operating under the banner of the Southern Strategy.

The President has called upon his own biracial identity many times in an attempt to reach across "racial and cultural divides" and to symbolize America's diversity and multiculturalism. However, as Nangwaya suggests, the way in which he has used these identities since being elected is particularly telling. While he seems to feel comfortable utilizing his "Black side" to lecture Black Americans about so-called "personal responsibility" and their perceived "shortcomings," he never once has utilized his "white side" to lecture white folks about their collective role in perpetuating societal problems like classism, racism and xenophobia. In other words, as Nangwaya asks, why does the President not call on his "white identity" to tell a "largely white graduating class that they should stop blaming immigrants for taking away "their" jobs, or stop blaming social assistance and welfare recipients for high taxes?" Ultimately, by embracing Reaganism, the President has assumed a license to operate under a double-standard while in office; a double-standard that went global in 2009 when he told African nations to "stop blaming colonialism for their problems." As Ta-Nehisi Coates writes , "It is hard to avoid the conclusion that this White House has one way of addressing the social ills that afflict Black people - and particularly black youth - and another way of addressing everyone else. I would have a hard time imagining the president telling the women of Barnard that 'there's no longer room for any excuses' - as though they were in the business of making them. Barack Obama is, indeed, the president of 'all America,' but he also is singularly the scold of 'Black America."

The right-wing populism that carried Reagan through two successful presidential campaigns and a mythological place in American history was no surprise. Promises to champion privilege and end "white guilt" attracted the upper classes in droves, and strong condemnations against the "weakness" of liberalism and the "corrupt welfare system" for which it supported stroked the highly-reactionary and racist egos of a conservative American middle class that had been patiently waiting to strike back against the radicalism of the 1960s. Three decades later, the emergence of "Black Reaganism" points to the enduring strength of neoliberal corporatism as much as it exposes the transition of white supremacy from the rural landscapes of the Old South to the executive offices of the modern political elite. And the perpetuation of the "personal responsibility" myth is as telling as the seemingly conscious omission of structural failures that continue to relegate a disproportionate number of Black Americans to poverty and prison. "(W)hen you look at the prison industrial complex and the new Jim Crow: levels of massive unemployment and the decrepit unemployment system, indecent housing; white supremacy is still operating in the US, even with a brilliant black face in a high place called the White House,' explains Cornel West. "He (Obama) hasn't said a mumbling word about these institutions that have destroyed two generations of young black and brown youth... It's not about race. It is about commitment to justice. Maybe he couldn't do that much. But at least tell the truth... He's just too tied to Wall Street."

Ultimately, as Obama and the purveyors of "Black Reaganism" have proven, it is not merely racism that creates this unaccountability, it is the tie that binds racism - as well as misogyny, homophobia, jingoism and other oppressive mentalities - to the alienating effects of capitalism, and vice versa. In this sense, it is not Obama who has chosen to be a "good Reaganite" by remaining indifferent to systemic deficiencies that continue to plague the inner-cities and urban ghettoes of America - it is the duty for which he has been chosen to carry out. As Glen Ford from Black Agenda Report concludes: "The Age of Obama, now in its second and final quadrennial, has largely succeeded in divorcing African American politics from the historical Black consensus on social justice, self-determination and peace. What remains is play-acting and role-modeling, an Ebony magazine caricature of politics that leaves the great bulk of Black people with, literally, no avenues of resistance to the savage depredations of capitalism in decline."

If Black Power is "a range of political goals designed to counteract racial oppression through changing and establishing social institutions," then "Black Reaganism" is its antithesis - a co-opting of Afrocentric direct action and a rebranding of white privilege and corporate culture. Although many would just as soon move on from "racial politics," with all of its potential downfalls, the fact remains that America's social structure still operates from a foundation built on racial inequity. "Blaming the victim" through hollow calls for "personal responsibility" is not the solution - because one cannot "pull themselves up from their bootstraps" if their bootstraps were taken from them long ago.