An Ideal Blueprint: The Original Black Panther Party Model and Why It Should Be Duplicated

By Colin Jenkins

The rise of the Black Panther Party (BPP) in the late 1960s signified a monumental step toward the development of self-determination in the United States. In a nation that has long suffered a schizophrenic existence, characterized by a grand facade of "freedom, liberty and democracy" hiding what Alexis de Tocqueville once aptly described as "old aristocratic colours breaking through,"[1] the BPP model provided hope to not only Black Americans who had experienced centuries of inhumane treatment, but also to the nation's exploited and oppressed working class majority that had been inherently disregarded by both the founding fathers' framework and the predatory nature of capitalism.

As we grind our way through the tail-end of a neoliberal storm, it has become clear that in an age of extreme inequality, unabated corporate power, and overwhelming government corruption at all levels; we have a war on our hands. Not a war in the traditional international sense, but a domestic class war; one that has decimated our communities, our hopes for a better future, our children's educations, and our collective physical and mental well-being. The aggressors in this war are powerful - so much so that resistance often seems futile, and the opposition insurmountable. Multi-trillion dollar financial institutions and multi-billion dollar corporations pulling the strings of the most powerful politicians - Presidents, Senators, Congress members, and Governors alike - all of whom have at their disposal the abilities to print money at will, control markets through fiscal and monetary policy, deploy powerful militaries anywhere in the world, and unleash militarized police forces to terrorize our neighborhoods.

Despite this juggernaut of an enemy, working-class resistance has not subsided. And although it took a proclaimed "economic crisis" to wake many from their slumber, developments within activist and direct action circles have been positive over the past half-decade. The Occupy movement sparked much-needed discourse on income inequality and corporate/government corruption while setting up the fight for a $15 minimum wage, which has caught on like wildfire throughout the country, and especially among the most vulnerable of the working class - low-wage service sector workers. Anti-war protestors who made their presence felt during the Bush administration - only to disappear after Obama's election - have begun to trickle back with the gradual realization that nothing has changed. And anti-capitalist political parties throughout the Left, though still small and splintered, have gained momentum and membership while successfully plugging into some mainstream working-class consciousness (Kshama Sawant and Socialist Alternative's rise in Seattle; the Black Autonomy Federation's regrouping of grassroots, anti-authoritarian struggle; the International Socialist Organization's ongoing solidarity with folks like Glenn Greenwald, Jeremy Scahill, Ali Abunimah and Amy Goodman; the Socialist Party USA's growing relevance; and the Party for Socialism and Liberation's relentless battle in the trenches of anti-war, anti-police brutality, and anti-racist activism).

These developments, while positive in many respects, have ultimately been limited. Some of these limitations are due to external factors that continue to plague the American public: a general deficit in education and knowledge, a lack of class-conscious analysis, and the inundation of corporate media and propaganda, to name a few - all of which pose elements that are difficult, if not impossible, to control. Other limitations are due to internal factors which are largely controllable, such as organizational structures and approaches. It is regarding these internal shortcomings where the original Black Panther Party model becomes invaluable and should be held as a standard blueprint for all organizations and parties seeking revolutionary change.

The following is a list of attributes, both tangible and conceptual, that made the BPP an effective model for true liberty and self-determination; and, consequently, a substantial threat to the status quo of ever-strangling corporate and governmental power. Organizations and parties of today, whether through piecemeal or wholesale consideration, would do well to take this ideal mix into account.

Theoretical Foundation and Internationalism

Despite constant grumblings regarding the "inundation" and "worthlessness" of theory from within the modern Left, a glance at the operational effectiveness of the original BPP lends credence to its usefulness.

The BPP was firmly rooted in revolutionary political philosophy, most notably that of Marxism - a tool that is needed to understand and properly critique the very system which dominates us - capitalism. "Capitalist exploitation is one of the basic causes of our problem," explained one of the party's founders, Huey P. Newton, and "it is the goal of the BPP to negate capitalism in our communities and in the oppressed communities around the world."[2]

The BPP's ongoing exploration of theory allowed for the development of a crucial class component that perfectly balanced their fight against institutional racism. This helped create the notion that the fight for racial justice could not be won outside the confines of economic justice and class division, something revolutionary counterparts like Martin Luther King, Jr. and Malcolm X would also eventually realize.

Stemming from Marxism was the method of and adherence to "dialectical materialism," which "precluded a static, mechanical application" of theory and allowed the party to adapt to the constantly developing environment while maintaining a mission based in class and racial oppression. "If we are using the method of dialectical materialism," argued Newton, "we don't expect to find anything the same even one minute later because one minute later is history." [3] Regarding the party's embrace of this method, Eldridge Cleaver noted, "we have studied and understand the classical principles of scientific socialism (and) have adapted these principles to our own situation for ourselves. However, we do not move with a closed mind to new ideas or information (and) know that we must rely upon our own brains in solving ideological problems as they relate to us." [4]

The Party's belief in "international working class unity across the spectrum of color and gender" led them to form bonds with various minority and white revolutionary groups. "From the tenets of Maoism they set the role of their Party as the vanguard of the revolution and worked to establish a united front, while from Marxism they addressed the capitalist economic system, embraced the theory of dialectical materialism, and represented the need for all workers to forcefully take over the means of production." This approach was echoed by Fred Hampton, who urged all to resist fighting racism with racism, but rather with (working class) solidarity; and to resist fighting capitalism with "Black capitalism," but rather with socialism.

Through this theoretical base, "Newton and the BPP leadership organized with the intent of empowering the Black community through collective work," Danny Haiphong tells us. "Each concrete medical clinic, free breakfast program, and Panther school were organized to move community to confront the racist, capitalist power structure and embrace revolutionary socialism and communalism."

The Party's Ten-Point Program and platform, which evolved slightly over the course of several years, rested on demands that focused not only on historical roots to the daily injustices faced by Black Americans and oppressed communities, but also took on an international scope that allowed for understanding macro-systemic causes, and particularly those associated with capitalism. As Cornel West explains, "The revolutionary politics of the Black Panther Party linked the catastrophic conditions of local Black communities (with the disgraceful school systems, unavailable health and child care, high levels of unemployment and underemployment, escalating rates of imprisonment, and pervasive forms of self-hatred and self-destruction) to economic inequality in America and colonial or neocolonial realities in the capitalist world-system."[5]

"It was the politics of international radical solidarity ... Because of the tremendous hostility that the Vietnam War was generating, youth organizations in Germany, France and Sweden created solidarity committees for the BPP. We would travel back and forth; and they raised money for us. There were liberation movements in Africa who read our paper and contacted us," says Kathleen Cleaver. The Party even established its own embassy in Algeria, a nation that had no diplomatic ties with the United States at the time. With a firm understanding of political economy and geopolitics, the party possessed a "big picture approach" that has become a necessity, especially in today's world of globalization, neoliberalism, and multinational corporate power.

Praxis and Direct Action

"They (the people) can do anything they desire to do," Newton professed, "but they will only take those actions which are consistent with their level of consciousness and their understanding of the situation. When we raise their consciousness (through education), they will understand even more fully what they in fact can do, and they will move on the situation in a courageous manner. This is merging your theory with your practices." [6]

The BPP didn't just talk about change, they actively pursued it. Their presence was felt in the neighborhoods for which they lived and worked. They walked the streets, talked with folks, broke bread with neighbors, and cultivated a sense of community. Their numerous outreach efforts were well-planned, beautifully strategic, and always multi-pronged - combining basic and pleasant human interaction with education and revolutionary politics. They were the perfect embodiment of solidarity, often times rejecting notions of leadership and superiority to create a radical landscape where all were on equal footing. The sense of empowerment felt by all who came in contact with them was unmistakable.

In an effort to curb police brutality and the indiscriminate murders of black youth at the hands of racist police tactics, the party regularly deployed armed citizen patrols designed to evaluate the behaviors of police officers. They coordinated neighborhood watch programs, performed military-style marching drills, and studied basic protective manuevers to ensure measures of safety and self-preservation for citizens living in oppressed communities.

In January of 1969, in response to the malnutrition that plagued their communities, the party launched a "Free Breakfast for Schoolchildren" program, which was introduced at St. Augustine's church in Oakland, California. In a matter of a few months, the program had spread to other cities across the country. In April, the Black Panther newspaper reported on its progress and effectiveness:

The Free Breakfast for School Children is about to cover the country and be initiated in every chapter and branch of the Black Panther Party… It is a beautiful sight to see our children eat in the mornings after remembering the times when our stomachs were not full, and even the teachers in the schools say that there is a great improvement in the academic skills of the children that do get the breakfast. At one time there were children that passed out in class from hunger, or had to be sent home for something to eat. But our children shall be fed, and the Black Panther Party will not let the malady of hunger keep our children down any longer.

By year's end, the program had blanketed the country, feeding over 10,000 children every day before they went to school. To compliment this, the Party "launched more than 35 Survival Programs and provided community help such as education, tuberculosis testing, legal aid, transportation assistance, ambulance service, and the manufacture and distribution of free shoes to poor people." This type of tangible solidarity and assistance is needed today. Food drives, safety programs, neighborhood watch, and basic accessibility and assistance should not represent things that are beneath revolutionary politicking.

Intersectionality

Due to their solid theoretical framework, the Party was able to deploy a proto-intersectionality that allowed them to go beyond issues of racial oppression and police brutality in order to address broad roots and common causes. In doing so, they were able to redirect the emotional rage brought on by targeted racism and channel it into a far-reaching indictment of the system. This created the potential for broad coalitions and opened up avenues for unity and solidarity with revolutionary counterparts, especially with regards to Black women.

Despite stifling elements of misogyny and sexism, the emergence of women as key figures in the Black Power movement was ironically made possible through the BPP. One of the party's early leaders, Elaine Brown, pointed to a conscious effort on the part of female members to overcome patriarchy from within party lines. "A woman in the Black Power movement was considered, at best, irrelevant," explains Brown. "A woman asserting herself was a pariah… It was a violation of some Black Power principle that was left undefined. If a Black woman assumed a role of leadership, she was said to be eroding Black manhood."[7]

Leaders like Brown, despite carrying this heavy burden of being drawn into a fight within THE fight, were incredibly important to the party's mission and became highly influential members, local leaders, fierce orators, and public representatives for the party-at-large. Brown made impressive runs for Oakland City Council in 1973 and 1975, receiving 30% and 44% of the vote respectively. In 1977, she managed Lionel Wilson's Oakland mayoral campaign which resulted in Wilson becoming the city's first Black mayor.

Regarding the dynamics of sexuality and gender in the party, journalist and activist Annie Brown tells us:

The BPP had an open mind towards sexual expression as well as the roles women could play in social change organizations. The embrace of female empowerment and varied sexual identities within the party allowed for women like Angela Davis, to rise to prominent positions of power within the party while other radical organizations of the time such as Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) and The Student Nonviolent Coordination Committee (SNCC) saved leadership roles for men, and forced women to remain in the background.

After addressing these early pockets of misogyny and hyper-masculinity, the party was shaped heavily by women, to the point where it "transformed gender roles in the Black Power movement," and paved the way for similar developments in other grassroots movements in the U.S. In researching for her forthcoming book, "What You've Got is a Revolution: Black Women's Movements for Black Power," Historian Ashley Farmer found the Party's newspaper regularly "defied gender roles by depicting women as strong, gun-toting revolutionaries," while female party members were heavily involved in setting "a community-focused revolutionary agenda that supported programs for daycare, groceries, and housing."

In addition to celebrating women as "tough revolutionaries," the newspaper included an "explicit focus on women's issues" throughout its publication. For years, Women Panthers assumed leadership roles and " turned toward local-level activism, providing food, housing, and health care in local black communities." The inclusion of women as active participants in the struggle was eventually, if not initially, embraced by founding members. As Historian Robyn Spencer writes, "Seale and Newton didn't exclude African-American women in their rhetoric or in their involvement. The message became: Black brothers and sisters unite for real social action."[8] This development within the party's evolution led to a membership that was majority (roughly two-thirds) female by the early-1970s, a desirable goal for a modern Left that still possesses a troublesome androcratic identity.

Discipline

Despite constant meddling from the FBI and its COINTELPRO program, which sought to "disrupt, confuse and create tension within the organization," the BPP's organizational structure was solidly built, baring a slight resemblance to that of the Nation of Islam. Some BPP chapters operated with military-like discipline, a quality that tends to be lacking on a loose and often times hyper-sensitive Left (even amongst Leninist organizations). This was accomplished with a good mix of horizontal leadership and chapter autonomy, which allowed for creativity, initiatives and actions throughout the organization, while also maintaining the discipline necessary for taking broad action and staying focused on the big picture.

The party recognized the severity of the situation for oppressed and working-class communities within a racist and capitalist system. The system's inherently predatory nature regarding social and economic issues provided a glimpse of a society based in class division, and the daily brutalization of communities of color at the hands of the police confirmed the presence of an all-out class war. In this sense, the party organized for this purpose - equipping themselves with ideological ammo, building poor and working-class armies through community outreach and education, arming themselves for self-defense, and operating their mission with a high degree of strategy and discipline.

Mao Zedong's revolutionary military doctrine, "Three Rules of Discipline and Eight Points for Attention," was highly influential in the party's daily operations. These "rules of engagement" emphasized obedience to the needs of oppressed peoples as well as conducting actions in a respectable and honorable manner (Be polite when speaking; Be honest when buying and selling; Return all borrowed articles; Pay compensation for everything damaged; Do not hit or swear at others; Do not damage crops; Do not harass females; and Do not mistreat prisoners). "There were some aspects of Chairman Mao's thought that had helpful and sensitive application for the life of the Panthers in the ghetto," explained Cleaver.[9]

In addition to Mao's "little red book," the party made Che Guevara's "Guerilla Warfare" required reading in all of its political education classes. Recognizing the similarities between the Black struggle in America and the struggle of the colonized in many parts of the world, party members studied anti-colonial resistance and Regis Debray's foco theory of revolution, which posited the idea that "vanguardism by cadres of small, fast-moving paramilitary groups can provide a focus (in Spanish, foco) for popular discontent against a sitting regime, and thereby lead a general insurrection." While the BPP didn't apply this in the same manner as a revolutionary peasantry would in taking up arms against an imperial force, they were able to use many points as a foundation for unity and self-defense, if not merely for inspiration in battling forces of oppression. Said Newton:

… all the guerilla bands that have been operating in Mozambique and Angola, and the Palestinian guerillas who are fighting for a socialist world. I think they all have been great inspirations for the Black Panther Party… they are examples of guerilla bands. The guerillas who are operating in South Africa (against Apartheid) and numerous other countries all have had great influence on us. We study and follow their example."

This disciplined approach allowed the party to establish clear targets for opposition, while also dissuading reactionary behaviors that were dangerously counterproductive and counter-revolutionary. An example of this came in a message released to members through the organizational newspaper in 1968. The message was in response to news of frequent quarrels with hippies:

"Black brothers stop vamping on the hippies. They are not your enemy. Your enemy, right now, is the white racist pigs who support this corrupt system. Your enemy is the Tom nigger who reports to his white slavemaster every day. Your enemy is the fat capitalist who exploits your people daily. Your enemy is the politician who uses pretty words to deceive you. Your enemy is the racist pigs who use Nazi-type tactics and force to intimidate black expressionism. Your enemy is not the hippies. Your blind reactionary acts endanger THE BLACK PANTHER PARTY members and its revolutionary movements. WE HAVE NO QUARREL WITH THE HIPPIES. LEAVE THEM ALONE. Or - THE BLACK PANTHER PARTY will deal with you."

Such focus is crucial and should be a primary goal for a modern Left that is often intensely and frustratingly sectarian.

An All-Inclusive, Working-Class Orientation

Perhaps the most valuable of the BPP's attributes was its common acceptance and inclusion of the most disenfranchised and oppressed of the working classes - the unemployed, the poor, and those alienated by the criminal justice system through racist and classist laws and law enforcement practices. This approach stood in contrast to the overly-Eurocentric package that housed orthodox Marxism, and openly defied the highly romanticized, lily white version of working-class identity espoused by many Leftist organizations throughout history - often symbolized by the white, chiseled, "blue-collar" man wielding a hammer.

Over the years, Marx's assessment and discarding of the "lumpenproletariat" - a population that he described as "members of the working-class outside of the wage-labor system who gain their livelihoods through crime and other aspects of the underground economy such as prostitutes, thieves, drug dealers, and gamblers" - had been accepted by many on the Left. However, the BPP's familiarity with Zedong and Guevara led them away from this commonly accepted notion, and their philosophy paralleled that of Frantz Fanon, who in his ongoing analysis of neocolonialism, deemed the lumpen to be "one of the most spontaneous and the most radically revolutionary forces of a colonized people."

The BPP recognized similar dynamics within the United States - particularly the relationship between Black, poor, and disenfranchised populations and the power structure - and viewed this as a microcosm of international colonialism. In their eyes, the American "peasantry" wasn't tilling fields and cultivating crops - it was the homeless lying in the streets, the unemployed standing on the corners, the racially disenfranchised left with no options in life, and the unlawfully imprisoned masses behind bars. They saw potential in society's castaways and embraced the idea of a revolutionary class made up of displaced workers who were never given a chance to participate in the labor market.

Newton, particularly, was a firm believer in the revolutionary potential of the 'Black lumpenproletariat' in the United States, and viewed this notion as an important challenge to the "bourgeois nature" of the Southern Civil Rights movement, which he believed had become completely reliant on a reformist-minded, Black middle-class leadership that was too concessionary and did not properly represent a revolutionary working-class orientation.

Today, at a time when over 20 million able-bodied Americans have been forced into the "underground economy," and another 2.5 million are incarcerated, the idea of drawing society's castaways toward class-conscious political movements is ripe. Narratives that focus on the erosion of the "middle class" are not only insufficient, they're irresponsible. Our true struggle lies with the multi-generational poor, the unemployed, and the imprisoned victims of the draconian "Drug War" and prison industrial complex.

A Winning Formula

The BPP model could be summed up with the following formula: (THEORY + INTERSECTIONALITY) + (PRAXIS + EDUCATION) = CLASS CONSCIOUSNESS = REVOLUTIONARY CHANGE. Like no other, the party successfully blended a heavy academic foundation with a non-academic approach, using community outreach programs to serve basic needs while also educating and promoting class consciousness. Their crucial "Survival Programs" sought to satisfy immediate Maslovian needs without losing sight of the ultimate goal of uprooting and transforming society from below.

"All these programs satisfy the deep needs of the community but they are not solutions to our problems," explained Newton. "That is why we call them survival programs, meaning survival pending revolution. We say that the survival program of the Black Panther Party is like the survival kit of a sailor stranded on a raft. It helps him to sustain himself until he can get completely out of that situation. So the survival programs are not answers or solutions, but they will help us to organize the community around a true analysis and understanding of their situation. When consciousness and understanding is raised to a high level then the community will seize the time and deliver themselves from the boot of their oppressors." [10]

The party also wasn't afraid to display physical prowess and utilize the art of intimidation in their struggle. In fact, they saw this as a crucial component necessary to counter reactionary and senseless violence from racist citizens and police officers. They provided security escorts for Betty Shabazz following Malcolm's death, and sent thirty armed members to the California State capitol to protest the Mulford Act. This approach, coupled with similar tactics of self-defense used by the Nation of Islam, proved to be a vital compliment to the non-violent wing of the Civil Rights movement, ultimately allowing its "more palatable elements" to secure legislative victories. Furthermore, it challenged the notion that reactionary and racist conservatives had a monopoly on intimidation and violence - a notion that has gained an increasingly strong foothold over time, and should be challenged again.

The BPP's model is needed today. A firm foundation of knowledge, history, internationalism, and political economy is needed. A concerted effort to bond with and assist our working-class communities and disenfranchised sisters and brothers is needed. An infusion of authentic, working-class politics which shifts the focus from 'middle-class erosion' to 'multi-generational disenfranchisement' is needed. The blueprint is there. Let's use it.

Notes

[1] Alexis de Tocqueville, Democracy in America. Penguin Books edition, 2004: p. 58

[2] The Huey P. Newton Reader, Seven Stories Press, 2002. p 229

[3] Kathleen Cleaver and George Katsiaficas. Liberation, Imagination, and the Black Panther Party: A New Look at the Panthers and Their Legacy. Routledge, 2001, p. 30.

[4] The Huey P. Newton Reader, p 230

[5] The Black Panther Party: Service to the People Programs, the Dr. Huey P. Newton Foundation. Edited and with an afterword by David Hilliard. University of New Mexico Press, 2008

[6] The Huey P. Newton Reader, pp. 228-229.

[7] Johnnetta B. Cole, Beverly Guy-Sheftall, Gender Talk: The Struggle for Women's Equality in African American Communities. Random House, NY: 2003. p 92

[8] Robyn C. Spencer, "Engendering the Black Freedom Struggle: Revolutionary Black Womanhood and the Black Panther Party in the Bay Area, California," Journal of Women's History, 20 no. 1 (2008), 3.

[9] Cleaver and Katsiaficas, p. 30.

[10] To Die for the People: The writings of Huey P. Newton, City Lights Books, 2009.

Calibrating the Capitalist State in the Neoliberal Era: Equilibrium, Superstructure, and the Pull Towards a Corporate-Fascistic Model

By Colin Jenkins

The following is Part one of a multi-part series, "Applying Poulantzas," which analyzes the work of Greek Marxist political sociologist, Nicos Poulantzas, and applies it to the unique political and economic structures found under neoliberalism and post-industrial capitalism.

Since the capitalist formation of relations between what is perceived as the 'public sector' and the 'private sector,' traditional nation-states and their governing bodies have played a major role as facilitators of the economic system at-large. This became a necessary supplemental component as localized economies, which were dominated by agrarian/plantation life, gave way to industrialization and subsequent mass migration into urban centers, thus introducing new industrial economies based in the manufacturing/production process. With the advent of wage labor came predictable outcomes of capital accumulation and a perpetually increasing polarization between the owning class and working class. And with this growing inequality came the notions of worker collectivization and unionism which, absent any equalizing measures taken by the State, were the only sources of hope for workers who quickly found themselves, their livelihood, and their family's well-being at the mercy of a rapidly fluctuating and exploitative labor market. Work was often hard to come by and, when it was available, the wages "earned" were barely enough to cover basic necessities like food, clothing and shelter - provisions which had long been commodified to create expanding avenues of profit for the owning class.

The inherent instabilities created by this economic system — a system that exists for the sole purpose of creating or maintaining individual/personal wealth (as opposed to preserving collective/societal wealth) — require components that act solely as stabilizers. Despite its shunning, the existence of society — or "the aggregate of people living together in a more or less ordered community" — not only remains, but actually serves as the casing for which this system must rely on, or more aptly, capitalize from within. And because of this reliance, the instabilities and contradictions that simultaneously represent natural byproducts and threats become common growths as the result of a counterintuitive and inhumane arrangement, and must be kept in check through a delicate (though not necessarily intricate) balancing act.

In order to "balance" competing interests - in this case the "dominant" and "dominated" classes - the political sphere, a major element of the State apparatus, assumes a vital role. As such, Nicos Poulantzas, building upon earlier theoretical contributions from the likes of Antonio Gramsci, details the dynamic process whereas the state serves as a facilitator to the unstable equilibrium that is produced by the internally antagonistic capitalist system. Ultimately, through this act of facilitating, the state (by deploying its political power) negotiates a perpetual series of "compromises" in the form of economic "sacrifices" which are accepted as a necessity by the dominant classes; and which are precisely aimed at creating a limited equilibrium that ensures a minimal degree of social stability (maintained by the political superstructure) atop the inherently asymmetrical economic base.

Poulantzas explains:

"…political power is thus apparently founded on an unstable equilibrium of compromise. These terms should be understood as follows: 1) Compromise: in the sense that this power corresponds to a hegemonic class domination and can take into account the economic interests of certain dominated classes even where those could be contrary to the short-term economic interests of the dominant classes, without this affecting the configuration of political interests; 2) Equilibrium: in the sense that while these economic 'sacrifices' are real and so provide the ground for an equilibrium, they do not as such challenge the political power which sets precise limits to this equilibrium; and 3) Unstable: in the sense that these limits of the equilibrium are set by the political conjuncture." [1]

Gramsci tells us, "The life of the state is conceived of as a continuous process of formation and superseding of unstable equilibria… between the interests of the fundamental group and those of the subordinate groups - equilibria in which the interests of the dominant group prevail, but only up to a certain point, i.e. stopping short of narrowly corporate interest."[2] In other words, as the capitalist system naturally bends toward a corporate-fascistic state of being through the simultaneous developments of capital accumulation and mass alienation - thus forming structures of domination that extend from the economic base and into the political, social, and cultural realms - there develops a need to stabilize the fragile nature (in the sense that such imbalance is a constant threat to the societal structure at-large) of this system.

The need to maintain this equilibrium exists as long as a wholly functioning society is requisite for capitalist expansion - or, as long as worker-consumers represent viable targets of exploitation. In Political Powers and Social Classes, Poulantzas identifies certain measures that represent embedded concessions on the part of the owning class, carried out by the state apparatus through a systematic process that is relatively fluid and effortless (though, as Poulantzas points out, competing interests exist even within this elite bureaucracy). In recognizing the function of the state and its role atop the capitalist formation of relations, Poulantzas explains, "The notion of the general interest of the 'people', an ideological notion covering an institutional operation of the capitalist state, expresses a real fact: namely that this state, by its very structure, gives to the economic interests of certain dominated classes guarantees which may even be contrary to the short-term economic interests of the dominant classes, but which are compatible with their political interests and their hegemonic domination."[3]

Political systems based on grand "democratic" narratives like "representative democracy" and "republicanism," as well as Rousseau's "social contract," are ideal enablers for this societal arrangement. This is the very reason why liberalism and the modern adaptation of the "liberal politician" play such a crucial role in their opposition to the proto-fascist nature of "conservatism." Their superficially adversarial relationship represents the ultimate stabilizer as its reach is limited to the confines of the political superstructure. And, because it deals primarily with "social issues" (including passive measures of economic redistribution), it is ultimately relegated to directing the aforementioned "compromises" of the dominant class. It does not and can not transform the economic base (the capitalist hierarchy) as these compromises, while representing "real economic sacrifices" that are necessary to provide the ground for equilibrium, "do not as such challenge the political power which sets precise limits to this equilibrium."

"Democratic" systems which involve periodic elections of "representatives" to "public" office accomplish two important tasks in this regard. First, they create a façade of civil empowerment - a form of political compromise which gives the dominated classes the appearance of choice vis-a-vis universal suffrage. Second, they create a political sphere that, while completely fused with the long-term interests of the dominant classes (through its sole purpose as a facilitator), operates as a separate entity existing outside the economic base - a separation that is, as Poulantzas explains, both an exclusive and necessary element to the capitalist system. It reminds us of John Dewey's claim that, "As long as politics is the shadow cast on society by big business, the attenuation of the shadow will not change the substance." In the US, the two-party political system has proven extremely effective in this regard. Aside from differences on social issues like abortion and gay marriage, as well as socioeconomic issues like unemployment insurance and public assistance, both parties ultimately embrace capitalist/corporatist interests in that they both serve as facilitators for the dominant classes: The Republican Party in its role as forerunner, pushing the limits of the capitalist model to the brink of fascism; and the Democratic Party in its role as governor, providing intermittent degrees of slack and pull against this inevitable move towards a "corporate-fascistic state of being."

The distinction made between 'the political' and 'the economic' is important to consider, though these boundaries have seemingly blurred in the age of neoliberalism and the intensification of the merger between "public" and "private." And while Poulantzas insists this separation is inherent and theoretically unbreakable, he (along with Gramsci) may have underestimated the extent to which compromises may be reined in without destabilizing the equilibrium beyond repair. During the neoliberal era, there have been many developments which have pushed this long-standing balance to the verge of "narrow corporatism" and beyond, including factors related to technology and government surviellance, growth in the banking industry, the development of corporate media and intricate propaganda, financialization's role in supplementing monopoly capitalism, and the maturation of the international economic system and all of its mediating components, to name a few; but that discussion is for another place and time.

For the purpose of this analysis, we are focused on national electoral politics and political parties, and the specific role they play in maintaining the status quo - in this case, not only the capitalist hierarchy, but also the stage of monopoly capitalism which has come to fruition over the past few decades. The distinction between base and superstructure allows us to see how the political apparatus, through the actions of political parties, exists solely as a tool for the "power bloc." Furthermore, it allows us to divert from reductionist theories which attempt to highlight a singular cause, and move towards a more nuanced critique of the capitalist state, especially in the "pluralist" form that we see in the US and other "western democracies."

"As far as the terrain of political domination is concerned, this is also occupied not by one single class or class fraction, but by several dominant classes and fractions," explains Poulantzas. "These classes and fractions form a specific alliance on this terrain, the power bloc, generally functioning under the leadership of one of the dominant classes or fractions, the hegemonic class or fraction."[4] In this instance, even with a government that includes separate branches - legislative, executive, and judicial - and represents several interests, as in Robert A. Dahl's "polyarchy," the state still exists and operates on the foundation of a capitalist system that creates its own hierarchy. The members of this "political terrain" are not necessarily synchronized with one another when it comes to geography, special interests, localized interests, and priorities when maintaining the equilibrium, and they don't have to be. Despite these various pieces which make up the power bloc, in its own formation the base forces the political "superstructure" to adjust accordingly. This is why modern practices like "blanket financing" of political campaigns, which consists of corporations or private interests providing monetary support to opposing candidates and political parties in a particular election, have become so prevalent. Politicians, despite what their personal beliefs or aspirations may be, are put into power by the very hierarchy that depends on the economic base. Their positions of power cater to and are reliant on not only the power bloc which put them there, but the maintenance of the very system that allows them to stay there. Therefore, while they may possess some leeway in terms of pushing superficial agendas, their ability to do so is granted by the hierarchy extending from the economic base. Ultimately, in order to maintain its own existence, the political apparatus must protect the base - and is essentially designed (or is ever-evolving) to do so despite its "relative autonomy" which is "inscribed in the very structure of the capitalist state."

According to Poulantzas, by recognizing both the autonomy of the "state machine" as well as the existence of a "power bloc" which mimics society's pluralist form, it will "enable us to establish theoretically, and to examine concretely, the way in which the relative autonomy of the capitalist state develops and functions with respect to the particular economic-corporate interests of this or that fraction of the power bloc, in such a way that the state always guards the general political interests of this bloc - which certainly does not occur merely as a result of the state's and the bureaucracy's own rationalizing will."[5] This understanding includes "firmly grasping the fact than an institution (the state) that is destined to reproduce class divisions cannot really be a monolithic, fissureless bloc, but is itself, by virtue of its very structure (the state is a relation), divided."[6] Poulantzas continues:

The various organs and branches of the state (ministries and government offices, executive and parliament, central administration and local and regional authorities, army, judiciary, etc.) reveal major contradictions among themselves, each of them frequently constituting the seat and the representative - in short, the crystallization - of this or that fraction of the power bloc, this or that specific and competing interest. In this context, the process by whereby the general political interest of the power bloc is established, and whereby the state intervenes to ensure the reproduction of the overall system, may well, at a certain level, appear chaotic and contradictory, as a 'resultant' of these inter-organ and inter-branch contradictions.[7]

This "division," and these "contradictions," were never more evident than with President Dwight Eisenhower's 1961 farewell address and sobering warning against the rising "military industrial complex," which publicly displayed a major fission within the power bloc. According to Poulantzas, this splitting is irrelevant in the capitalist scheme of things because it remains, by design, autonomous from the base; and, therefore, will naturally work itself out to accommodate that base, whether through conscious coordination or through inherent process. In the age of neoliberalism and monopoly capitalism, the state has become highly concentrated out of necessity. In this sense, C. Wright Mills' assessment rings true:

As each of these domains becomes enlarged and centralized, the consequences of its activities become greater, and its traffic with the others increases. The decisions of a handful of corporations bear upon military and political as well as upon economic developments around the world. The decisions of the military establishment rest upon and grievously affect political life as well as the very level of economic activity. The decisions made within the political domain determine economic activities and military programs. There is no longer, on the one hand, an economy, and, on the other hand, a political order containing a military establishment unimportant to politics and to money-making. There is a political economy linked, in a thousand ways, with military institutions and decisions. [8]

This intertwined political economy exists within the superstructure. It's increased centralization, coordination, and synchronization over the past half-century has undoubtedly pushed the US government to the brink of a "corporate-fascistic state of being." In this development, the equilibrium has never been more delicate and fragile. The two-party system, thriving from the pluralist nature of both the electorate and power bloc, has proven efficient in carrying out trivial "concessions" that give "the economic interests of certain dominated classes guarantees which may even be contrary to the short-term economic interests of the dominant classes, but which are compatible with their political interests and their hegemonic domination."[9] The expansion of domestic militarization and the intensification of "austerity measures" have introduced a degree of "corporate-fascistic" torque unseen before from within a mature capitalist state. How far these embedded "compromises may be reined in without destabilizing the equilibrium beyond repair" remains to be seen.

References

[1] Poulantzas, Nicos (Timothy O'Hagan translating). Political Power and Social Classes. Verso, 1975, p. 192.

[2] Gramsci, Antonio. Prison Notebooks, p. 182.

[3] Poulantzas, Political Power and Social Classes, p. 191.

[4] Poulantzas, Nicos. Classes in Contemporary Capitalism (Translated from French version by David Fernbach). Verso, 1978, p. 93.

[5] The Poulantzas Reader: Marxism, Law and the State. Verso Books: London/New York, 2008, p. 284.

[6] Ibid, p. 285.

[7] Ibid, p. 285.

[8] C. Wright Mills. The Power Elite, New Edition. Oxford University Press: 2000, p. 76.

[9] Poulantzas, Political Power and Social Classes, p. 191

Transformation of Fascism in the Twentieth Century: A Comprehensive Theory

By Fazal Rahman

The following paper was presented at the Pacific Northwest Marxist Scholars Conference in Seattle, Washington, on April 11, 1986, under a different title, "Some Aspects of the Developing Dialectic of U. S. Capitalist Democracy and International Imperialism". It is being reproduced here without any changes, except in the title. The paper was type-written and was scanned and transferred to the MS Word with some difficulty. There was an abstract diagrammatic presentation of the theory in the original paper. However, its scanned copy could not be transferred to the word processor. So, that has been excluded.

As predicted theoretically in the paper, enormous further erosions of capitalist democracy and conditions of the working class have taken place in the US and other imperialist centers since its writing and presentation in 1986, which are continuing and are going to get worse. Great changes have also occurred in the world politico-economic situation and balance of forces. Socialism has been betrayed in the former socialist giants, Peoples Republic of China and the USSR, as well as in majority of the other socialist countries. They are now turning into capitalist and imperialist countries, further fueling and exacerbating the inter-capitalist and inter-imperialist rivalries and competition. The former dominant imperialist countries of the US, Japan, and in Europe are now facing powerful and successful competition from the newly emerging capitalist and imperialist (or wannabe imperialist) powers, especially the countries of BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa). The 1986 paper had focused on the negative effects of the crumbling of fascist-type dictatorships in the periphery-established and sustained by the center-and their replacement with the democratic types, on the capitalist democracies in the imperialist centers. The great changes in the distribution of world resources, wealth, and balance of power, associated with the emergence of BRICS and other actors on the world stage, will inevitably produce further huge and powerful negative effects on the economies and political superstructures of the rapidly receding imperialist powers that have been dedicated and addicted to dominance and exploitation of the periphery for centuries. The effects, pressures, and forces of these newer changes in the world reality, on the political economies and systems of the imperialist centers, are combining with those of the earlier changes of abolition of fascist-type dictatorships and multiplying and compounding them. These effects, pressures, and forces are objective; but subjectively, in both cases, the imperialist capital and its political representatives in the government, congress, and other institutions are channeling them through the erosion of capitalist democracy and attacks on the rights, living conditions, employment, and wages of the working class and other working people, in attempts to maintain the class inequalities, privileges, and domination. Large parts of the Third World periphery were subjected to fascism of the imperialist center for a long time. Now those externalized forces and pressures are returning to that center itself. The newer changes mentioned above are also greatly adding to those.

The fundamentals of world balance of economic, political, and military forces, as well as the relations of production and classes, have been changing for quite sometime; and, recently, the pace of these changes has greatly accelerated. The super-profits extracted from the super-exploitation of the Third World had made it possible for the ruling capitalist classes in the US and other imperialist countries to bribe the working classes into class collaboration, from which the latter, especially their leaderships and technically skilled sections, had benefited significantly in financial terms, on the expense of the political positions of the working classes as a whole. Due to the changes in the fundamentals, large parts of the working classes in the imperialist countries are now not only being excluded from the benefits of the bribery, but are also being subjected to greatly enhanced exploitation and exclusion, in order to compensate for losses in the international areas. As the leaderships and privileged sections of the working classes continue to reap the benefits of bribery and class collaboration, they continue the same policies, callously and conscienceless ignoring and disregarding the plight of large parts of their classes, numbering tens of millions, and on the expense of the political positions of their classes, relative to the capitalist and imperialist classes. Needless to say that continuation of these policies by the working classes of imperialist countries, at this stage of the evolution of their politico-economic and social systems, has now become a great threat to their own welfare-as well as to that of the overwhelming majority of other people-, domestic and international peace, and capitalist democracy itself. These policies are greatly contributing to the blow-back of fascism from the Third World periphery-where it has been replaced with the democratic types-to the imperialist centers, and its establishment there. As a result of its rapidly weakening international economic position and resources, prolonged and irresolvable economic and all-round crises, and becoming the greatest debtor nation in history, US imperialism's ability to bribe its own working class and the capitalist and feudal leaders and other elites of the Third World countries has greatly diminished. In spite of all these great objective changes, it continues to allocate huge parts of its national budget and GDP to military expenditures, spending more on these than all the rest of the world combined. This policy is also now feeding into the developing domestic fascism. All these multiple international and national interacting factors, forces, and pressures, within the context of a new and changed global reality, are producing powerful macro- and micro-level objective and subjective effects, which are eroding the capitalist democracy and transforming it into the most dangerous masked fascism in history. Sooner or later, the mask itself will be eroded, if the system and society continue to move in the same directions.

An overwhelming part of the working class in the US is unorganized. It is in such a dismal state that only 7.2 percent of it is organized into unions in the private sector (2009 figures) and it does not even have its own working class political party. This situation is very different from 1945, when almost 36 percent of American workers were represented by the unions. Its leadership has been complacent with the capitalist class throughout much of the 20 th Century, as well as currently. During the last part of 19th Century, first two decades of 20th Century, and during the 1930s, large and important parts of the American working class had become politically conscious and revolutionary. They aimed at wrestling political power from the capitalist class, which is the only way for the transformation of the relations of production to bring them into harmony with the level of development of the productive forces and to establish a system of social justice, domestic and international peace, real democracy-the socialist democracy-, and universal well-being for everyone. However, they were brutally repressed and crushed. For example, the Western Federation of Miners (WFM), a militant socialist organization, was crushed between 1903 and 1907, and the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW), a powerful socialist revolutionary working class organization with large membership, was crushed during the second decade of the 20th Century. Twenty percent of the unions of Congress of Industrial Organizations (CIO) were controlled by the Communist Party (CP) after the Second World War. It was forced to purge them in 1949 and 1950 due to repressive legislation, government pressure, and American Federation of Labor (AFL) red baiting. The AFL has a long history of capitulation to the capitalist class and class collaboration. When the radical unions were being destroyed, AFL was being praised and rewarded. After purging all the communists from their unions, the AFL and CIO merged in 1955. The AFL-CIO has since been engaging in only industrial unionism. The radical unionism of WFM, IWW, and CP controlled unions of CIO was destroyed by brutal repression and repressive legislation. All the other radical political parties and organizations suffered the same fate in the long history of repression in this country. The worst repression was unleashed on CP, shortly after its formation in September 1919, and continued unabated, with brief intervals and ever-increasing ferocity, until its influence in the working class and unions was almost completely destroyed by 1950s. After the betrayal of socialism in the USSR, the CP has also betrayed socialism under its current leadership. Among other things, it has been attempting to act as Obama's tail! Before the betrayal, CP, under the leadership of Gus Hall, had intellectually become one of the best and most principled communist parties of the world.

Another important change during that period has been in the nature and operations of the United Nations Organization (UNO), its various agencies, and personnel. They no longer conduct the type of important objective and critical studies that were cited in the article. The UNO has essentially become a tentacle of imperialism and its various agencies and officials have lost their former relative intellectual, political, and ethical independence. They have now submitted to the masters that feed them. This is the age of the worst form of prostitution: the intellectual, spiritual, and politico-economic prostitution, and the UNO, like almost everyone else, has also become a part of the chain reaction, mutating into a different element.

Introduction

Much has been written about the nature and history of fascism between the two world wars. However, there is a great void in theory as well as in the objective documentation of the development of fascism after the Second World War. Moreover, in spite of extensive studies of the earlier period, there continues to be very widespread confusion and misunderstanding about the class nature and state structure of the phenomenon of fascism, due to the dominance of bourgeois deformation of social knowledge and psychology in the capitalist societies. Although Marxist-Leninists developed the most scientific analysis of fascism in the earlier period, and several profound communist thinkers and fighters discovered and revealed its most essential features [e.g. R. Palme Dutt (1), Georgi Dimitrov (2), Palmiro Togaliati (3) etc.], no comparable insightful theoretical advance has been made in the development of knowledge of the forms of fascism and their transformations after the Second World War. Two major reasons for this crippling lack have been:

(1) The entirely inadequate and meager understanding of nature, forms, and evolution of fascist forces and tendencies inherent within the frameworks of bourgeois democracy in the imperialist centers.

(2) The artificial division and restriction of the phenomenon of fascism within the national boundaries of the center and the periphery in the historical and politico-economic analyses. Superficial appearances that have indicated the overwhelming dominance of bourgeois democracy over forms of fascism inherent in the advanced imperialist center, have been generally accepted for their face value. The flow of fascist pressures and tendencies from the center to the periphery has largely gone unnoticed. Such arbitrary and narrow fragmentation of the forms of fascism prevalent in the center from those in numerous areas of the periphery has already done immeasurable damage to the possibility of development of a comprehensive theory and knowledge of fascism as an integrated, interconnected, and continuous whole evolving in the center as well as in the periphery of imperialism simultaneously. In political circles, it is hardly understood at all that the contemporary existence of fascism in large areas of the periphery has been the result of, more than anything else, the evolution, transformation, and externalization of fascist forms and pressures of the imperialist center. Such a gap of understanding has inevitably retarded the discovery of the real and continuing dialectic of bourgeois democracy and fascism and of the passing of one into the other, as well as their mutual conditioning and flow between the center and periphery within the international system of imperialism under contemporary conditions.

In the current international political situation, characterized by intense fascist upsurge in the center as well as sharp polarization of international class forces, it is of utmost importance to grasp the correct structure of the above-mentioned dialectic. This paper is devoted to such an effort.

Evolutionary Dialectic of Fascism: An Outline

The most concise and yet profound and often-quoted definition of the rule of fascism was arrived at during the 13th Plenum of the Executive Committee of the Communist International in 1933 as "the open, terrorist dictatorship of the most reactionary, most chauvinistic, and most imperialist elements of finance capital" (4), which continues to be accepted as the essence of fascism by contemporary Marxist-Leninist circles throughout the world. Due to limitations of space, we cannot go into the details of the historical developments of this definition or of why this is the only scientific understanding of the class essence of fascism as compared to the confusionist and obscurantist theories of the apologists of capitalism. Here the focus is on the dialectical developmental processes of fascism.

There has been both continuity and discontinuity in the various historical types and forms of fascism. These will be briefly dealt with in the following four phases of fascism and its molting.

The First Phase

In the first phase, which started in the earlier part of this century and reached its zenith between the two world wars, the bourgeois democratic form of capitalist class rule was replaced by the fascist form of capitalist class rule in certain parts of the imperialist centers, e.g. Germany and Italy. There were colossal efforts to establish the rule of fascism universally. These efforts were crushed after the unprecedented destruction of human lives and material resources.

The Second Phase

The second phase, which started soon after the Second World War and continues into the present, constituted a major shift in the strategy of fascism as well as in the geographical location of its headquarters. As this phase is central to the theory, and as its various international connections between the imperialist center and the periphery have been effectively obscured for so long, this needs to be elaborated upon in some detail.

The strategy of fascist forces in the imperialist centers after the Second World War changed fundamentally while the basic objectives remained the same, i.e. maximization of profits for the big finance capital, brutal and militarist suppression of the international working class and its unions through fascist-type political superstructures, and economic, political, and military subjugation of the periphery in forms consistent with the new historical conditions. However, in this phase a dichotomy came into existence. While formerly, in the first phase, fascist superstructures were established in some parts of the imperialist centers themselves, in the second phase, the inherent fascist pressures and tendencies of capitalist democracies in the imperialist center were directed towards and channeled into numerous areas of the Third World periphery, while maintaining the bourgeois democratic types of superstructures in the center itself. As a result, numerous fascist-type superstructures sprang up in the periphery during that period. The nature of interactions and mutual conditioning between the imperialist center and periphery in this phase has been the most obscure in modern history. In the diagrammatic representation of this phase, it is shown that, while fascism flowed out of the center into the periphery, bourgeois democracy in the center was reinforced and enhanced by the super-exploitation and imperialist-fascist plunder of the human and natural resources of the periphery and the transfer of the resulting wealth to the center, which made it possible to establish, consolidate, and enhance the bourgeois democratic superstructures in the center. In fact, such a neocolonial process is coextensive with similar mechanisms during the colonial period.

The geographical headquarters of the fascist forces in this period shifted to the U.S. from Germany. It must be pointed out here that fascist tendencies and pressures are inherent in all the imperialist countries and grow out of, as well as against, the bourgeois democratic state apparatus under certain crisis situations. In the U.S., these tendencies and forces were already extremely well-developed and powerful even before the second phase. Fortunately, the inter-imperialist contradictions and rivalries and the uneven developments during the first phase prevented the international simultaneity and coordination of fascist conquest of political power and divided the capitalist world into two opposing camps. In the second phase, the fascist pressures and tendencies inherent within the bourgeois democracy of the imperialist center were externalized onto the numerous areas of the periphery wherever it was possible. The U.S., because of its unparalleled development of an international network of political, economic, and military domination during the post-Second World War period, played the determining central role in the developments of the second phase. As has been scientifically well documented, e.g. in Gromyko's work (5), in the first phase too it was the U.S. monopoly capital that had provided the essential industrial, economic, and military foundations for the establishment of a militarist and fascist Germany in the hope of directing that military power against the U.S.S.R. Although U.S. monopoly capital operates under all forms of political superstructure internationally, the focus of this essay is on its operations under the fascist types. If we examine the foundations of the latter, the following elements stand out clearly as of a determining nature:

(1) The economic, political, and military structures and forces provided by the imperialist center.

(2) The native military apparatus dominated by pro-imperialist elites, many of whom are trained for their roles in the center.

(3) Powerful sections of native big bourgeoisie closely tied to the imperialist metropolitan bourgeoisie.

(4) Big landowners also closely linked to monopoly capital of the center.

The foundations of fascist-type superstructures in the periphery have been permeated through and through with the powerful and vital components of imperialism, primarily of the U.S. Some sociologists and political economists in the periphery, intimately familiar with the situation, are already arriving at the conclusion that the U.S. metropolitan bourgeoisie can in no realistic sense be considered external to the class structure of fascist-type superstructures under discussion, but on the contrary it constitutes the most dominant class among the various native classes there. This, for example, is the conclusion of veteran progressive Pakistani sociologist Hamza Alavi (6) and various others in their analysis of the fascist-type dictatorships in Pakistan. A more or less similar class situation has existed in numerous other countries of the periphery where fascist-type dictatorships came into being during the second phase. U.S. imperialism has been the connecting thread, the international coordinator and manager of all these dictatorships spread all over the Third World periphery.

At this point, it would be desirable to cite some contemporary data on the global economic operations of imperialism, as ultimately it is on this basis that all other forms of relationships develop.

The U.N.Center on Transnational Corporations reported that the parent transnational corporations (TNCs) have 100,000 affiliates in other countries, out of which one-third belong to the parent TNCs in the U.S. and one-fifth to those in the U.K. U.S. and U.K. TNCs account for over 60 percent of all foreign affiliates in the developing countries (7). Of the 10 largest TNCs in the world, 8 are US corporations which account for 76 percent of the group's total sales and 75 percent of its total profits (8). In 1985, the 10 largest U.S. industrial TNCs had sales of more than $522.5 billion (9). A sample of the largest TNCs, in a U.N. study, showed that the ratio of sales by their foreign affiliates to total sales rose from about 30 percent in 1971 to about 35 percent in 1976 and to about 40 percent in 1980, indicating the rapid pace of the transnationalization of monopoly capital (10).

At the Tenth World Trade Union Congress in 1982, it was estimated that, by transfer of profits and other forms of plundering, international monopolies swindle the Third World countries of $200 billion annually (11). Certainly this conservative estimate must have gone up considerably by this time.

For more than a decade now, the main form of the export of capital has been loan capital, which, according to the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) data, made up 90 percent of the financial flow to the periphery in 1980 (12). In 1984, the debt of the periphery to the imperialist banks and corporations of the center reached the astronomical figure of $833 billion, on which $120 billion was extracted as debt service (13).

Transnational corporations from the center control 80 to 90 percent of the main commodities exported by the periphery and 40 percent of the industrial production in the latter (14). Fifteen largest among them, for example, controlled the marketing of 90 percent of the world's pineapples; 80 to 90 percent of the wheat, coffee, corn, cocoa, tea, forest products, cotton, tobacco, jute, copper, tin, bauxite; 90 to 95 percent of the iron ore; 75 percent of the crude petroleum; 60 percent of the sugar; 70 to 75 percent of the rice, bananas, and natural rubber; and 50 to 60 percent of the phosphates during 1980. In most cases, only 3 to 6 TNCs dominate bulk of the above-cited market (15). Although foreign direct investment and ownership is relatively lower in the agricultural economy than in mining, petroleum, and other industries of the periphery, the returns to the producers in the former sector, in terms of the proportion of the final product value, are much lower because of the TNC controls at the processing, transportation, and marketing levels (16). In one pioneering study, the U.N. Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD) revealed that, in the case of global banana trade, dominated by 3 large TNC's, 88 percent of the gains went to the TNC's while the producing countries got only 12 percent (17). It is estimated that the price manipulations by TNC's alone cause the Third World to lose between $50 billion and $100 billion annually (18).

The cumulative foreign direct investment (FDI) of TNC's at the end of 1983 was estimated to be around $625 billion, of which TNC's based in the U.S. accounted for over 40 percent. About a quarter of the total FDI was in developing countries (19). During the 1960's and 1970's, U.S. TNC's accounted for more than half of the total flow of FDI, and in 1979 their share was 59 percent of the total (20).

Another U.N. study revealed that between 1956 and 1968 the operations of U.S. TNCs were twice as profitable in the Third World as in the industrially developed countries (21).

The share of income from FDI in the total income of 8 of the top 10 U.S. TNC's varied from 49 to 87 percent in 1979 (22).

In UNCTAD's statistics, it was shown that for every dollar invested in the Third World between 1970 and 1980, TNCs repatriated approximately $2.20 to their home bases (23). U.S. TNCs invested $12,450 million and repatriated $48,847 million during 1970-1979, getting $3.92 return for every dollar invested in the developing countries (24). In 1980, there was a disinvestment of $3,454 million in the Middle East, and profits repatriated to the U.S. amounted to $7,326 million (25), reducing the net flow of FDI by U.S. TNCs to the periphery to $8,996 million and increasing the profits repatriated to the U.S. to $56,173 million between 1970 and 1980, indicating that $6.24 were repatriated as profits to the U.S. for every dollar invested in the Third World. Total income of U.S. TNCs between 1970 and 1980, from the above-mentioned net flow of $8,996 million during the same period, amounted to $78,934 million or a ratio of $8.77 income for every dollar invested in the periphery. During the same period, U.S. TNCs FDI net flow to developed capitalist countries was $35,218 million, profits repatriated to the U.S. from them $63,138 million and income $134,818 million. Hence the ratios of repatriated dollars and total profits to dollars invested in the developed capitalist countries were 1.79:1 and 3.83:1, respectively, between 1970 and 1980, while, as noted above, these ratios were 6.24:1 and 8.77:1 in the case of developing countries. While 46.8 percent of the total profits made in the developed capitalist countries were repatriated to the U.S. and 53.2 percent were reinvested there, from the Third World 71 percent of the profits were remitted to the U.S. and 29 percent reinvested. Moreover, the profit rate on the U.S. cumulative FDI investments in the developed capitalist countries in 1980 was 16.6 percent, while the corresponding profit rate in the developing countries amounted to 24.1 percent. The total profits of U.S. TNCs from FDI in all areas abroad between 1970 and 1980 added up to the colossal sum of $219,472 million. The total net inflow of FDI to these areas in the same period was $44,928 million (26).

UNCTAD estimated that technological contributions by the skilled personnel who emigrated from the Third World to the U.S., Canada, and U.K. between 1960 and 1972 amounted to $51 billion in terms of capital. The total amount of development assistance during the same period to the Third World was $46 billion. Hence, brain drain alone caused a net loss of $5 billion to the Third World in 12 years (27).

Such is the economic framework that has both been the result and the cause of numerous fascist superstructures in the periphery which constitute the overwhelming proportion of the data cited above for the periphery.

The above analysis of the second phase has shown that both bourgeois democracy and international fascism have been the essential attributes of U.S. monopoly capital in the post-Second World War period. The relevance of this relationship can hardly be overstated when applied to the developments and transformations in the present and future periods discussed in connection with the third and fourth phases.

The Third Phase

In the third phase of fascist molting, the initial processes of which started in the mid-1970s and the definitive shapes of which have been established in the 1980s, the imperialistically established fascist superstructures in the periphery are crumbling down rapidly, one after the other, like a house of cards, under the pressures of mass democratic movements. In this phase, the fascist pressures externalized so skillfully for so long onto the periphery are returning home to the imperialist center itself. This should be quite understandable, as once certain amounts of energy and pressures are generated and circulated in different channels of a system, any blockage in one of them would cause corresponding increases in the others to accommodate the total original volume, if a change in the system itself is not made. As indicated in the diagram, the third phase is a transitional phase which involves the present and immediate future periods and in which, as the fascist-type superstructures are breaking down in the periphery and being replaced by the democratic types, in the center the bourgeois democratic apparatus is being eroded, and there is a rapid upsurge of fascist and militarist tendencies on all levels of society, most importantly on the political level.

There are two diametrically opposed types of movement of forces and processes within the center inherent in the third phase:

(1) Mass opposition and resistance to the transformation of bourgeois democracy into fascism in the center. Such an opposition will only succeed if it sets before itself the task of transforming the imperialist system itself. Otherwise it will be absurdly self-contradictory and ineffective. To be effective and successful, it will have to be organized under the leadership of the working class and will involve the revolutionary transformation of the imperialist system into a socialist democracy, eliminating the source of fascism once and for all.

(2) Spontaneous movement of forces and processes, leading to ever-increasing erosion of bourgeois democracy, without the effective and consciously organized massive opposition mass movement in the center.

The Fourth Phase

The two alternative outcomes in the fourth phase would flow out of the two alternative developments of the movements described above and their conflict and outcome.

(1) As a result of the first alternative of the third phase, socialist-oriented democracy is likely to result in the present imperialist center, which will have complementary democratic relationships with the periphery. As shown in the diagram, democracy will flow in both directions if this alternative is materialized.

(2) If the second alternative of the third phase emerges victorious, fascism, in one form or another, is certain to be established in the imperialist center. It will be like the first phase, but with a different geographical nucleus, i.e. the U.S., and on an incomparably higher level of development and force. There will be renewed efforts for the establishment of universal fascism, even under the label of "democracy".

Foundations of Fascism in the U.S

Within the U.S. imperialist center, various objective and subjective processes, described below, that are prerequisites for the upsurge and consolidation of fascism, have accumulated and matured to unprecedented levels. Although some of the same objective processes, in themselves, also constitute the maturity of conditions for transition into socialism, the incredibly regressive and distorted development of the subjective factor counteracts movement in that direction.

(1) The highest degree and the most gigantic concentration of monopoly capital, under the control of relatively few large monopolies, in the world history.

(2) The highest state of militarization of the economy in world history.

(3) The most colossal buildup of material-technical military apparatus, constructed with the aid of the most advanced scientific and technological techniques in the world's history.

(4) Unparalleled increase in the economic and political power of the military-industrial complex headed by the most bestial, reactionary, chauvinistic, imperialistic, and nuclear-weapons-intoxicated sections of monopoly capital.

(5) A triple-layered economic crisis which U.S. imperialism is incapable of resolving within its present framework.

(6) Sharp increase in the well-integrated and aggressive attacks of monopoly capital on the working class and labor unions.

(7) An astounding lack of political unity, low political level of struggle, and predominance of class-collaborationist, opportunist, and pro-imperialist elements and sentiments in the working masses, which have made them extremely vulnerable to the attacks against them. Although a high degree of polarization of class forces is ensuing as a consequence of these brutal attacks, it is not clear whether it will develop rapidly enough and deeply enough to check the further advance of monopoly capital in the direction of fascism.

(8) A general dehumanization, followed by monsterization of human nature, decadence, callousness, spiritual-emotional atrophy, and perversion of the mass psychology and personality structure in the population at large, primarily the result of being under the prolonged rule of the most intensified and sinister forms of capitalism in history, have all created a social environment in which extreme reactionary forces can and have risen to the top levels of political state power with an ease which only appears surprising if one has entertained delusions about social reality in the U.S. To be sure, such objective social reality is denied and covered up by a thin and superficial layer of solipsistic-mechanical forms of linguistic and other social behavior that are culturally produced and reproduced. However, objective facts constantly burst forth and explode the fragile and phony bubble of this secondary layer which, nevertheless, is again automatically inflated. There is an incessant contradiction and tension between the objective social reality on the one hand, and social subjective manipulation, rationalization, and denial of it on the other, producing a sort of social schizophrenic mental apparatus in this society.

Due to the existence of various objective and subjective circumstances, "the most reactionary, most chauvinistic, and most imperialist elements of finance capital" have gained control of the political and state apparatus, albeit in a bourgeois democratic form. Whether they will need to or attempt to resort to the "open terrorist dictatorship" will largely depend upon the scale and strength of the opposition mass movement.

Summation

The staggering successes of national liberation movements in the periphery constitute the major causal factor in the chain of events leading to the all-out offensive of monopoly capital against the working class and the bourgeois democratic rights in its center. This could not be otherwise within the sinister system of imperialism. The main point here is that although the imperialist bourgeoisie has taken short-term measures to make up for the losses and has, in fact, increased its profits in face of the successes of national liberation movements in the periphery, it has no viable and reliable intermediate or long-term solutions to the problems thus being generated and is more and more resorting to naked militarism, irrationality, and rapidly increased levels of measures towards fascism.

At this point, it is possible to formulate the central thesis of this paper, which is that within the present U.S. imperialist politico-economic structure, an increase in the politico-economic independence and democracy in the periphery has a reducing effect on the existing version of bourgeois democracy in the center, and conversely the existence and expansion of fascist-type dictatorships in the periphery tend to maintain and enhance the specific version of bourgeois democracy under discussion in the center. On the other hand, the level and stability of bourgeois democracy in the center is dependent upon the continuation of fascist-type dictatorships, either direct or camouflaged through surrogates, in the periphery

The class nature and contradictions of democracy under capitalism have long been understood and analyzed by communists. Lenin, in his address to the First Congress of the Communist International in 1919, had presented a thorough analysis of the extremely limited and contradictory nature of bourgeois democracy in response to the class collaborationist, opportunist, and confusionist nonsense of the leadership of some European social democratic parties, in which they were attempting to identify bourgeois democracy with democracy in general. He conclusively demonstrated that bourgeois democracy was little more than a legal form of cover for the actual state of affairs characterized by the dictatorship of capitalists. He also pointed out that the "Marxists have always maintained that the more developed, the 'purer' democracy is, the more naked, acute, and merciless the class struggle becomes, and the 'purer' the capitalist oppression and bourgeois dictatorship" (28). These were prophetic words, the truth of which was never more self-evident, more applicable, than in the contemporary U.S. The inverse relationship between the progress of bourgeois democratic political super-structural form in the center and of any kind of democracy worth the name in the periphery, as discussed in this essay, is consistent with the Marxist-Leninist understanding of the problem of bourgeois democracy and follows from it under current international conditions. The dialectical logic also requires such an analysis of the interconnected movement, interactions, and mutual conditioning of the basic economic structures and political superstructures of the center and the periphery.

I will not attempt to deduce all the strategic and tactical implications of the analysis of this paper. However, one such implication is of fundamental importance: that under contemporary international conditions, the effective struggle against fascism requires a new strategy in which it is inseparably linked with the fight against the present structure of imperialism and the dependent nature of its bourgeois democracy in the center on fascism in the periphery. This means that the mere struggle to preserve the present form of bourgeois democratic apparatus in the center, within its current imperialist context, would be futile and self-defeating. To be effective, the mass struggle against fascism would have to aim at the radical transformation of the current form of bourgeois democratic apparatus in the center as well as of the structure of international imperialism itself. This would only be possible under the leadership of the working class and its vanguard party. The bourgeoisie itself is completely bankrupt and incapable of providing such leadership at this stage. The theory and practice of united and popular front against fascism, developed during the first phase of fascism, will continue to be the basic guide at the new stage. However, the new features in the new phase of fascism also demand new measures and some modifications in the strategic objectives as well as in the strategy and tactics themselves. The highly contradictory and ambiguous role of progressive sections of the bourgeoisie became clear in their involvement in the popular front during the Spanish people's war against fascism, as well as during other revolutionary struggles throughout the world. Some of them, entrusted with leadership positions, caused immeasurable damage to the revolutionary movements. In the present-day imperialist centers, the bourgeoisie has decayed even further, and although its progressive sections will become part of the united and popular front against fascism, their capacity for leadership is extremely contradictory and limited. Another feature of the contemporary fight against fascism is the struggle against the danger of nuclear war, both problems being the organically linked, dominant forms that modern monopoly capital is passing through in its morbid historical development.

The immense and fundamental importance of the existence of socialist-bloc countries for the development of international events has not been discussed in this writing. However, this has been taken for granted as the foundation on which historical movement in the progressive directions has the possibility to advance at this phase.

Originally published on http://imperialismandthethirdworld.wordpress.com.

Notes

1. Dutt, R. P. Fascism and Social Revolution. International Publishers, New York, 1934. World Politics. 1918-1936. Random House, New York, 1936.

2. Dimitrov, G. The United Front Against Fascism. Speeches delivered at the Seventh Congress of the Communist International, July 25-August 20, 1935. New Century Publishers, New York, 1950.

3. Togliatti, P. Lectures on Fascism. International Publishers, New York, 1976.

4. Dimitrov, op. cit. Seldes, G. Facts and Fascism. In Fact, Inc., New York, 1943.

5. Gromyko, A. The Overseas Expansion of Capital. Progress Publishers, Moscow (English translation), 1985.

6. Alavi, H. "Class and State". Gardezi and J. Rashid (eds.), Pakistan: The Roots of Dictatorship: The Political Economy of a Praetorian State, pp. 40 Zed Press, London, 1983.

7. United Nations. "The Global Foreign Affiliate Network", The CTC Reporter, No.15, p. 8. U.N. Centre on Transnational Corporations (UNCTC), 1983.

8. Fortune. Time, Inc., New York, May 3 and August 23, 1982.

9. Fortune. Time, Inc., New York, April 28, 1986.

10. United Nations. "TNCs in World Development: Third Survey". The CTC Reporter, No. 15, p. 3. UNCTC, 1983.

11. Tenth World Trade Union Congress, Commission No. 4, "Trade Union Strategy Against the Transnational Corporations". Havana, 1982.

12. Castro, F. The World Economic and Social Crisis. Report to the Seventh Summit Conference of Non-Aligned Countries, p. 141. Oficina de Publicaciones de Consejo de Estado, Havana, 1983.

13. OECD. External Debt of Developing Countries in 1984, pp. 20-21. OECD, Paris, 1985.

14. Castro, F., op. cit., pp. 16, 142.

15. Clairemonte, F. F. "Reflections on Power: TNCs in the Global Economy". The CTC Reporter, No. 15, pp. 37-39. UNCTC, 1983.

16. Zorn, S. "TNC-Government Relations in Agriculture". The CTC Reporter, No. 20, pp. 45-47, 50. UNCTC, 1985.

17. Clairemonte, op. cit.

18. Castro, op. cit.

19. United Nations. "Policy Analysis and Research. Foreign Direct Investment and Other Related Flows". The CTC Reporter, No. 19. pp. 6-9 UNCTC, 1985.

20. United Nations. Salient Features and Trends in Foreign Direct Investment. UNCTC, 1983.

21. United Nations. Multinational Corporations in World Development, p. 36. U.N., 1973.

22. Bergsten, C. F., T. Horst, and T. H. Moran. American Multinationals and American Interests, pp. 10-13. Brookings Institution, 1978.

23. U. N. Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD). Handbook of International Trade and Development. Supplement. 1981.

24. Whichard, 0. G. "U.S. Direct Investments Abroad in 1979", Survey of Current Business, pp. 24-25. U.S. Department of Commerce,, August 1980.

25. Whichard, 0. C. "U.S. Direct Investments Abroad in 1980", Survey of Current Business, pp. 21, 23, 27, 34. U.S. Department of Commerce, August 1981.

26. Ibid., and Whichard, 1979, op. cit.

27. Castro, op. cit., p. 131.

28. Lenin, V. I. "Theses and Report on Bourgeois Democracy and the Dictatorship of the Proletariat", First Congress of the Communist International, March 2-6, 1919. Selected Works, Vol. 3, pp. 150-163. Progress Publishers, Moscow, 1971.

Invisible Chains: Consumerism, Debt, and Consciousness

By Colin Jenkins

Critical analyses regarding the effects of "consumerism" have been a staple of Leftist theory for the past century. The Situationist International, appearing in the 1950s as an extension of Lukacs' unique brand of social analysis from the 20s, famously ridiculed the "western lifestyle" as a "fake reality which masks the capitalist degradation of human life."[1] The Situationists viewed the "spectacle" as the process for which people's desires are shaped and molded towards consumerist tendencies through mass media, marketing and advertising, and advanced techniques like "recuperation." This counter-cultural examination quickly became synonymous with a Left that had already come to terms with the "economic injustice" which characterized "the predatory phase of human development."[2] In opposition to this "rigged game," a determined and conscious working class countered with radical unionism and activism, direct action, stacks of polemics, studies on socio-economics, and avant-garde artistic techniques that fell under the banner of "culture jamming." "Detournement" turned the act of recuperation upside down by attempting to radicalize and politicize the corporate slogans and logos that flooded the "spectacle," leading to modern alternative media outlets such as Adbusters, the unsung catalysts of Occupy Wall Street and Rolling Jubilee, and street artists like Banksy, who combines detournement techniques with urban graffiti to send powerful counter-cultural messages via concrete canvass.

Naturally, any opposition to consumerism, especially from within those societies historically classified as "western" or "industrialized," is counter-hegemonic and proto-revolutionary. After all, the cultures derived from them have come to be dominated by ideals rooted in capitalism and market economies, naturally leading to intense daily routines that consist of celebrity worship at the altar of reality television and a multi-billion dollar "gossip industry." And when considering the dominant culture is one of superficiality, where our identities are based on what we own, wear and drive - in other words, consumerism - any stance in opposition to this is naturally "against the grain." The current counter-culture is one that not only recognizes the inherent dangers of a society where meaningful human concerns like impoverishment, homelessness, ever-increasing militarism, racism and misogyny take a backseat to Reality Housewives, American Idol and Jersey Shore; but also one that dares to make conscious lifestyle decisions which run contrary to this domination, while also working to break the collective trance that derives from such. Despite the obvious legitimacies found in this stance, and assuming we haven't conceded to nothingness, it's important to consider (1) how this opposition affects the Left's ability to function as a real alternative to the embedded socio-political hegemony, and (2) how it affects the Left's relationship with a working class that has embraced much of this culture as its own. The inherent risks of elitist-like diatribes against what have essentially become "cultural norms" beg for a re-evaluation which must recognize the need to accommodate both scathing cultural critiques and working-class political means. And while this seemingly half-assed approach to addressing such reactionary psychology may be debatable, the dangerous effects and continued escalation of consumerism clearly represent a powerful barrier to reaching any semblance of a collective working class consciousness. Its roots are not always as clear.

In 1901, following the conquest of Madagascar, French General Joseph Simon Gallieni immediately introduced a franc-based currency in order to impose an "educational tax" on the native population. This move had three implied purposes: "To teach the natives the value of work;" to create an immediate and effective monetary form of debt; and to instill consumerist tendencies within the population. While the first "function" followed the typical blueprint of colonialism by creating cheap forms of "human resources" to exploit, the latter two incorporated tangible debts to "legitimize" servitude (a tactic that would soon take hold in the "modern international financial system") and a culture of consumerism as the psychological means to establish and maintain what Antonio Gramsci once referred to as "cultural hegemony." As David Graeber explains, "The colonial (French) government was quite explicit about the need to make sure that (indigenous) peasants had at least some money of their own left over, and to ensure that they became accustomed to the minor luxuries - parasols, lipstick, cookies - available at the shops."[3] Understanding the connection between alienation, debt and consumerism - and how each may be used as a form of control - goes beyond the "inferiority complex" that Fanon once attributed to colonized populations which are "physically and symbolically destroyed, and in their place the colonizer produces a people who deserve only to be ruled."[4] Essentially, these are tools that transcend international and inherently racist relations between the "core" and "periphery" - making class analyses absolutely vital in regards to the "forced dependency" created by the architects of the dominant culture, not only from the perspective of an indigenous population, but also from that of the domestic working classes. "It was crucial that they (the colonized) develop new tastes, habits and expectations; that they lay the foundation of a consumer demand that would endure long after the conquerors had left, and keep Madagascar forever tied to France."[5]

Establishing a "cultural hegemony" runs analogous to principles that drive the market business model, which relies solely on individual "desires" to sell products. Since most of these desires do not constitute basic needs in the Maslovian sense, advertising and marketing must convince consumers that they need big screen televisions, new clothes, technological gadgets, and so forth. With such a task at hand, the business community had to look no further than the colonizers' experience in establishing control over its subject population. In a 1955 edition of The Journal of Retailing, Economist and Marketing Consultant, Victor Lebow, urged business "leaders" and marketers to cultivate and exploit this consumerist mentality with full force:

(Our economy) demands that we make consumption our way of life, that we convert the buying and use of goods into rituals, that we seek our spiritual satisfactions, our ego satisfactions, in consumption. The measure of social status, of social acceptance, of prestige, is now to be found in our consumptive patterns. The very meaning and significance of our lives today expressed in consumptive terms. The greater the pressures upon the individual to conform to safe and accepted social standards, the more does he tend to express his aspirations and his individuality in terms of what he wears, drives, eats- his home, his car, his pattern of food serving, his hobbies.... We require not only "forced draft" consumption, but "expensive" consumption as well. We need things consumed, burned up, worn out, replaced, and discarded at an ever increasing pace. We need to have people eat, drink, dress, ride, live, with ever more complicated and, therefore, constantly more expensive consumption.[6]

To them, the ultimate challenge was not merely establishing a monetary system which allows for widespread consumer spending (fiat-based, supply-side economics) - a task that is handled in conjunction by the "financial wizards" of the hegemonic class - but rather creating the psychological desire to drive such spending. Essentially, as Lebow implied, this may only be accomplished by deflating the "meaning" out of life and replacing it with artificial "spiritual and ego satisfactions" that are achieved through false consciousness and "forced draft consumption." In a scene from the movie Fight Club, Tyler Durden famously rails against the effects of this conditioned psychology on the working classes:

I see all this potential, and I see squandering. God damn it, an entire generation pumping gas, waiting tables - slaves with white collars. Advertising has us chasing cars and clothes, working jobs we hate so we can buy shit that we don't need. We're the middle children of history, man. No purpose of place. We have no Great War. No Great Depression. Our Great War's a spiritual war; our Great Depression is our lives.

While Durden's underground sermon accurately characterized the nihilistic decadence of America's Generation X - a generation born at the pinnacle of this consumerist assault - he was merely echoing the theoretical basis of "commodity fetishism" espoused by Marx nearly a century and a half prior:

(With the spread of markets) there will come a time when everything that people consider as inalienable will become an object of exchange, of traffic, and can be alienated. This is the time when the very things which till then had been communicated, but never exchanged, given, but never sold, acquired but never bought - virtue, love, conviction, knowledge, conscience - when everything, in short, passed into commerce. It is the time of general corruption, of universal venality. It has left remaining no other nexus between man and man other than naked self-interest and callous cash payment. [7]

As predicted, this commodity-consumer paradigm has dominated life for much of the past century. Just as workers are commodified and alienated by their role within the labor-capital relationship, they are doubly commodified and exploited in the consumer-capital relationship. Marx recognized this; western imperialists recognized this; and the corporate business community recognizes this. Hence, the appearance of an extensive "propaganda model" that is carried out in the form of a multi-billion-dollar marketing and advertising industry - which is controlled to a large extent by "a relatively concentrated network of major corporations, conglomerates and investment firms."[8] And while there are certainly examples of acute organization within this corporate community (i.e. The Business Roundtable, Chamber of Commerce, etc…), the maintenance of its hegemony ultimately falls on a loosely connected arrangement of entities that share one powerful commonality: the search for profit. It is this very dynamism that makes it such a formidable foe for the Left in its attempt to deploy class-conscious politics.

Long before the onset of industrialization, capitalism, and even market economies, there were many examples of cultures partaking in the act of accumulation for reasons other than need. Therefore, it seems such "gathering" is likely inherent in our DNA. So what's the problem? Well, first of all, it's important to differentiate between a superficial condemnation that borders on envy, and an analytical assessment that attempts to identify and deconstruct mindless, narcissistic and reactionary societal tendencies. By doing so, it brings much needed legitimacy to the latter purpose, while avoiding further alienation from folks who find natural enjoyment in the acquisition of things. In other words, it's not the act of "wanting" that's inherently bad, it's the totality of a "consumerist" society that intensifies the process of degradation and dehumanization which has already been established within the realms of capital, labor and property relations. And while the battle against exploitation via labor and property is complex, multi-layered and formidable, especially when considering its collective nature and the multitude of external factors involved, the battle against anti-consciousness perpetuated by consumerism can be won on an individual basis, from within. Ultimately, it is this compounding "superstructure" which houses many aspects of superfluous want, where the transition from a civil society to a "surface society" has been made complete; and ironically, where the reversal of such may begin. Therefore, juxtaposing "superficial condemnation" and "analytical analysis" is absolutely vital when breaking down this inherently destructive process. Secondly, it is important to identify such characteristics of a "surface society," with the most dangerous of those coming in the form of personal identity, whether internally through the self or externally through the perception of others. Historically, this process of "self-worth through accumulation" and its reciprocal effect on public perception has blurred the lines between consummation for personal enjoyment and "conspicuous consumerism" as a means of establishing human value. Thorstein Veblen's observations of more than a century ago, though somewhat obvious, still ring true:

Since the consumption of these more excellent goods is an evidence of wealth, it becomes honorific; and conversely, the failure to consume in due quantity and quality becomes a mark of inferiority and demerit."[9]

As if the illegitimacy and consequences of personal fortune and unequal distribution are not enough, the cultural norms that are created through consumption and public display serve to compound and further entrench such inequity on a social scale. As such, the "cultural hegemony" becomes a self-sustaining phenomenon that persists without the need for direct manipulation. "This principle has had the force of a conventional law," explains Veblen. "It has served as the norm to which consumption has tended to conform, and any appreciable departure from it is to be regarded as an aberrant form, sure to be eliminated sooner or later in the further course of development."

A civil society is one that recognizes the collective nature which exists within a community and realizes the inherent connection between a common good and the individual "pursuit of happiness." The essence of civility was captured by Peter Kropotkin in his historical work, Mutual Aid: A Factor of Evolution:

The mutual-aid tendency in man has so remote an origin, and is so deeply interwoven with all the past evolution of the human race, that it has been maintained by mankind up to the present time, notwithstanding all vicissitudes of history. It was chiefly evolved during periods of peace and prosperity; but when even the greatest calamities befell men --when whole countries were laid waste by wars, and whole populations were decimated by misery, or groaned under the yoke of tyranny --the same tendency continued to live in the villages and among the poorer classes in the towns; it still kept them together, and in the long run it reacted even upon those ruling, fighting, and devastating minorities which dismissed it as sentimental nonsense. And whenever mankind had to work out a new social organization, adapted to a new phase of development, its constructive genius always drew the elements and the inspiration for the new departure from that same ever-living tendency.[10]

A "surface society" is one that ignores this commonality and replaces it with narcissistic tendencies that are centered within a false sense of identity - one that constantly pursues wealth or, at the very least, the appearance of such. In Prosperity without Growth, Tim Jackson writes, "The profit motive stimulates a continual search for newer, better or cheaper products and services. Our own relentless search for novelty and social status locks us into an iron cage of consumerism. Affluence itself has betrayed us."[11] This society, in sharp contrast to its civil counterpart, has been intensified by the maturation and successive mutations of capitalism, a system that has far outlived the spotty improvements it once offered to its ancestral systems of feudalism and mercantalism.

The development of a "surface society" is as much intentional as it is incidental. On one hand, it represents a regression to what Kant once referred to as "man's self-imposed infancy." On the other hand, it represents a product of invention - the intended result of a social and economic system that is manipulated and shaped through intensely concentrated power structures and profit-seeking motives. The latter brings us back to the French subjugation of Madagascar, where a noted "strategy" used to gain control of the indigenous population was to mold them into consumers who become "accustomed to the minor luxuries available at the shops." Thus, by doing so, they are not only assimilated into the "western mindset," but also dependent on the perceived need for otherwise worthless commodities. Post-industrialized societies are marked by similar dynamics, some of which are natural byproducts of the corporatized market system, and others which are products of design through hierarchical decision-making and political and monetary policy. Ultimately, if the interests of the "ruling-class" (the super minority) not only differs from that of the "working-class" (the super majority), but actually runs adversarial to such, then the need to "manipulate a culturally diverse society so that the ruling-class worldview becomes the worldview that is imposed and accepted as the cultural norm," like Gramsci once suggested, is logical on face value.

As we embark well into the 21st century, debt has officially replaced "labor surplus value" as the fundamental tool used by "the rich to extract wealth from the rest of us."[12] However, below its tangible use for "extracting" and funneling wealth to the top lies a crucial weapon in the battle for consciousness and working-class servitude. One of the most notable instances of "assimilation through policy" is reflected within America's love affair with home ownership, which has been intensely subsidized by the federal government for the past century. Interestingly enough, the push for home ownership was rooted in two essential motives: to quell the radical working-class uprisings of the early 1900s, and to serve as a subtle avenue for transferring public funds to private finance. Federal support of home ownership "began as an extension of anti-communist efforts in the wake of the Bolshevik Revolution in Russia; as on organization of realtors put it at the time, "socialism and communism do not take root in the ranks of those who have their feet firmly embedded in the soil of America through homeownership."[13] The working-class angst that had begun to surface, both internationally with the events in Tsarist Russia and nationally with the groundswell of union activity and workers' strikes, presented the need to ramp up capitalist intervention in domestic policy. What followed were the federally-backed "Own Your Own Home" campaign, the Home Owners' Loan Corporation (HOLC), the Federal Housing Administration (FHA) and the Federal National Mortgage Association (better known as "Fannie Mae."). The consensus among the "owning-class" was that indebted homeowners do not go on strike. The subsidization of private home ownership through tax incentives (where the federal government actually pays homeowners a portion of their expenses at the end of the year) allowed for the manipulation of working-class interests, and were eventually fortified by modern advents of the same, such as consumer debt (rampant through the 1980s and 90s) and student loan debt (dominant from the 1990s to present). It is no surprise that this "control by debt" mantra has intensified during an historical macroeconomic transition from tangible production economies to highly abstract "financial" economies. In contrast to the potentially negative perception of debt, the introduction of seemingly positive forms of class connections have been deployed in the form of "privatized" retirement plans, company "profit sharing," 401Ks and "deferred compensation" plans - all of which urge workers to give portions of their earnings to Wall St. in the promise of long-term returns. Yet another artificial creation of vested (in the form of a direct monetary medium), though contradictory, interest in the owning-class' well-being. The result: A working-class that cheers on the Dow, Nasdaq and S & P 500 under the false impression of inclusion and mutual interest, all the while being fleeced.

Naturally, as "financialization" has sprung up as the dominant paradigm, so has the near-complete fusion of what C. Wright Mills once referred to as "The Power Elite." Graeber writes:

Financialization is not just the manipulation of money. Ultimately, it's the ability to manipulate state power to extract a portion of other people's incomes. Wall Street and Washington, in other words, have become one. Financialization, securitization and militarization are all different aspects of the same process. And the endless multiplication, in cities across America, of gleaming bank offices- 
 spotless stores selling nothing while armed security guards stand by-is just the most immediate and visceral symbol for what we, as a nation, have become.[14]

So, where does consumerism fit into this bleak reality? It's rather simple. Without a constant effort to ensure people remain "accustomed to the minor luxuries - parasols, lipstick, cookies- available at the shops," the potential reach of debt is limited. Of course, basic necessities like housing, health care, food, clothing, and even water can and have been commodified in this fashion - but this isn't enough. Without creating and maintaining an insatiable "need" for luxuries, immense avenues of profit (on one side) and debt (on the other side) are essentially shut down. Furthermore, beyond the basic pursuit of monetary gain (profit) and wealth extraction (debt) lies the foundation of the status quo: the struggle for consciousness. A working class that remains ignorant to its role in this struggle; that remains indignant towards members of its own class through artificial divisions (race, gender, nationality) or false consciousness (by foolishly blaming the poor, homeless, welfare recipients, etc..); that buys into the Weltanschauung established by the "owning-class," is one that stands idle in the face of its own collective disenfranchisement. It allows "the norms of gender, class, and culturally circumscribed behavior, the requirements of work, the pressures of seeking status through consumption, and, in the absence of viable social alternatives, the need to find almost all enjoyment from private commodities" to dictate human life.[15] In this sense, consumerism is the enemy of solidarity; and solidarity is the catalyst of social awareness. Because if and when genuine class consciousness takes flight, society runs the risk of offering a meaningful human existence - an inevitable death to the status quo and the collective realization that "you're not your fuckin khakis."

Notes

[1] Guy Debord. The Society of the Spectacle.

[2] Albert Einstein. Why Socialism? Monthly Review: May 1949. (Paraphrasing Thorstein Veblen)

[3] David Graeber. Debt: The First 5,000 Years (New York: Melville House, 2011)

[4] Franz Fanon. Black Skin, White Masks (New York: Grove Press, 1967)

[5] Graeber, Debt.

[6] Karl Marx. The Poverty of Philosophy, 1847.

[7] Victor Lebow. Journal of Retailing, Spring of 1955.

[8] Edward Herman and Noam Chomsky. Manufacturing Consent: The Political Economy of the Mass Media (New York: Pantheon, 1988)

[9] Thorstein Veblen. The Theory of the Leisure Class: An Economic Study of Institutions (New York: Macmillan, 1902), pp. 68-101

[10] Kropotkin, Peter. Mutual Aid: A Factor of Evolution. 1902

[11] Is rampant consumerism ruining our lives? The Guardian, March 17, 2011.

[12] "Can Debt Spark a Revolution?" David Graeber. The Nation, September 5, 2012.

[13] Vincent Cannato, A Home of One's Own, National Affairs, Spring 2010.

[14] The Nation.

[15] Michael Albert. Parecon: Life After Capitalism (New York: Verso, 2003), p. 205.